Carl Schmitt - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Schmitt
Carl Schmitt was a German jurist and political theorist. Schmitt wrote extensively about the effective wielding of political power. His work has been a major ...Note: For those so inclined, the way to approach this reading list is as a graduate, post-JD-level seminar in politics, political theory and/or legal theory.
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, Expanded Edition, Translation, Introduction, and Notes by George Schwab with "The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations" (1929) translated by Matthias known and John P. McCormick; with leo Strauss's Notes on Schmitt's Essay, translated by J.Harvey Lomax, Foreword by Tracy B. Strong (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 1967, 2007) ("The specific political distinction to which political action and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy. This provides a definition in the sense of a criterion and not as an exhaustive definition or one indicative of substantial content. Insofar as it is not derived from other criteria, the antithesis of friend and enemy corresponds to the relatively independent criteria of other antitheses: good and evil in the moral sphere, beautiful and ugly in the aesthetic sphere, and so on. In any event it is independent, not in the sense of a distinct new domain, but in that it can neither be based on any one antithesis or any combination of other antitheses, nor can it be traced to these. If the antithesis of good and evil is not simply identical with that of beautiful and ugly, profitable and unprofitable, and cannot be directly reduced to the others, then the antithesis of friend and enemy must even less be confused with or mistaken for the others. The distinction of friend and enemy denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation. It can exist theoretically and practically, without having simultaneously to draw upon all those moral, aesthetic, economic, or other distinctions. The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transactions. But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible. These can neither be decided by a previously determined general norm by the judgment of a disinterested and therefore neutral third party." "Only the actual participants can correctly recognize, understand, and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict. Each participant is in a position to judge whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's own form of existence." Id. at 26-27. "The enemy is not merely any competitor or just any partner of a conflict in general. He is also not the private adversary whom one hates. An enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to a whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such relationship." Id. at 28. "[I]n usual domestic polemics the word political is today often used interchangeably with party politics. [] The equation politics = party politics is possible whenever antagonisms among the domestic political parties succeed in weakening the all-embracing political unit, the state." Id. at 32. At the extreme, then, at the extreme one is in (or receives oneself to be in) an existential battle with one's enemy. Consider for a moment how you define yourself politically. Who (that is, what groups) do you identify as your political friends and political enemies, both domestically and internationally? "Liberalism [Note: Schmitt is using the term in the classic European sense, rather than the contemporary American sense.] has changed all political conceptions in a peculiar and systematic fashion. . . . [T]he question is whether a specific political idea can be derived form the pure and consequential concept of individualistic liberalism. This is to be denied." "The negation of the political, which is inherent in every consistent individualism, leads necessarily to a political practice of distrust toward all conceivable political force and forms of state and government, but never produces on its own a positive theory of state, government, and politics As a result, there exists a liberal policy in the form of a polemical antithesis against state, church, or other institutions which restrict individual freedom There exists a liberal policy of trade, church, and education, but absolutely no liberal politics, only a liberal critique of politics." "The systematic theory of liberalism concerns almost solely the internal struggle against the power of the state. For the purpose of protecting individual freedom and private property, liberalism provide a series of methods for hindering and controlling the state's and government's power. It makes of the state a compromise and of its institutions a ventilating system . . . " Id. ad. at 69-70. Again, "liberalism" is being used here in the classical sense. Still, does not Schmitt capture the ills America is experiencing over the past half century and is continuing to experience post-2016 election?).
Carl Schmitt, Constitutional Theory, translated from the German and edited by Jeffrey Seitzer, foreword by Ellen Kennedy (Durham & London: Duke U. Press, 2008) (From the back cover: "In Constitutional Theory, Schmitt provides a highly distinctive and provocative interpretation of the Weimar Constitution. At the center of the interpretation lies his famous argument that the legitimacy of a constitution depends on a sovereign decision of the people. In addition to being subject to long-standing debate among legal and political theorists in Western Europe and the United States, this theory of constitution making a decision has profoundly influenced constitutional theorists and designers in Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. "Constitutional Theory is a significant departure from Schmitt's more polemical Weimar-era works not just in terms of its moderate tone. Through a comparative history of constitutional government in Europe and the United States, Schmitt develops an understanding of liberal constitutionalism that makes room for a strong, independent state.").
Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, translated from the German by Ellen Kennedy (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: The MIT Press, 1985, 1988) (From the back cover: "Described as 'the Hobbes of our age' and as 'the philosophical godfather of Nazism,' Carl Schmitt was a brilliant and controversial political theorist whose doctrine of political leadership and critique of liberal democratic ideals distinguished him as one of the most original contributors to modern political theory." "The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy offers a powerful criticism of the inconsistencies of representative democracy. First published in 1923, it has often been viewed as an attempt to destroy parliamentarism; in fact, it was Schmitt's attempt to defend the Weimar constitution. The introduction to this new translation places the book in its historical context and provides a useful guide to several aspects of Weimar political culture.").
