Overview
The Value of the State and the Significance of the Individual is a work of legal and state theory that examines the relationship between law (Recht), power (Macht), the state, and the individual. Its central argument is that the state’s value lies in its realization of law in the world, while the individual’s significance lies in fulfilling the roles the state assigns for the completion of that task. The book is not a political pamphlet or a biography of institutions; it is a philosophical treatment of the conceptual foundations of law and state. Its title states the asymmetry that runs through the whole argument: the state is ascribed great value, while the individual is ascribed a correspondingly diminutive significance.
The work proceeds in three broad movements: a discussion of the relation between law and power, a discussion of the state as the entity that realizes law, and a discussion of the individual’s place within the state.
Law and Power
Schmitt begins from the apparent antagonism between law and power. On one side stands the view that law is ultimately reducible to power—that legal norms are merely the commands of the stronger, or that the state is nothing but an apparatus of force. On the other side stands the view that law is a pure norm, an “ought” that exists independently of the empirical world and therefore independently of power. Schmitt rejects both one-sided positions. Law without power is impotent; it remains an abstract norm that cannot shape the world. Power without law is arbitrary; it lacks the justification that would make it something more than brute force. The problem, as Schmitt frames it, is how law can be both normative and real. His answer is that law must be realized, and that realization requires power. Power is not external to law but the means by which law enters the world. The state is the entity that unites law and power, and the rest of the book is devoted to explaining what that unity means.
The State as the Realization of Law
The state, for Schmitt, is not an end in itself. It has value only because it realizes law. He criticizes both the deification of the state—the view that the state is an absolute value, a “highest earthly power” to be worshipped for its own sake—and the liberal reduction of the state to a minimal night-watchman that merely protects individual interests. The state is indeed the highest earthly power and the strongest reality that a human being may face, but this power is justified only as the instrument of law. Sovereignty, on this account, is not the arbitrary will of a ruler; it is the capacity to realize law. The state is the concrete unity of law and power, the order in which legal norms become effective.
Schmitt argues that the state is neither a mere contract among individuals nor an organism with a life of its own. It is the concrete order that gives law reality. The state does not create law out of nothing, nor is it merely a subordinate instrument of a pre-existing natural law. Rather, the state is the entity through which law becomes actual. Its value is therefore derived and conditional: the state is valuable because it realizes law, not because it is the state. This distinguishes Schmitt’s position from any simple statism. The state is great, but its greatness is borrowed from its task.
The Individual as Role-Bearer
The third movement turns to the individual. Schmitt rejects the idea that the individual is an autonomous moral end whose natural rights set limits on the state. He also rejects the view that the individual is merely a biological or psychological unit with no legal significance. The individual has significance, but that significance is not intrinsic. It is functional and relational. The individual is significant as a bearer of roles assigned by the state for the realization of law. The state ascribes tasks and duties to individuals, and in fulfilling those roles the individual participates in the state’s task. The individual is thus a point of attribution for legal duties, a bearer of offices and functions, rather than an end in himself or herself.
Schmitt distinguishes between the empirical individual—the concrete human being with desires, interests, and private life—and the legal person as role-bearer. The individual’s freedom, on this account, is not the freedom of an isolated subject to pursue private ends, but the freedom to fulfill the roles the state assigns. The state gives the individual significance by integrating him or her into the order of law. Outside that order, the individual has no legal significance. The individual is not the source of law; the state is the order in which law becomes real. The individual’s value is therefore derivative: it depends on participation in the state’s realization of law. This is a deliberately anti-individualist position, but it is also anti-statist in its own way, because the state itself is not an end in itself. Law is the end, and both state and individual are means to its realization.
Conclusion
The book’s argument is a sustained attempt to overcome the dualism of law and power by positing the state as their synthesis. It is also an attempt to overcome individualism by conceiving the individual as a role-bearer within the state’s task. The title captures the result: the state is ascribed great value, the individual a correspondingly diminutive significance. Yet the value of the state is not unconditional. The state is valuable because it realizes law, and the individual is significant because he or she fulfills the roles the state assigns in that realization. The work is a foundational text of Schmitt’s early legal theory, concerned with the conceptual structure of law, state, and individual rather than with the practical politics of his later writings.
The Asymmetry of Value and Significance
The title’s pairing of Wert (value) and Bedeutung (significance) is not ornamental. Schmitt assigns value to the state and significance to the individual, and the distinction is central to his argument. The state has value because it fulfills a task: the realization of law. Its value is therefore objective and conditional. The individual has significance because it bears roles assigned by the state in the service of that task. Its significance is relational and functional. The individual does not possess value in the same sense as the state; the individual has significance only as a point of attribution within the state’s order. This asymmetry is deliberate. It allows Schmitt to avoid both the statism that treats the state as an end in itself and the individualism that treats the individual as an autonomous moral end. The state is valuable, but only as a means; the individual is significant, but only as a role-bearer. Law is the end that measures both.
The Critique of Legal Personification
Schmitt also rejects the reduction of the state to a legal person or fiction. In the legal theory of his time, the state was often treated either as a sovereign person with rights and duties or as a corporate fiction. Schmitt argues that the state is not a person among persons but the concrete order that makes legal personality possible. The state is the unity in which the normativity of law and the facticity of power are mediated. This unity is not a static substance but an actualization. The state’s value lies in this mediating function, not in any intrinsic majesty. The book thus develops a relational ontology of the state: the state is real only insofar as it realizes law, and law is real only insofar as it is actualized in the state.
