Why should we read Carl Schmitt today? Does his friend-enemy conception of politics retain some pertinence in our “post-political” age? Do liberal democrats have something to learn from his critique of liberalism? Is his theory of sovereignty still relevant in a globalized word? These are some if the issue that Chantal Mouffe addresses in this article. The author considers that political theorists, in order to put forward a conception of a liberal-democratic society capable to win the active support (...) of its citizens, must be willing to engage with the arguments of those who have challenged the fundamental tenets of liberalism. This means confronting some disturbing questions, usually avoided by liberals and democrats alike. The intention of this article is to contribute to such a project by scrutinizing Carl Schmitts critique of liberal democracy. To bring to the fore the pertinence and actuality of Schmitt's questioning, the theme development is organized around two topics which are currently central in political theory: the boundaries of citizenship and the nature of liberal-democratic consensus. (shrink)

In Politics of Friendship Jacques Derrida reveals the core of Carl Schmitt's thinking concerning the political: “If thepolitical is to exist, one must know who everyone is, who is a friend and who is an enemy, and this knowing is not in the mode of theoretical knowledge but in one of apractical identification.”Nevertheless, the enemy, who actually isidentified, is not Carl Schmitt's real enemy. On the contrary, the identified enemy is his friend to the extent that (...) it constitutes by exclusion what is most important to Schmitt: the existence of the political, and thereby, the Volk. Schmitt's real enemy is, as I try to demonstrate in this article, anyone who is not identified, the anonymous “natural existence of groups of individuals who just happen to live together” (Schmitt). In Schmitt's Nazi-period this anonymous individual got a concrete—although still non-identified—content: an assimilated Jew. And although Schmitt thought that he was a Christian thinker, in the end of this article I argue that the very first assimilated Jew was indeed St Paul, and that his doctrine of the “life in Christ” can be taken as a point of departure for thinking politics beyond enemies and exclusion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Politics Is a Mushroom: Worldly Sources of Rule and Exception in Carl Schmitt and Walter BenjaminKam Shapiro (bio)Life is not a mushroom growing out of death.—Carl Schmitt, The Visibility of the ChurchTo isolate death from life, not leaving the one intimately woven in the other, and each one entering into the other’s midst—this is what one must never do.—Jean-Luc Nancy, L’intrus1Carl Schmitt’s theory of the exception was (...) bound up with a thoroughgoing critique of philosophies of immanence, materialism, and “atheism,” which he treated as interchangeable. In his early writings, he adopted the Christian perspective according to which postlapsarian nature cannot by itself yield a juridical order, or in his poetic phrase, “life is not a mushroom growing out of death.” Yet—in accord with Catholic doctrine—he also found sources of life, or law, in this world. While he repudiated theories of collective self-legislation, he embraced a popular sovereign empowered to impose form on a chaotic society. In Political Theology (1922), he compared the form-giving power of the sovereign to an act of divine intervention. Law, he argued, can only function in a lawful or “normal” situation that precedes formalization, and the sovereign “produces and guarantees the situation in its totality” [13]. In The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (1923) Schmitt retained his theological terms: “A scientific study of democracy must begin with a particular aspect that I have called political theology” [32]. In the modern age, democratic constituent power (pouvoir constituant) replaces the will of God as the transcendent source of a substantial order, namely democratic homogeneity. Democratic will-formation thereby becomes an act prior to its subject, or as Schmitt wrote, “[...] only political power, which should come from the people’s will, can form the people’s will in the first place” [Crisis 28]. A variety of democratic theorists dwell on the paradoxical character of democratic sovereignty, sometimes tracing it back to Rousseau’s well-known formulations [see esp. Connolly and Honig]. They highlight the gap between a transcendent (ideal or fictive) will in whose name political power acts, and the bounded, material consensus it forms, ostensibly rendering the latter vulnerable to challenge. As I argue, however, a closer look at Rousseau’s discussion of democratic founding in On the Social Contract reveals instead a dynamic relay between dispersed substantial or immanent sources of affiliation, on the one hand, and various agents and techniques of political power that draw on and combine them in a collective will, on the other, or what I call the virtual and the virtuosic.2 After briefly exploring this dynamic in Rousseau’s [End Page 121] On the Social Contract, I will highlight similar dynamics at work in Schmitt’s Weimar writings, examining three instances: the complexio oppositorum (1923), national myth (1923), and the polemical opposition of friend and enemy (1927), focusing especially on the first. Contrary to familiar readings of Schmitt’s metaphysical “exceptionalism,” I argue that for Schmitt, as for Rousseau, political power does not create a normative order from a vacuum, and the apparent transcendence of sovereign authority has a variety of worldly sources.3 Finally, I consider what I call “democratic virtuosity,” or virtuosity from below, focusing on Walter Benjamin’s repudiation of sovereign acts of lawmaking or law preserving in favor of ongoing collective habit-formation. As I argue, Benjamin returns spiritual force to the material world not only to shatter human authorities, but also to democratize creation.Rousseau—Anticipating the PeopleIn the Social Contract, Rousseau formulated the paradox of democratic founding to which so many, including Schmitt, would return. “In order for an emerging people to appreciate the healthy maxims of politics, and follow the fundamental rules of statecraft, the effect would have to become the cause; the social spirit, which should be the result of the institution, would have to preside over the founding of the institution itself; and men would have to be prior to laws what they ought to become by means of laws” [Rousseau 69]. As Rousseau argues, a constitution can form a general will only if it commands the loyalty of the people, that is, if there is... (shrink)