Carl Schmitt, Dictatorship: From the Origin of the Modern Concept of Sovereignty to Proletarian Class Struggle, translated from the German by Michael Hoelzl & Graham Ward (New York: Polity Press, 2014) (As noted by John P. McCormick, "Carl Schmitt's Dictatorship is the first book ever entirely devoted to the topic of emergency powers." In an "emergency" the government determines that a "crisis" is such that the rules of law and justice will not suffice and, therefore, extralegal actions and policy are "necessary". Schmitt argues that dictatorships is a necessary necessary legal institution in constitutional law. That is, there are emergency situations that cannot be specifically predicted and, therefore, cannot be dealt or provided for ex ante under a constitution. However, that there will be emergencies in the future can be predicted, emergencies which the constitutional order may be unable to address. Thus, constitutional law will itself implicitly provide for emergency powers to be assumed by the dictator to address the emergency. Therefore, so the argument goes, dictatorship is a necessary legal institution in constitutional law, is not just the arbitrary rule of a so-called dictator. This is certainly a controversial argument. Do you buy it?).
Carl Schmitt, Hamlet or Hercuba: The Intrusion of the Time into the Play, translated from the German by David Pan & Jennifer Rust (New York: Telos Press Publishing, 2009).
Carl Schmitt, Legality and Legitimacy, translated from the German and edited by Jeffrey Seitzer, with an introduction by John P. McCormick (Durham & London: Duke U. Press, 2004) (From John P. McCormick, "Identifying or Exploiting the Paradoxes of Constitutional Democracy?: An Introduction to Carl Schmitt's Legality and Legitimacy": "More generally, Schmitt's Legality and Legitimacy raises many questions that often prove awkward for liberals, constitutionalists, and even democrats who understand themselves to be committed to the rule of law. To count off a minor litany of such questions: When dos law reflect the popular will to the extent that those over whom it is exercised can be said to have authorized or at least consented to it? Is it when law is elevated to unchangeable or remotely accessible constitutional norms? Or do statutes produced by a parliament satisfy such conditions? If so, can simple majorities lay claim to a general will or are supermajorities required to do so? If the content of law is decided by a major of the people's representatives, is it consensually binding on as much as 49 percent of the population or does it merely serve the 51 percent's coercion of them? On what grounds could any vote short of parliamentary unanimity meet the standards of legitimacy? Moreover, percentages notwithstanding, the party compromise and bargaining that plainly characterize the legislative formulation of law suggest little connection with a general will. Might not the proclamations of a more unitary institution like the president, generally elected, better reflect a broader popular will? "Schmitt poses some deeper, even existential problems for liberal democracy as well, A rule-of-law- regime founded on complete formal or procedural standards, for example, allows parties that are avowed enemies of the law to help formulate and apply that law--thereby opening the way for its abuse. Furthermore, law placed in the service democratically responsive policies of regulation and redistribution necessarily descends into arbitrariness and incoherence. Schmitt suggest that the legal policies of the latest party or interest-group coalition that formulated them constitute a kind of revolution approximating an illegitimate assault on the very structure of state and society. ll these problems can be solved, Schmitt claims, by admitting that there are preconsititional and prelegal substantive values or concrete decisions to which appeals might be directed when the formal rules of a liberal- or social-democratize regime collide or appear vulnerable, If such substantive criteria indeed prove available, then these, and not the law itself, as liberal hope, are the source of the regime's legitimacy." Id. at xiii, xv-xvi. Note: Obviously, these questions are pertinent, and pressingly so, in the environment of U.S. domestic politics and governance. Half the time one side thinks what the other side proposes to do or has done is not legitimate.).
Carl Schmitt, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol, Translation by George Schwab & Erina Hilfstein, Introduction by George Schwab, and Foreword by Tracy B. Strong (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 1967, 2008)
Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, translated from the German and annotated by G. L. Ulman (Candor, NY: Telos Press Publishing, 2006) (From the back cover: "The Nomos of the Earth is Carl Schmitt's most historical and geopolitical book. It describes the origin of the Eurocentric global order, which Schmitt dates from the discovery of the New World, discusses its specific character and its contribution to civilization, analysis the reasons for its decline at the end of the nineteenth century, and concludes with prospects for a new world order. It is a reasoned yet passionate argument in defense of the European achievement--not only in creating the first truly global order of international law, but also in limiting war to conflicts among sovereign states, which in effect civilized war. In Schmitt's view, the European sovereign state was the greatest achievement of Occidental rationalism; in becoming the principal agency of secularization, the European state created the modern age. Since the problematic of a new nomos of the earth has become even more critical with the onset of the postmodern age--and postmodern war--Schmitt's text is now more timely and more challenging." "Remarkable in Schmitt's discussion of the European epoch of world history is the role played by the New World, which ultimately replaced the Old World as the center of the earth and became the arbiter in European world politics. According to Schmitt, the United States' internal conflicts between economic presence and political absence, between isolationism and intervention, are global problems, which today continue to hamper the creation of a new world order. But however critical Schmitt is of the American actions at the turn of the twentieth century and after World War I, he considered the United States to be the only political entity capable of resolving the crisis of global order." QUERY: Would Carl Schmitt have such confidence in the United States in, now, the twenty-first century and the age of Trump nationalism (that is, in the age of "America First" and "Make America Great (meaning 'White') Again"? I doubt it. If the West manages to avoid complete collapse, look to Frano-German leadership, not American leadership.).
