1. Strauss thinks Schmitt's formulation of the political in _The Concept of the Political_ isn't sharp enough. The separation into exclusive groups of friends and enemies not only leads to the more intense forms of group conflict, i.e., war, but is also a basic feature of human nature. Nothing in human relations is then prior to the political; in the beginning was the enemy and the alliance.
2. Humans need authoritarian societies because humans are evil (doesn't Strauss somewhere else express this by saying that man is evil because he is dangerous? in another letter to Schmitt? or his review?) Right as the state's right over the individual is the only right that actually exists. Any other principle of government is incoherent.
3. Per Strauss, the necessity for authoritarian government means the distinction between bellicose nationalism and internationalist pacifism devolves into the opposition between authoritanism and anarchism; authoritarian states (us) need their enemies (them). Without the sharper definition and total scale of the political in (1) and the requirement for authoritarian states in (2), the authoritarian/anarchic and nationalist/internationalist dichotomies could be independent of each other.
4. "Welcome to Weimar" means: we're in a transitional stage between a society with formal freedoms and tolerance to an authoritarian one based on ideological homogeneity and a constant state of war. Strauss' more-Schmitt-than-Schmitt concept of the political is the theoretical blueprint for this.
Curtiss
>Dear Professor Schmitt:
>
> I have reflected once again in the past few days on the ideas you have
> expressed in your Concept of the Political and also on my objections,
> which have in the meantime been published in the Archiv fur
> Sozialwissenschaft. In the course of those reflections, two points
> have occurred to me that I would like to report to you by letter
> because I can no longer present them in my review.
>
> As far as I have seen from various conversations about your book,
> your thesis is particularly subject to misunderstandings because you
> occasionally express yourself more or less as follows: political
> opposition is the highest degree of intensity of all possible group
> oppositions. These formulations invite the misunderstanding that the
> political always presupposes the prior existence of human oppositions
> that in themselves have an unpolitical character, in other words that
> the political is something subsequent or supplementary. But if I have
> correctly understood your opinion---admittedly taken more from an oral
> exchange than from your text---it leads precisely to the conclusion
> that there is a primary tendency in human nature to form exclusive
> groups.
>
> In attempting to analyze your text more thoroughly, one gets the
> impression that the polemic against the Left, a polemic that at first
> glance appears completely unified, collapses into two incompatible or
> at least heterogeneous lines of thought. The opposition between Left
> and Right is presented (1) as the opposition between internationalist
> pacificism and bellicose nationalism and (2) as the opposition between
> anarchistic and authoritarian society. No proof is needed to show
> that in themselves these two oppositions do no coincide. In my review
> I have explained why the second opposition (anarchy versus authority)
> appears to me to be the more radical and, in the final judgment, the
> only opposition that comes into consideration. But it goes without
> saying that one cannot rest easy with the foregoing observation. After
> all, the coincidence, at first merely empirical, of bellicose
> nationalism an sympathy for authoritarian order can hardly be wholly
> accidental. Does it accord with your understanding to explain the
> connection between ``authoritarianism'' and ``nationalism''---allow me
> for now these abbreviations---as follows: The ultimate foundation of
> the Right is the principle of the natural evil of man; because man is
> by nature evil, he therefore needs dominion. But dominion can be
> established, that is, men can be unified, only in a unity
> against---against other men. Every association of men is necessarily a
> separation from other men. The tendency to separate (and therewith the
> grouping of humanity into friends and enemies) is given with human
> nature; it is in this sense destiny, period. But the political thus
> understood is not the constitutive principle of the state, of
> ``order'' but only the condition of the state. Now this relationship
> of rank between the political and the state does not emerge
> sufficiently, I believe, in your text. Your statement ``The concept of
> the state presupposes the concept of the political'' is ambiguous:
> ``presupposing'' can mean constitutive principle or condition. In the
> first sense the statement can hardly be maintained, as the etymology
> (political-polis) already proves. The reviewer of your text probably
> meant to make this objection in the Rhein-Mainische Volszeitung (July
> 5), when he charged you with ``sociologism.''
>
> I close with the request that6 you take note of this supplement to my
> review with the same forbearance you show with respect to the review
> itself.
>
> Respectfully yours,
>
> Leo Straus