Carl Schmitt's friend/enemy principle is exposed to in-depth philosophical analysis and historical examination with the aim of showing that the political follows hostility, violence and terror as form follows matter. The book argues that the partisan is an umbrella concept that includes the national and global terrorist.

Carl Schmitt described the political in existential terms. The political consists in the distinction between friend and enemy, a distinction between collectivities that are existentially different. This led Richard Wolin to label Schmitt a “political existentialist” whose work relies on a specific cultural and philosophical climate of “vitalism.” Consequently, Schmitt’s thought is treated as ideology by Wolin. Instead of focusing on Schmitt’s underlying ideological affinity with a particular cultural climate, this paper attempts to conceptualize the notion of “political (...) existentiality” as a crucial element in Schmitt’s understanding of the political and defend it as a notion that reveals something about the political condition itself. In order to understand the meaning of existentiality, we will conceptualize it against the background of Max Weber’s disenchantment thesis and conclude that through the notion of political existentiality Schmitt conceptualizes the political sphere as a locus of meaning and values and thus reenchants the political. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt is one of the most widely read and influential German thinkers of the twentieth century. His fundamental works on friend and enemy, legality and legitimacy, dictatorship, political theology and the concept of the political are read today with great interest by everyone from conservative Catholic theologians to radical political thinkers on the left. In his private life, however, Schmitt was haunted by the demons of his wild anti-Semitism, his self-destructive and compulsive sexuality and his deep-seated resentment (...) against the complacency of bourgeois life. As a young man from a modest background, full of social envy, he succeeded in making his way to the top of the academic discipline of law in Germany through his exceptional intellectual prowess. And yet he never felt at home in the academic establishment and among those of high social standing. In his works, Schmitt unmasked the liberal Rechtsstaat as a constitutional façade and reflected on the legitimacy of dictatorship. When the Nazis seized power Schmitt was susceptible to their ideology. He broke with his Jewish friends, joined the Nazi Party in May 1933 and lent a helping hand to Hitler, thereby becoming deeply entangled with the regime. Schmitt was irrevocably compromised by his role as the ‘crown jurist’ of the Third Reich. But by 1936 he had already lost his influential position. After the war, he led a secluded life in his home town in the Sauerland and became a key background figure in the intellectual scene of postwar Germany. Reinhard Mehring’s outstanding biography is the most comprehensive work available on the life and work of Carl Schmitt. Based on thorough research and using new sources that were previously unavailable, Mehring portrays Schmitt as a Shakespearean figure at the centre of the German catastrophe. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt’s radio broadcast ‘Hegel and Marx’, aired on 13 November 1931, and newly translated here, recapitulates the account of Marxism that Schmitt started to develop in the 1920s. Beginning from Schmitt’s early theory of adjudication inLaw and Judgement, the concepts of decision, representation and the friend/enemy distinction are analysed, connected, and shown to structure Schmitt’s critique of Marxism, both in the broadcast, and in his other writings during this period. Some concluding remarks are offered on the substantive (...) issues Schmitt’s critique raises for Marx’s political theory. (shrink)

In her more recent work, Chantal Mouffe enters into what she calls a 'dialogue' with Carl Schmitt on the political. So far, interpretations of this dialogue suggest that Mouffe attempts to revise Schmitt's friend/enemy-distinction and carve out a theory of agonistic pluralism. An interpretation on these grounds, this article argues, reduces the dialogue to its analytical dimension and cannot comfortably be upheld. Mouffe indeed appropriates Schmitt's friend/enemy-distinction, but she also gets inspired by the metatheoretical facet of his (...) intellectual heritage with the result that her theory becomes organically interwoven with a polemical dimension. Rather than aiming at a post-structuralist defanging of Schmitt's conception of the political, Mouffe recontextualizes and applies it to the current academic discourse, for this allows decontesting her radical pluralist cause by establishing a we/them opposition along a political/post-political divide. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyse the notion of friendship in Carl Schmitt’s concept of the political. Most commentators and interpreters of the German lawyer and political philosopher focus on enmity. This is because, seeing the growing pacifist, universalist and apolitical trends, Schmitt devotes more space in his writings to an enemy endangered by these trends than to a friend. To be coherent, Schmitt’s theory requires a friend to be not only a reflex of an (...) enemy, but also an equal ontological subject. Friendship as the negation of political dissociation is tantamount to a condition of political unity. The condition of political unity is the absence within a given nation of entities which could become political, i.e. those that could provide security for obedience, expecting its members to sacrifice life for the good of the community. (shrink)