Carl Schmitt, Political Romanticism, translated from the German by Guy Oakes (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: MIT Press, 1986).
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, translated and with an Introduction by George Schwab, With a Foreword by Tracy B. Strong (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2005) ("Sovereign is he who decides on the exception." Id. at 5. As the translator states in a footnote: "In the context of Schmitt's work, a state of exception includes any kind of severe economic or political disturbance that requires the application of extraordinary measures. Whereas an exception presupposes a constitutional order that provides guidelines on how to confront crises in order to establish order and stability, a state of emergency need not have an existing order as a reference point because necessities non habit legume." Id. at 5, fn. 1. "All law is 'situational law.' The sovereign produces and guarantees the situation in its totality. He has the monopoly over this last decision Therein resides the essence of the state's sovereignty, which must be juristically defined correctly, not as the monopoly to coerce or to rule, but as the monopoly to decide. The exception reveals most clearly the essence of the state's authority. The decision parts here from the legal norm, an (to formulate it paradoxically) authority proves that to produce law it need not be based on law." Id. at 13. "Dictatorship is the opposite of discussion." Id. at 63.).
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology II: The Myth of the Closure of any Political Theology, translated from the German by Michael Hoelzl & Graham Ward (New York: Polity Press, 2008) (From the back cover: John P. McCormick observes "That in the late 1960s, as the Roman Catholic Church reconciled itself to secular modernity and West Germany's liberal democracy resorted to extra-legal measures in the midst of political crisis, Schmitt decided to revisit the questions that motivated his thinking in the early Weimar Republic: can morality only find justification in transcendental theological sources and must political authority rest ultimately with an extraordinary sovereign authority? Obviously, these questions still haunt our world as we move further into the twenty-first century.").
Carl Schmitt, Theory of the Partisan: Intermediate Commentary on the Concept of the Political, translated from the German by G. L. Ulman (Candor, NY: Telos Press Publishing, 2007) (From the "Translator's Introduction": "Like partisan warfare, terrorism has been around since the beginning of recorded history, meaning that guerrillas throughout history often have resorted to terrorist tactics to achieve their goals. However, terrorism and partisan warfare are not synonymous, and the distinction should be kept in mind. Terrorism emerged in its own right as a separate phenomenon alongside urban guerrilla warfare in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Like partisan warfare, terrorism is a political concept. It is violence or the threat of violence used in pursuit of a political end. But unlike partisan warfare, terrorism is a planned, calculated, and systematic act. [] Like the partisan, the terrorist is irregular; but unlike the partisan, he does not depend on cooperation with a regular base; he can and does exist in a political no-man's land. Like the partisan, the terrorist is illegal, but unlike the partisan, his illegality is illegitimate, meaning that it has no point of reference. Like the partisan, the terrorist has increased mobility of active combat, But unlike the partisan he is not essentially defensive; rather, he is essentially offensive. Moreover, unlike the partisan, the terrorist is not telluric, meaning, that his hostility is not spatially limited. "Generally speaking, the partisan has a real enemy, who is fought in a war, however irregular, and has some claim to humanity and legitimacy, whereas the terrorist has an absolute enemy, wh must be annihilated. Here is where the transition form the partisan to the terrorist is not evident, and where the distinction is conceptually clear." Id. at xvi-xvii.).
