Democracy and Its Matter. Juxtaposing Carl Schmitt and John Rawls

According to critics, the adjective ‘political’ of John Rawls’s political liberalism indicates an unexpected convergence with the thought of Carl Schmitt. Rawls is said to offer a justification for liberalism that presupposes many of the substantive commitments he sought to avoid. Nor did he ever address the pressing question of how to contain doctrines that do not support the content of the overlapping consensus. Based on this critique, Schmitt’s political theory emerges as a complement to the gaps in political liberalism. Alessandro Ferrara has recently taken up this argument to refute it once and for all. It is true, he maintains, that Schmitt discussed issues that resonate with some Rawlsian themes, but the reasons that make these two leading authors incomparable seem to him stronger than any similarity. This article makes two claims that seek to strengthen the above critique. First, if one believes, as I do, that the comparison is plausible, it should be with Schmitt’s most robust constitutional theory, which he completed between 1928 and 1934. Second, if one looks at Schmitt’s scholarly production in those years, the points of convergence appear more significant than those Ferrara is prepared to accept.