Despite the problematic political positions he adopted during his life span, the work of Carl Schmitt contains a fascinating argument in favour of `the political', which is understood as a plural symbolic space composed of friends and enemies who reciprocally recognise each other. Schmitt's struggle for the political is a struggle for a public spirit which accounts for this plurality. One of the terrains on which Schmitt wages this struggle is that of historical meaning. The image of history is (...) crucial for the political, as it is one level on which the relation between enemies is symbolised. In this paper, Schmitt's polemic for a political conception of history, which gives the enemy and the defeated their due place as political subjects, will be reconstructed. Central to Schmitt's endeavour is the attempt to think historical singularity, against the notion of repetition in history, against the understanding of history as a reservoir of `lessons' and against ideologies of progress. Through his polemic, a profane and sober image of history appears which stresses singularity, relative contingency and openness, and the pluralisation of social temporalities. The enigmatic notion of the katechon will play a crucial role in providing a very minimal but crucial form of historical meaning for such a political conception of history. (shrink)

While Carl Schmitt is one of the main proponents of the question of the political with the consequence that his thinking on the subject has garnered much attention, not only is the question of the political in Gilles Deleuze relatively underdeveloped, but there has been virtually no work done on the relationship between the two. The orientating contention of this paper is that thinking the question of the political from the works of these two, very different, thinkers will not (...) only start to bring these two thinkers together but, in so doing, will allow us to better understand their individual thinking in a way that draws out conclusions regarding the nature of the political. While Schmitt’s friend-enemy division is the normal focus of analyses, I will focus on the role that violence and territory plays in fostering and sustaining this distinction to suggest that Schmitt’s famous distinction actually points towards the intimate relationship between the political, violence, and territory. Having made this connection, I then turn to the work of Gilles Deleuze who, I argue, maintains that the political is linked to pre-individual processes of territorialization and signification. The conclusion reached is that thinking the political from Schmitt and Deleuze reveals that it is intimately connected to violence, territory, and signification, which are primordially determined by ever-changing pre-individual, socio-linguistic relations specific to each society. It is to this pre-individual, socio-linguistic field that attempts to answer the question of the political should attend. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt's Concept of the Political advances an understanding of the political in which the political is assessed in terms of the autonomy of the friend-and-enemy distinction. This article questions the autonomous foundations of Schmitt's concept of the political. Ultimately, Schmitt's desire to establish the autonomous nature of the political, allowing the specifically political antithesis to achieve mastery over all other forms of discourse, is replete with paradox. Whilst Schmitt endeavours to establish the autonomy of the political—where the (...) political is free from interference from other domains—it is argued that his account of the political is highly dependent on the state. More critically, Schmitt's depiction of the political as autonomous is a strategic manoeuvre to establish the autonomy of the domain of the political vis-à-vis other conceptual domains. (shrink)

As a candidate Donald Trump Sovereigntystyled himself uniquely equipped to enact the will of a thickly racialized national community. His campaign may thus be read alongside Carl Schmitt’s key concepts: the friend/enemy distinction fundamental to politics, a popular sovereignty founded in an organically united Volk. But what of Trump’s presidency? Here, too, Schmitt’s thought is helpful, particularly his work on commissarial dictatorship as a response to a state of emergency—we will read in this light the “Muslim Ban” and (...) the pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Rather than creating new executive powers, this chapter argues that Trump is exploiting existing ones. This is inevitable: Presidents will seek to exercise the powers available to them, and the US Constitutional tradition fails to provide effective tools for distinguishing between the executive’s legitimate and baseless emergency actions. Schmitt’s thought and career are marred by precisely the same failure. (shrink)

Since it appeared during the French Revolution and for about two centuries, the left/right distinction has been one of the most extended and significant forms of political identity. This pair of synthetic and complex concepts have been a real challenge to political science. The left is the original term of the pair, the one that gives birth to political opposition. Carl Schmitt’s concept of the political can be an interesting and provoking theoretical framework to improve our understanding of the (...) left as a political identity. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt contends that liberal constitutionalism or the rule of law fails because it neglects the state of exception and the political, namely politics viewed as a distinction between friend and enemy groups. Yet, as a representative of liberal constitutionalism, Locke grapples with the state of exception by highlighting a magistrate prerogative and/or the right of the majority to act during a serious political crisis. Rather than neglecting the political, Locke’s state of war presupposes it. My thesis is (...) that Schmitt’s assault against Locke’s liberal constitutionalism is one-sided, and hence Locke’s militant liberalism can disarm it. In support of my thesis I shall argue (1) that Schmitt overlooks Locke’s distinction between liberty and license; (2) that, ironically, Schmitt’s conception of politics resembles Locke’s state of war; and (3) that Locke’s liberalism is militant rather than neutral because it excludes extremists from enjoying equal civil and political rights, as reasonable citizens do, to compete for political power. (shrink)