Carl Schmitt, Writings on War, edited and translated from the German by Timothy Nunan (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2011) (From the back cover: "Writings on War collects three of Carl Schmitt's most important and controversial text . . . : The Turn to the Discriminating Concept of War, The GroBraum Order of International Law, and The International Crime of War of Aggression and the Principle 'Nullum crimen, null open sine legs'. "Written between 1937 and 1945, these works articulate Schmitt's concerns throughout this period of war and crisis, addressing the major failings of the League of Nations, and presenting Schmitt's own conceptual history of these years of disaster for international jurisprudence. For Schmitt, the jurisprudence of both Versailles and Nuremberg fails to provide for a stable international system because it attempts to impose universal standards of 'humanity' on a heterogeneous world, and because it treats efforts to revise the status quo as 'criminal' act of war. In place of these flawed systems, Schmitt argues for a new planetary order in which neither collective security organizations nor 19th-century empires, but rather the Schmittian 'Reich' will be the leading subject of international law. "Writings on War will be essential reading for those seeking to understand the work of Carl Schmitt, the history of international law and the international system, and interwar European history. These writings not only offer an erudite point of entry into the dynamics and charged world of interwar European jurisprudence, for they also speak with prescient to a 21st-century world struggling with similar issues of global governance and international law." Note: If one listens carefully to the undertone of Donald Trump's, admittedly incoherent, view of the 'proper' role of America's in the world, one should appreciate his binary world-view. It is not just the 'America-not-American' divide, or the 'West-not-the-West' divide, or the 'West-versus-Islam' divide, or the 'West-versus-terrorists' divide., etc. Rather, and more important, his is, and he does articulate it as, a 'civilization-versus-barbarians' divide, where America and it cooperative allies are civilization, and where everybody else--but especially, Islam (though Trump labels it Radical Islamic Extremists'--are the barbarians. If one drills down to the core of Trump's thinking, one sees that his civilization-barbarian divide really is a divide between what he views as humanity and what he considers inhuman or less than human. This does not simply apply to Trump's views regardless the relationship between the America and its allies, on the one hand, and the rest of the world, on the other. It is also applies domestically. There are segments of the American population Trumps barely views as worthy of human considerations. These include people of color, Muslims, and women. These groups are not part of Trump's understanding of humanity, except those few who know and accept their low place and status in Trump's world (e.g., women who defend Trump's misogynistic attacks on women). For Trump, as for most of us, the world is a heterogeneous place; but for Trump, unlike most of us, there is "no universal standards of 'humanity'." For Trump, some of us are less human than others, and therefore less worthy of moral consideration. That is at the core of both his "America First" nationalism and his "Make America Great Again," which is properly understood as 'Make America White Again,' populism. Trump does not have a complicated, sophisticated, or nuanced world view. He does not have a complicated, sophisticated, or nuanced domestic view. His view is simple: simply racist, simply misogynistic, and simply tribal. If one is not of Trump's tribe, one's value is deeply discounted or nonexistent.).
Gopal Balakrishnan,The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt (London & New York: Verso, 2000) (From the back cover: "The writings of Carl Schmitt from what is arguably the most disconcerting, original, and yet still unfamiliar body of twentieth-century political thought. In the English-speaking world, he is terra incognito, a name associated with Nazism, the author of a largely untranslated oeuvre forming no recognizable system, coming to us from a disturbing place and time in the form of fragments." "The Enemy is a comprehensive reconstruction and analysis of all of Schmitt's major works--his books, articles and pamphlets from 1919 to 1950--presented in an arresting narrative form. The revelation of his work is that, unlike mainstream Nazi ideology, Schmitt makes a strong philosophical claim for the necessity of confrontational politics within a democratic system; a claim that has resonance in today's hegemony of consensual politics.").
Carlo Galli, Janus's Gaze: Essays on Carl Schmitt, translated from the Italian by Amanda Minervini, edited wand introduced by Adam Sitze (Durham & London: Duke U. Press, 2015) (From "Schmitt and the Global Era": "In reality, there is a legible intent woven not this neoconservative ideology (which Schmitt did not in fact influence) that is quite close to traditional political realism. On the terms of this theory, the United States sees itself as the political subject acting as the core of 'civilization.' one that is not generically 'human.' but 'Western' (a West guided by America, but one that includes Europe and other allied non-Western countries). Its aim is to reterritorialiize politics and globalize war, beginning with a unilateral definition of 'terrorism' and form the unilateral recognition of the terrorist enemy against whom it is legitimate to wage absolute and discriminatory war. However, this war, despite all its aggressive aspects, is waged with the intent of constructing a limes [fortified frontier] toward external barbarians, stabilizing internal space by capturing and controlling portions of space in the Middle East and in central Asia (area that are 'unstable' and that, as such, are in need of 'stabilization') for the purpose of impeding Chinese projects (a motivation very much in keeping with implicit logic of the Great Spaces). The task is to transform the United States's informal Empire (which emerged during the first phase of globalization) into into [] a direct and territorial Empire (one that is, in many ways, 'traditional'). The American response to the attacks of September 11 (the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also Guantanamo Bay and the Patriot Act) seem to amount to an attempt to replace the haziness of the liquid age of the first phase of globalization with the solidity and concreteness of a new iron age--an attempt, in other words, to restore political order, even by means of extra juridical forms, and to tranform global war into constituent war, into a new oriented order. The hallmark of this new order