Abstract

The paper begins with analysing Schmitt’s essential work Political Theology, 100 years after its publication. In it, the German legal philosopher formulated the concept of political theology, which indicates the relationship between the state of exception and decisionism as a form of legal-political thinking. The contribution of the paper is reflected in its emphasis on the importance of a twofold understanding of the concept of the state of exception: in the first place, as a notion of the exception that funds the philosophy of law and legal theory, and in the second as the state of exception that marks the constitutional category of the state of emergency. Schmitt will insist that the question of the state of exception is not a question of a mere state of necessity or emergency but a broader philosophical-legal concept based on the metaphysical origin of voluntary decision. The sovereign is not the one who decides “in” but “on” the state of exception, which means that, according to the decisionist model, he is just establishing it. Schmitt’s controversial book rarely left anyone indifferent, so it was supported by both right-wing and left-wing political theorists and philosophers, and it must be reconsidered today as a warning about the danger of the concept of the state of exception (state of emergency), which is increasingly becoming a political issue.