ExcerptThe title of Carl Schmitt's Hamlet or Hecuba: The Intrusion of the Time into the Play enacts a complex collision between politics and aesthetics.1 The titular colon divides two oppositions from each other, thus producing a couple of couples. If the “either/or” of Hamlet or Hecuba mandates an absolute decision between opposed terms, a frame familiar to us from this theorist of the sovereign decision and the friend/enemy distinction, the logic of the “both/and” within The Intrusion of the (...) Time into the Play insists upon the messy fact of lived historical interpenetration between the seemingly disjunctive spheres of politics and…. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt (1888–1985), Professor für Staats- und Völkerrecht, bewegt nach wie vor die Gemüter. Die Reaktion auf seine Schriften, Handlungen und Ausstrahlungen ist vielfältig; die Spanne reicht von entrüsteten, für die er der Teufel in Person bleibt, über viele Zwischenstufen bis zu jenen Lesern, die ihn für einen der subtilsten, noch keineswegs ausgeloteten Geistern dieses Jahrhunderts halten. Sein Leben lang war Carl Schmitt ein passionierter Schreiber von Briefen. Meist handelte es sich um handschriftlich verfasste, die für den Schreibenden (...) die Fortsetzung eines konkreten Gespräches mit anderen Mitteln war. Das macht das authentische und die Spontanität der Schmitt-Briefe aus. Als erste Edition einer umfangreichen Korrespondenz wird in dem Buch die Korrespondenz zwischen Carl Schmitt und Armin Mohler veröffentlicht. Der Briefwechsel umfasst die Zeit von 1947 bis 1980 und enthält 280 Briefe und Karten von Carl Schmitt an Armin Mohler. Von dem Briefpartner und Herausgeber wird in der Regel aus den eigenen Briefen nur auszugsweise zitiert, sofern es für das von Carl Schmitt Geschriebene notwendig ist. Armin Mohler (1920 bis 2003), ist einer der bekanntesten rechtskonservativen Schriftsteller, Kritiker und Historiker in Deutschland. Sein Handbuch zur Konservativen Revolution ist ein Standardwerk. In der Zeit des Briefwechsels war Mohler von 1949 bis 1953 Sekretär Ernst Jüngers, danach Korrespondent großer Zeitungen in Paris und von 1964 an Geschäftsführer der Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung, in der er sehr beachtete Symposien zu aktuellen wissenschaftlichen Themen organisierte. Der Briefwechsel ist für die Deutung Carl Schmitts in der Nachkriegszeit in seinem Sauerländer "Exil" grundlegend, gleichzeitig enthält er pointierte Schlaglichter auf das politische und kulturelle Geschehen der frühen und mittleren Bundesrepublik sowie auf Werk und Leben von Ernst Jünger. (shrink)

The concept of the political in Carl Schmitt’s works is not only defined by the distinction between friend and enemy, but also by the criterion of breaching the rules in a normatively unbound act of decision. According to Schmitt, this decision is, however, not arbitrary, but provoked by the necessity of a historical situation. This aspect of necessity calls the freedom of the decision into question and leads to tensions within Schmitt’s theory of the political. More explicitly than (...) in Schmitt’s political and legal writings, this conflict between freedom and necessity is exposed in his theory of tragedy. In a reading of his book Hamlet or Hecuba, published in 1956, I will show, in a first step, how the act of breaching the rules is not external to normativity, but occurs from within normativity itself. It is the act of self-breaching – of breaking the rules of its own genre – by which, according to Schmitt, modern tragedy is defined. This breach, however, is compelled by the necessity of a real, i. e. extraliterary, event. In a second step, I will expound on how this idea of self-breaching, which also characterises Schmitt’s understanding of the political, leads to a loss of decision which not only questions his idea of sovereignty, but also topples his concept of the political. (shrink)

In this work, legal theorist and political philosopher Carl Schmitt argues that liberalism's basis in individual rights cannot provide a reasonable justification for sacrificing oneself for the state.

Written in the intense political and intellectual tumult of the early years of the Weimar Republic, Political Theology develops the distinctive theory of sovereignty that made Carl Schmitt one of the most significant and controversial ...