would seem to be a hierarchical relationship, typical of Empire, between center and periphery, between imperial elites and local elites. Its point of orientation would appear to be the physical security of American (brought back to its insular dimension, although not insolation), the indisputable centrality of America's material and cultural living standards, and the preservation of existing power relations between America (the Western world being its extension) and the rest of the world. All of this would seem to amount to a new nomos of the earth, a new orientation for its order. Whether or not this nomos really can create effective order, is, of course, an entirely different discussion." Id. at 97, 127-128. [Note: Obviously, the Obama administration pivoted away from the Bush Administration's neoconservative approach to globalization, adopting a 'first-among-equals' rather than 'America-as-Empire' approach. The Trump administration, though very much lacking intellectual and political clarity, has abandoned both Obama's and Bush's understandings and approaches to globalization and America's place in the world. Instead, the Trump administration advocates American nationalism ("America First"), American isolationism (e.g., weak support for NATO, abandonment of the Paris Climate Accord and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, declining to re-certify Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal, and a cross the board questioning of the legitimacy of global institution--many of which, by the way, were created, structured, and dominated the United States). The likely consequence: a weaken European Union, an emboldened Russia, a lessening of American global influence, and the rise of China on the global stage.] From the back cover: "Janus's Gaze is the culmination of Carlo Galli's ongoing critique of the work of Carl Schmitt. Galli argue that Schmitt's main accomplishment, as well as the thread that unifies his oeuvre, is his construction of a genealogy of the modern that explains how modernity's compulsory drive to achieve order is both necessary and impossible. Galli addresses five key problems in Schmitt's thought: his relation to the state, the significance of his concept of political theology, his reading of Machiavelli and Spinoza, his relation to Leo Strauss, and his relevance for contemporary political theory. Galli emphasizes the importance of passing through Schmitt's thought--and, more important, beyond Schmitt's thought--if we are to achieve insights into the problems of the global age. Adam Sitze provides an illuminating introduction to Schmitt's and Galli's reading of him.").
Raphael Gross, Carl Schmitt and the Jews: The "Jewish Question," the Holocaust, and German Legal Theory, translated from the German by Joel Golb, foreword by Peter C. Caldwell (Madison & London: U. of Wisconsin Press, 2007) (From the book jacket: "Through a reading of Schmitt's corpus . . . Gross highlights the importance of the 'Jewish Question' on the breadth of Schmitt's work. According to Gross, Schmitt's antisemitism was at the core of his work--before, during, and after the Nazi era. His influential polarities of 'friend and foe.' 'law and nomos,' 'behemoth and Leviathan.' and 'Katechon and Antichrist' emerge form a conceptual template in which 'the Jew' is defined as adversary, undermining the Christian order with secularization. The presence of this template at the heart of Schmitt's work, Gross contends, calls for a major reassessment of Schmitt's role within contemporary cultural and legal theory.").
Andreas Kalyvas, Democracy and the Politics of the Extraordinary: Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt (New York: Cambridge U. Press, 2008) ("Although the modern age is often described as the age of democratic revolutions, the subject of popular founding has not captured the imagination of contemporary political thought. Most of the time, democratic theory and political science treats as the object of their inquiry normal politics, institutionalized power, and consolidated democracies. The aim of Andreas Kalyvas's study is to show why it is important for democratic theorists to rethink the question of democracy's beginnings. Is there a founding unique to democracies? Can a democracy be democratically establish? What are the implications of expanding democratic politics in light of the question of whether and how to address democracy's beginnings? Kalyvas addresses these question and scrutinizes the possibility of democratic beginnings in terms of the category of the extraordinary, as he reconstructs it from writings of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt and their views on the creation of new political, symbolic, and constitutional orders." Id. at i. "It is . . . their thoughts on foundations and on the creation of new political, symbolic, and constitutional orders that I discuss. I argue that Weber's theory of charisma, Schmitt's conception of the constituent power, and Arendt's notion of new beginnings represent three distinct variations on a single theme--namely, the extraordinary dimensions of the political as the ordinary, instituting moment of society. [] Despite their different paths, all three thinkers explored the perplexing relationship between radical founding acts and politics as usual in a secular age, when, with the entrance of the masses into the public sphere, references to ultimate foundations of authority and to an extrasocial source of power had begun to appear more dubious than ever. Id. at 10-11.).
Ellen Kennedy, Constitutional Failure: Carl Schmitt in Weimar ( Durham & London: Duke U. Press, 2004) ("With Hitler's appointment, liberal constitutionalism ceased in Germany. It was dead as legal theory, and its forms too would soon cease. The foundation of law, as Schmitt recognized, was no longer ratio but voluntas, now conceived as 'the will of the furrier.' What remained of the constitution was 'mere text' successively reshaped by Enabling Law . . . , presidential decrees, and constitutional reform laws. Less than a year after becoming chancellor, Adolf Hitler presided over a Germany legally and constitutionally unrecognizable from that a few years earlier." Id. at 169. Note: Bear in mind, many sophisticated political commentators drew parallels between the weakened status of America's democracy in the coming and, now, realized Trump-era, on the one hand, and Weimar Germany and the rise of Adolf Hitler, on the other. Less than a year into the Trump presidency, key institutions have been attacked and undermined: the press, the courts, the intelligence community, the FBI, the Justice Department, the electoral process, facts, the integrity of the Oval Office, the emoluments clause (e.g, making money off being president), etc. So, read Constitutional Failure and determine whether you see any parallels.).
