131214840-Carl-Schmitt

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German thought the notion of eternal discussion was more accessible in the Romantic
conception of an unending conversation, 7 and it may be remarked in passing that all the
intellectual confusion of the conventional reading of German political Romanticism, which
characterizes it as conservative and antiliberal, is revealed in precisely this connection.
Freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of assembly, freedom of discussion, are not
only useful and expedient, therefore, but really life-and-death questions for liberalism.
Guizot's description placed particular emphasis on freedom of the press as the third
characteristic of parliamentarism, after discussion and openness. One can easily see that
freedom of the press is only a means for discussion and openness and not an independent
factor. But since a free press is a typical means for the other characteristic features of
liberalism, Guizot is quite justified in giving it particular emphasis.
Only if the central place of discussion in the liberal system is correctly recognized do the two
political demands that are characteristic of liberal rationalism take on their proper
significance with a scientific clarity above the confused atmosphere of slogans, political
tactics, and pragmatic considerations: the postulate of openness in political life and the
demand for a division of powers, or more specifically the theory of a balance of opposing
forces from which truth will emerge automatically as an equilibrium. Because of the decisive
importance of openness and especially of the power of public opinion in liberal thought, it
appears that liberalism and democracy are identical here. In the theory of the division of
powers, that is obviously not the case. These, on the contrary, are used by Hasbach in order
to construct the sharpest contrast between liberalism and democracy. 8 A threefold division of
powers, a substantial distinction between the legislative and the executive, the rejection of
the idea that the plenitude of state power should be allowed to gather at any one point—all of
this is in fact the antithesis of a democratic concept of identity. The two postulates are thus
not simple equivalents. Of the many very different ideas connected to these two demands,
only those that are essential
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