Karl Smit se obicno smatra teoreticarem totalne drzave, totalnog rata i totalnog neprijateljstva. U clanku, medjutim, autor pokusava da pokaze da je od 1937. do 1944, Smit upozoravao na to da su totalni rat i totalno neprijateljstvo opasni po Nemacku i da se mora zaustaviti perpeturanje svih napora za totalizacijom neprijatelja, koji su zapoceli 1914. U svojim teorijskim radovima iz ovog perioda on je nalazio mesta samo za totalnu drzavu - a pogotovo za onu koja je dovoljno jaka da se (...) odupre iskusenju da objavi totalni rat totalnom neprijatelju. Totalna drzava koju je preporucivao Hitleru i njegovim nacionalsocijalistickim sledbenicima bio je nemacki Rajh, kao deo Evrope uredjenje i podeljene izmedju velikih prostora. Pozicionirana u sredini Evrope, izmedju ostalih sila Nemacka je trebalo da bude dovoljno pazljiva da ratuje samo protiv istocnih neprijatelja i samo za 'pravedne' granice. Zaokruzujuci na taj nacin svoj veliki prostor, Nemacka je trebalo da se okrene zadatku eksploatacije razlicitih naroda, kao sto su Poljaci, Cesi i Slovaci, koji su bili proglaseni kao nesposobni da imaju vlastitu drzavu i osudjeni na to da sluze gospodarsku rasu - Nemce. (shrink)

Most students of politics are familiar with Carl Schmitt’s definition of politics as a friend–enemy distinction. Yet, only few know of alternative conceptions of politics in interwar Germany that emphasize cooperation and legality over confrontation and decisionism. To unlock such views, this article examines the work of Hermann Heller, a social-democratic constitutional theorist, and takes a close look at his conceptualization of politics as a sphere, activity and discipline. For Heller, ‘the political’ consists in turning human conflict into (...) social cooperation. For him, the political may be conflictual, but is also conditioned by shared norms and agreed rules. By consequence, to act politically means to order the antagonistic social relations that are typical of every human society. In this sense, politics is a purposeful activity, but one which leaves the content of every decision unconfined and the potentialities that follow endless. Like politicians, politics scholars must reflect on ethical and legal principles, while remaining focused on context-specific political problems. The study of politics cannot be disconnected from the study of law, ethics and social reality. Heller’s work showed that the way we conceive of politics is directly related to the way we study politics and vice-versa. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt was a lawyer and philosopher of law whose writings on politics and social theory led to his being known as the Hobbes of the twentieth century. His criticisms of liberalism and naive humanitarianism and secularism were startlingly original and extreme, and attracted intellectuals on the Left as well as on the Right. His basic ideas about society revolved around the problem of the location and sources of the power of the state, which he styled as a mortal (...) god. His most influential ideas included his account of the concept of the political in terms of the possibility of war and the friend–enemy distinction. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt, the author of such books as Political Theology and The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, was one of the leading political and legal theorists of the twentieth century. His critical discussions of liberal democratic ideals and institutions continue to arouse controversy, but even his opponents concede his uncanny sense for the basic problems of modern politics. Political Romanticism is a historical study that, like all of Schmitt's major works, offers a fundamental political critique. In it, he defends a (...) concept of political action based on notions of good and evil, justice and injustice, and attacks the political passivity entailed by the romanticization of experience. The book has three strands. The first is an attack on received notions of the origins of the Romantic Movement. Schmitt argues that this movement represents a secularization, subjectification, and privatization in which God is replaced by the emancipated, private individual of the bourgeois social order. The second is an assault on political romanticism that includes a broader attack on the new European bourgeoisie, which Schmitt characterizes as the historical bearer of the movement. The third strand is a defense of political conservatism and a refutation of the view that political romanticism is intrinsically linked with romanticism. Here Schmitt argues that the political romantic is tied not to positions but to aesthetics, and can therefore as easily become a Danton as a Frederick the Great. Guy Oakes's introduction places the book in historical context and also suggests its continuing relevance through his discussion of the latest outcropping of political romanticism in the late 1960s, intriguingly brought out in his example of Norman Mailer as a political romantic. (shrink)

One of the most significant political philosophers of the twentieth century, Carl Schmitt is a deeply controversial figure who has been labeled both Nazi sympathizer and modern-day Thomas Hobbes. First published in 1938, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes used the Enlightenment philosopher’s enduring symbol of the protective Leviathan to address the nature of modern statehood. A work that predicted the demise of the Third Reich and that still holds relevance in today’s security-obsessed society, this volume (...) will be essential reading for students and scholars of political science. “Carl Schmitt is surely the most controversial German political and legal philosopher of this century. . . . We deal with Schmitt, against all odds, because history stubbornly persists in proving many of his tenets right.”— Perspectives on Political Science “[A] significant contribution. . . . The relation between Hobbes and Schmitt is one of the most important questions surrounding Schmitt: it includes a distinct, though occasionally vacillating, personal identification as well as an association of ideas.”— Telos. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt and the Problem of the Realization of Law 1. The famous pithy aphorisms that Carl Schmitt used to open his major works - 'the sovereign is he who decides on the exception', 'the concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political', etc. - have become a part of the common discourse of contemporary scholarship on politics and the law. The theoretical framework that animates these slogans, however, has remained somewhat opaque. It has often been (...) argued that there is no such framework, that Schmitt was a situational thinker whose works are best understood as interventions in concrete political debates that do not add up to a grand theoretical vision. (shrink)