Reinhard Mehring, Carl Schmitt: A Biography, translated from the German by Daniel Steuer (Cambridge, England, & Malden, Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2014) (From the "Translator's Preface": "If Schmitt's biography--even, and maybe especially, when viewed from the most factual and impartial perspective--proves one thing, it is that intelligence is neither a protection against delusion nor a guarantee of moral integrity. And, whereas we may assume that Hitler believed in his ideological constructs, at times not even that much is clear in the case of Schmitt. Rather, the 'case of Schmitt' is also the case of Germany, in that it raises the question of why there was so little solidarity with the victims, and how it was possible to install, practically overnight, an exclusionist and totalitarian the defied any legal or moral standard. These questions are still relevant today, not only in Germany." Id. at xii. Relevant today, say, in Trump' America.).
Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue; Incuding Strauss's Noteson Schmitt's Concept of the Political andThree Letters from Strauss to Schmitt, translated from the German by J/ Harvey Lomax, foreword by Joseph Cropsey (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 1995) (From the "Foreword": "Schmitt's own mortal enemy is liberalism, which he demonizes as the pacifistic, all-tolerating, rationalist-atheist antithesis of 'the political' conceived as he defined it. Liberalism is thus complicitous with communism in standing for the withering away of the political and replacing it with the technological--the reduction of humanity to the last man." Id. at x.).
Heinrich Meier, The Lesson of Carl Schmitt: Four Chapters on the Distinction between Political Theology and Political Philosophy, Expanded Edition, translated from the German by Marcus Brained, with new Essays translated by Robert Berman (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2011).
Jan-Werner Muller, A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2003) ("This book is about what precisely 'one of the most equivocal and notorious' modern intellectuals has meant for the twentieth-century European political thought and cultural life--and why his thought has meant so much and so many seemingly contradictory things to so many. Just why has it been so difficult to lay Schmitt's ghost to rest? In February 1920, a few weeks before his death, Max Weber, after a discussion with Oswald Spengler, told his students that 'the integrity of a scholar today . . . can be measured by how he positions himself vis-a-vis Nietzsche and Marx'. Something similar appears to have happened with Schmitt in the late twentieth century. The question 'What does Carl Schmitt mean for us?' or 'Why Schmitt?' has been posed numerous times without yielding a satisfactory answer. Just why have his theories had such a polarizing effects, often prompting the observation that his claim that a distinction between friend and enemy was the essence of politics, however flawed in other respects, holds true for the reception of his own work? Why has no other thinkers--except perhaps Max Weber and Machiavelli--been associated with the 'demonic' so frequently? Was it simply because Schmitt was himself so prone to invoking devilish forces?" Id. at 2, citations omitted. From the back cover: "Carl Schmitt is at once one of the most sinister and one of the most interesting, and in his warped way stimulating and insightful, legal intellectuals of the twentieth century. A leader of anti-liberal thought, this reactionary Catholic and later Nazi thinker nevertheless managed to attract a strong posthumous following among the European New Left, and his thought remains fascinating, seductive, and dangerous--all as brilliantly shown in Muller's book. Liberals ignore Schmitt at their peril."--Richard A. Posner, judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit).
Kam Shapiro, Carl Schmitt and the Intensification of Politics (Modernity and Political Thought) (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008, 2010) ("On the side of sovereignty, formal hostilities between symmetrical powers have been supplanted not by a comprehensive form of global control, but by ongoing, fragmented, or 'limited' warfare, perhaps better termed by Sylvere Lotringer 'State terrorism.' [Note: I would suggest the means by which Russia tampered with the 2016 U.S. Presidential election constitute such "ongoing, fragmented, or limited warfare."] In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari display similar prescience. The new war machine, they write, has 'set its sights on a new type of enemy, no longer another State, or even another regime, but the 'unspecified enemy.'' In light of recent developments, these formulations gain an air of clairvoyance. As recent commentaries from across the political spectrum show, it is all too easy to draw parallels between Schmittt's ideas and the polemical definition of enemies of liberal democracy in the Bush administration's strategy and rhetoric surrounding the 'war on terror.' This enemy today is notoriously vague, characterized precisely by a lack of territorial or legal integrity. In the name of a global war against it, the United States has made substantial progress toward a unilateral order only to reveal the limits of such a project. . . On the whole, the occasional violent assertion of universal norms has taken precedence over attempts to define them in concrete terms. Waged against criminalized and stateless groups ('unlawful enemy combatants'), or 'criminal' states, the war on terror proceeds by extrajudicial decrees, secret detention centers, administrative delegations, constitutional evasions, and a general preference of Arcanum over open discussion." Id. at 102-103, citation omitted.).
