Schmitt conjured Rousseau’s radical democracy only to reduce all rational politics to absurdity

Evidence

Kirchheimer made it clear here that he did not share Schmitt’s conviction that a democracy could never function in a heterogeneous society and must therefore be rejected. Had he thus abandoned the contempt they had earlier shared for the nonsovereign constitutional state? Had it become clear to him that Schmitt had only conjured up Rousseau’s ideal of radical democracy, and a rational utopia of parliamentary discussion, in order to confront them with a reality which made a mockery of them, and in order to reduce themand with them every form of democracy and rational way of solving political differencesto the absurd? — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 254

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s earlier treatment of Schmitt’s Legality and Legitimacy and his critique of parliamentary liberalism.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that Schmitt weaponized an idealized Rousseauian democracy to discredit democratic procedure itself is a mechanism worth sitting with — the demolition is internal, not external.