In this, his most influential work, legal theorist and political philosopher Carl Schmitt argues that liberalism’s basis in individual rights cannot provide a reasonable justification for sacrificing oneself for the state—a critique as cogent today as when it first appeared. George Schwab’s introduction to his translation of the 1932 German edition highlights Schmitt’s intellectual journey through the turbulent period of German history leading to the Hitlerian one-party state. In addition to analysis by Leo Strauss and a foreword by Tracy (...) B. Strong placing Schmitt’s work into contemporary context, this expanded edition also includes a translation of Schmitt’s 1929 lecture “The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations,” which the author himself added to the 1932 edition of the book. An essential update on a modern classic, The Concept of the Political, Expanded Edition belongs on the bookshelf of anyone interested in political theory or philosophy. (shrink)

This is the first in-depth critical appraisal in English of the political, legal, and cultural writings of Carl Schmitt, perhaps this century's most brilliant critic of liberalism. It offers an assessment of this most sophisticated of fascist theorists without attempting either to apologise for or demonise him. Schmitt's Weimar writings confront the role of technology as it finds expression through the principles and practices of liberalism. Contemporary political conditions such as disaffection with liberalism and the rise of extremist political (...) organizations have rendered Schmitt's work both relevant and insightful. John McCormick examines why technology becomes a rallying cry for both right- and left-wing intellectuals at times when liberalism appears anachronistic, and shows the continuities between Weimar's ideological debates and those of our own age. (shrink)

This is the first in-depth critical appraisal in English of the political, legal, and cultural writings of Carl Schmitt, perhaps this century's most brilliant critic of liberalism. It offers an assessment of this most sophisticated of fascist theorists without attempting either to apologise for or demonise him. Schmitt's Weimar writings confront the role of technology as it finds expression through the principles and practices of liberalism. Contemporary political conditions such as disaffection with liberalism and the rise of extremist political (...) organizations have rendered Schmitt's work both relevant and insightful. John McCormick examines why technology becomes a rallying cry for both right- and left-wing intellectuals at times when liberalism appears anachronistic, and shows the continuities between Weimar's ideological debates and those of our own age. (shrink)

Even the thinking of professional revolutionaries progresses, as evidenced today in legal revolution. According to the German constitutional jurist, Rudolf Smend, who died in 1975, the German people suffer from a “touching need for legality.” Smend came to this conclusion not only as historian of the Supreme Court of the German Reich, but also as observer of the positivistic normativism of his own time. Recently an old and experienced Spanish revolutionary, Santiago Carrillo, put forward the same notion in a book (...) about Eurocommunism and the State. Akhough his “touching need for legality” is politically of a different nature, Carrillo is expressly convinced that die more violent mediods of Lenin's and Trotsky's illegal revolution of October 1917 are now antiquated, mat they were only justifiable in the instance of an agrarian (peasant) society breaking dirough to a modern (industrial) society. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt's existential, republican concept of politics spurned Carl Schmitt's idea that enmity constituted the essence of the political. Famously, she isolated the political sphere from social conflict, sovereign regimes, and the realm of military violence. While some critics are now interested in applying Arendt's more abstract political ideas to international affairs, it has not been acknowledged that her original reconceptualization of politics was in fact driven by her analysis of global war, and in particular, the startling new challenges (...) raised by nuclear warfare. Arendt's early, unpublished manuscript on the nature of politics contains important reflections on the nature of war and empire. Surprisingly, these reflections tentatively explore the relationship between war and political freedom. A close reading of this work on war can help explain both her later, more radical non-violent concept of political action, and the difficulties she faced integrating her existential republicanism within the global context of conflict in the Cold War. (shrink)