Jacob Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul, edited by Aleida Assmann & Jan Assmann, translated from the German by Dana Hollander (Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press, 2004) (From the back cover: "Taubes also takes issue with the 'political theology' advanced by the conservative Catholic jurist Carl Schmitt.").
Alan Wolfe:
TO BE CONTINUED.
Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, translated from the German and annotated by G. L. Ulman (Candor, NY: Telos Press Publishing, 2006) (From the back cover: "The Nomos of the Earth is Carl Schmitt's most historical and geopolitical book. It describes the origin of the Eurocentric global order, which Schmitt dates from the discovery of the New World, discusses its specific character and its contribution to civilization, analysis the reasons for its decline at the end of the nineteenth century, and concludes with prospects for a new world order. It is a reasoned yet passionate argument in defense of the European achievement--not only in creating the first truly global order of international law, but also in limiting war to conflicts among sovereign states, which in effect civilized war. In Schmitt's view, the European sovereign state was the greatest achievement of Occidental rationalism; in becoming the principal agency of secularization, the European state created the modern age. Since the problematic of a new nomos of the earth has become even more critical with the onset of the postmodern age--and postmodern war--Schmitt's text is now more timely and more challenging." "Remarkable in Schmitt's discussion of the European epoch of world history is the role played by the New World, which ultimately replaced the Old World as the center of the earth and became the arbiter in European world politics. According to Schmitt, the United States' internal conflicts between economic presence and political absence, between isolationism and intervention, are global problems, which today continue to hamper the creation of a new world order. But however critical Schmitt is of the American actions at the turn of the twentieth century and after World War I, he considered the United States to be the only political entity capable of resolving the crisis of global order." QUERY: Would Carl Schmitt have such confidence in the United States in, now, the twenty-first century and the age of Trump nationalism (that is, in the age of "America First" and "Make America Great (meaning 'White') Again"? I doubt it. If the West manages to avoid complete collapse, look to Frano-German leadership, not American leadership.).
Carl Schmitt, Political Romanticism, translated from the German by Guy Oakes (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: MIT Press, 1986).
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, translated and with an Introduction by George Schwab, With a Foreword by Tracy B. Strong (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2005) ("Sovereign is he who decides on the exception." Id. at 5. As the translator states in a footnote: "In the context of Schmitt's work, a state of exception includes any kind of severe economic or political disturbance that requires the application of extraordinary measures. Whereas an exception presupposes a constitutional order that provides guidelines on how to confront crises in order to establish order and stability, a state of emergency need not have an existing order as a reference point because necessities non habit legume." Id. at 5, fn. 1. "All law is 'situational law.' The sovereign produces and guarantees the situation in its totality. He has the monopoly over this last decision Therein resides the essence of the state's sovereignty, which must be juristically defined correctly, not as the monopoly to coerce or to rule, but as the monopoly to decide. The exception reveals most clearly the essence of the state's authority. The decision parts here from the legal norm, an (to formulate it paradoxically) authority proves that to produce law it need not be based on law." Id. at 13. "Dictatorship is the opposite of discussion." Id. at 63.).
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology II: The Myth of the Closure of any Political Theology, translated from the German by Michael Hoelzl & Graham Ward (New York: Polity Press, 2008) (From the back cover: John P. McCormick observes "That in the late 1960s, as the Roman Catholic Church reconciled itself to secular modernity and West Germany's liberal democracy resorted to extra-legal measures in the midst of political crisis, Schmitt decided to revisit the questions that motivated his thinking in the early Weimar Republic: can morality only find justification in transcendental theological sources and must political authority rest ultimately with an extraordinary sovereign authority? Obviously, these questions still haunt our world as we move further into the twenty-first century.").
Carl Schmitt, Theory of the Partisan: Intermediate Commentary on the Concept of the Political, translated from the German by G. L. Ulman (Candor, NY: Telos Press Publishing, 2007) (From the "Translator's Introduction": "Like partisan warfare, terrorism has been around since the beginning of recorded history, meaning that guerrillas throughout history often have resorted to terrorist tactics to achieve their goals. However, terrorism and partisan warfare are not synonymous, and the distinction should be kept in mind. Terrorism emerged in its own right as a separate phenomenon alongside urban guerrilla warfare in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Like partisan warfare, terrorism is a political concept. It is violence or the threat of violence used in pursuit of a political end. But unlike partisan warfare, terrorism is a planned, calculated, and systematic act. [] Like the partisan, the terrorist is irregular; but unlike the partisan, he does not depend on cooperation with a regular base; he can and does exist in a political no-man's land. Like the partisan, the terrorist is illegal, but unlike the partisan, his illegality is illegitimate, meaning that it has no point of reference. Like the partisan, the terrorist has increased mobility of active combat, But unlike the partisan he is not essentially defensive; rather, he is essentially offensive. Moreover, unlike the partisan, the terrorist is not telluric, meaning, that his hostility is not spatially limited. "Generally speaking, the partisan has a real enemy, who is fought in a war, however irregular, and has some claim to humanity and legitimacy, whereas the terrorist has an absolute enemy, wh must be annihilated. Here is where the transition form the partisan to the terrorist is not evident, and where the distinction is conceptually clear." Id. at xvi-xvii.).