Written in the early stages of the Cold War by one of the most controversial political and legal thinkers of the twentieth century, Carl Schmitts two short dialogues on power and space bring together several dimensions of his work in new ways. The dialogues renew Schmitts engagement with the questions of political power and geo-politics that had been a persistent concern throughout his intellectual life. As a basis on which to think through the historical role of human agency in (...) relation to power and its new geographies, the dialogues condense and rework key concepts in Schmitts political theory during a transitional period between his Weimar and fascist years to the post-war writings. In this book, Schmitt develops a new dialectics of modern power and an original understanding of the global spatial transformations of the Cold War period. Equally important, the dialogues anticipate the debates on the new geo-political possibilities and threats related to cosmic spaces, overpowering technological advances, and the existential predicament of the human in an increasingly multipolar world. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt veröffentlichte einen Großteil seiner wichtigen Werke im Verlag Duncker & Humblot. Im Zuge der engen Zusammenarbeit mit dem damaligen Verlagsleiter Ludwig Feuchtwanger entwickelte sich ein reger intellektueller, anspielungsreicher Austausch auf Augenhöhe zwischen Autor und Verleger. Ludwig Feuchtwanger, ein heute nahezu vergessener Intellektueller der jüdischen Renaissance nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg, vermochte es, auf Schmitts Interessen einzugehen und diese z.T. zu lenken. Dieser nun erstmals edierte Briefwechsel zeichnet ein Bild zweier Gelehrter in der Weimarer Republik, veranschaulicht u.a. auch die (...) materielle Lage eines wissenschaftlichen Autors und gibt Einblick in den damaligen Buchmarkt. Daneben finden sich Bausteine zur Biographie Carl Schmitts und Ludwig Feuchtwangers sowie ihren intellektuellen Netzwerken. Der Briefwechsel dokumentiert zugleich aber auch das Scheitern einer Freundschaft. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt unterhielt zeitlebens eine beeindruckend umfangreiche Korrespondenz. Seine Briefpartner waren höchst unterschiedlich. Es zählten dazu sowohl Künstler, wie Gelehrte aller Art, insbesondere juristische Kollegen als auch sonstige Persönlichkeiten.Ein Teil seiner Korrespondenz, nämlich die mit Ernst Jünger und mit Armin Mohler wurde in den letzten Jahren bei Klett-Cotta bzw. dem Akademie-Verlag veröffentlicht. In unserem Hause erschienen 1989 Briefe an Carl Schmitt, die der langjährige frühere Leipziger Studentenpfarrer Werner Becker in den Jahren 1923-1978 an Schmitt gerichtet hatte. Die Schreiben (...) Schmitts, die sich leider nicht mehr erhalten haben, erschließen sich insoweit, als Becker darin auf vorangehende Schreiben Schmitts inhaltlich eingeht. Im Dezember 2003 erschien in der Festschrift für Werner Krawietz unter dem Titel »Legalität, Legitimität und das Politische - Ein Briefwechsel« eine von Florian Simon aus unserem Verlagsarchiv zusammengestellte Korrespondenz Schmitts, die dieser in den Jahren 1931-1933 mit Ludwig Feuchtwanger, in den Jahren 1913-1936 wissenschaftlicher Leiter unseres Hauses, geführt hat.In Spanien war einer von Schmitts intensiven Briefpartnern, der 1915 geborene Römischrechtler Prof. Dr. Álvaro d'Ors. Er kannte Schmitt anfangs nur mittelbar und zwar über seinen Vater, den Philosophen und Essayisten Eugenio d'Ors. Dieser war mit Schmitt seit 1929 befreundet und hatte ihm in seiner Schrift Glosario mit der Darstellung seines Rangs und Originalität seiner Denkweise ein Denkmal gesetzt. 1944 lernten Álvaro d'Ors und Schmitt sich auch persönlich kennen, bei Gelegenheit eines Vortrags von Carl Schmitt »Vitoria und sein Ruhm«, den dieser an der Universität von Granada hielt. An diese war Álvaro d'Ors kurz zuvor zum Ordinarius für Römisches Recht berufen worden.Der Briefwechsel zwischen Schmitt und d'Ors setzt 1948 ein und endet 1983, zwei Jahre vor dem Ableben Schmitts. Der Briefwechsel war begleitet von einer Reihe von Begegnungen in Deutschland, aber mehr noch in Spanien, und zwar insbesondere in Santiago, wohin d'Ors später berufen worden war. Dort lebte seit 1959 auch Schmitts einzige Tochter Anima, nach Ihrer Eheschließung mit Alfonso Otero, Ordinarius für Rechtsgeschichte an der dortigen Universität.Der hier nun vorgelegte Briefwechsel zeigt, wie sehr die theoretischen und praktischen Interessen beider Juristen miteinander verwoben, aber dennoch ihre Denkansätze und Ergebnisse sehr verschieden waren. Der Briefwechsel führt uns durch einen für beide Partner überaus fruchtbaren Dialog zu grundlegenden Aspekten des Denkens beider Autoren: der Nomos der Erde, die Einheit der Welt, Ausnahme und Norm, Legalität und Legitimität und politische Theologie.In sorgfältigen und umfangreichen Anmerkungen der Herausgeberin werden dem Leser Zusammenhänge und Hintergründe erschlossen sowie die in den Briefen erwähnten Persönlichkeiten vorgestellt, die dem deutschen Leser weitestgehend unbekannt sind. Die Briefe mit den Anmerkungen geben einen aufschlußreichen Einblick in das Denken der Briefpartner und insbesondere Carl Schmitts. Sie sind zugleich ein spannendes Zeitdokument und ein Beitrag zur Geistesgeschichte Deutschlands und Spaniens. (shrink)

Einfuhrung Carl Schmitt: Der Schatten Gottes. INtrospektionen, Tagebucher und Briefe 1921 bis 1924 Teil I: Tagebuch August 1921 bis August 1922 Bearbeitet von Gerd Giesler und Ernst Husmert Teil II: Tagebuch 1923 und 1924 Bearbeitet von Wolfgang H. SPindler Teil III: Der Schatten Gottes. AUfzeichnungen aus den Jahren 1922 bis 1924 Bearbeitet von Gerd Giesler, Ernst Husmert und Wolfgang H. SPindler Anhang Briefe, Dokumente und Abbildungen Verzeichnis der mehrfach genannten Literatur Quellen und Nachschlagewerke Abbildungs- und Quellennachweis Personenverzeichnis.

The work that we have the honour to present here in its first Italian translation is a short essay published by Carl Schmitt in the first half of the ‘10s in the German Journal Die Rheinlande and titled Don Quixote and the public. A very brief but at the same time dense piece of literary criticism in which the future Kronjurist of the Third Reich, in those years still engaged in his legal practice, offers to the readers a juvenile (...) proof of his vastly and heterogeneous interests, trying to determine which is the proper interpretation of the renowned masterpiece of Miguel de Cervantes: Don Quixote of the Mancha. A juvenile work, therefore, in which Schmitt, as we will try to highlight in the introduction that accompanies the translation, offers an interpretation of the novel and particularly of its main character focusing on the contraposition between the level of the simple reading and that of erudite valorisation, applying a methodology similar to that he used in the coeval Law and Judgement that in some ways anticipate the critique of Romanticism that he will develop just a few years later in Political Romanticism. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to outline and compare the way that Carl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt understand the spheree of politics as well as analyse the concepts of power and freedom connected with their theories. Both Schmitt and Arendt criticise liberal democracy for its “neutrality” and counterpoise it with their own understanding of political action. Especially Schmitt who understand such action as a conflict between friends and enemies. The analysis of their approach to the power and the (...) contrasting their models of politics allows Wonicki to draw conclusions about contemporary liberalism and indicating its limits. (shrink)

The way to the total state -- Further development of the total state in Germany -- Total enemy, total war, and total state -- Neutrality according to international law and national totality.

ABSTRACTThis article offers an unconventional interpretation of Carl Schmitt’s conception of the political. It first identifies two alternative readings – an ‘exceptionalist’ and a ‘concretist’ one – to make the claim that in the late 1920s he laid the foundations for a theory of politics that overcame the flaws of his theory of exception. It then explains why the concretist reading provides an insightful key to Schmitt’s take on the relationship between politics and law as a whole. Despite this, (...) the chief aim of this analysis is not interpretive. Rather, the article claims that such a paradigm change was related to Schmitt’s pondering on the elements that were menacing to draw the experience of modern statehood to an end even more seriously than any upheavals and revolutions. For he came to the conclusion that the mere claim to political self-sufficiency on the part on non-state social entities was able to defy the idea of the state as the political entity par excellence. While these reflections urged Schmitt to reformulate many features of his conception of the political, the article contends that this particular juncture in his production sheds light on a crucial feature of contemporary politics. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to discuss the cultural hindrances and assets that promote constructive self-to-others relationships and active citizenship. Building on Carl Schmitt’s friend-enemy distinction, we argue that in contemporary societies the public and the private dimensions of the enemy have conflated, as the result of two concurrent phenomena: the politicization of otherness and the privatization of enemies. An integrated framework including approaches of social psychology and semiotic cultural psychology is proposed to account for both phenomena. (...) The notions of symbolic universes and semiotic capital are introduced as key concepts to understand the current socio-political dynamics and to promote fairer, more inclusive societies. (shrink)

Mehmet Karabela draws upon Carl Schmitt’s analysis more explicitly to interrogate and understand how Islamic and Western scholars have conceptualized an “apolitical” Islam that could then be politicized. He applies Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction as characteristic of the political to the study of Islam and shows how Islam has always been political and religious at the same time in this context. Liberalism posits a separate realm of religion and politics that it charges Islam and other political religions wrongly mix, (...) but there is no intrinsic separation of politics from religion in a post-secular context, and we have many lessons to learn of and from Islam. Rather than the modern nation-state, which is the locus for Schmitt, the polity of Islam is more situated on the Muslim community, which is less determinate and defined. Every community, particularly every religious community, is potentially political in the Schmittian context. (shrink)

Enmity, War, Intensity Norberto Bobbio once gave a minimal definition of politics, characterizing it as the activity of aggregating and defending our friends, and dispersing and fighting our enemies.1 We know that the instigator of this definition is Carl Schmitt, although his critics have often misunderstood the reference to enmity. What resonates most is the claim that friend-enemy oppositions constitute the basic code of the political and that such oppositions can lead to the extreme case of war. This (...) might explain why part of the debate on The Concept of the Political has revolved around the status of the enemy…. (shrink)