Carl Schmitt, Writings on War, edited and translated from the German by Timothy Nunan (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2011) (From the back cover: "Writings on War collects three of Carl Schmitt's most important and controversial text . . . : The Turn to the Discriminating Concept of War, The GroBraum Order of International Law, and The International Crime of War of Aggression and the Principle 'Nullum crimen, null open sine legs'. "Written between 1937 and 1945, these works articulate Schmitt's concerns throughout this period of war and crisis, addressing the major failings of the League of Nations, and presenting Schmitt's own conceptual history of these years of disaster for international jurisprudence. For Schmitt, the jurisprudence of both Versailles and Nuremberg fails to provide for a stable international system because it attempts to impose universal standards of 'humanity' on a heterogeneous world, and because it treats efforts to revise the status quo as 'criminal' act of war. In place of these flawed systems, Schmitt argues for a new planetary order in which neither collective security organizations nor 19th-century empires, but rather the Schmittian 'Reich' will be the leading subject of international law. "Writings on War will be essential reading for those seeking to understand the work of Carl Schmitt, the history of international law and the international system, and interwar European history. These writings not only offer an erudite point of entry into the dynamics and charged world of interwar European jurisprudence, for they also speak with prescient to a 21st-century world struggling with similar issues of global governance and international law." Note: If one listens carefully to the undertone of Donald Trump's, admittedly incoherent, view of the 'proper' role of America's in the world, one should appreciate his binary world-view. It is not just the 'America-not-American' divide, or the 'West-not-the-West' divide, or the 'West-versus-Islam' divide, or the 'West-versus-terrorists' divide., etc. Rather, and more important, his is, and he does articulate it as, a 'civilization-versus-barbarians' divide, where America and it cooperative allies are civilization, and where everybody else--but especially, Islam (though Trump labels it Radical Islamic Extremists'--are the barbarians. If one drills down to the core of Trump's thinking, one sees that his civilization-barbarian divide really is a divide between what he views as humanity and what he considers inhuman or less than human. This does not simply apply to Trump's views regardless the relationship between the America and its allies, on the one hand, and the rest of the world, on the other. It is also applies domestically. There are segments of the American population Trumps barely views as worthy of human considerations. These include people of color, Muslims, and women. These groups are not part of Trump's understanding of humanity, except those few who know and accept their low place and status in Trump's world (e.g., women who defend Trump's misogynistic attacks on women). For Trump, as for most of us, the world is a heterogeneous place; but for Trump, unlike most of us, there is "no universal standards of 'humanity'." For Trump, some of us are less human than others, and therefore less worthy of moral consideration. That is at the core of both his "America First" nationalism and his "Make America Great Again," which is properly understood as 'Make America White Again,' populism. Trump does not have a complicated, sophisticated, or nuanced world view. He does not have a complicated, sophisticated, or nuanced domestic view. His view is simple: simply racist, simply misogynistic, and simply tribal. If one is not of Trump's tribe, one's value is deeply discounted or nonexistent.).
Gopal Balakrishnan,The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt (London & New York: Verso, 2000) (From the back cover: "The writings of Carl Schmitt from what is arguably the most disconcerting, original, and yet still unfamiliar body of twentieth-century political thought. In the English-speaking world, he is terra incognito, a name associated with Nazism, the author of a largely untranslated oeuvre forming no recognizable system, coming to us from a disturbing place and time in the form of fragments." "The Enemy is a comprehensive reconstruction and analysis of all of Schmitt's major works--his books, articles and pamphlets from 1919 to 1950--presented in an arresting narrative form. The revelation of his work is that, unlike mainstream Nazi ideology, Schmitt makes a strong philosophical claim for the necessity of confrontational politics within a democratic system; a claim that has resonance in today's hegemony of consensual politics.").
Carlo Galli, Janus's Gaze: Essays on Carl Schmitt, translated from the Italian by Amanda Minervini, edited wand introduced by Adam Sitze (Durham & London: Duke U. Press, 2015) (From "Schmitt and the Global Era": "In reality, there is a legible intent woven not this neoconservative ideology (which Schmitt did not in fact influence) that is quite close to traditional political realism. On the terms of this theory, the United States sees itself as the political subject acting as the core of 'civilization.' one that is not generically 'human.' but 'Western' (a West guided by America, but one that includes Europe and other allied non-Western countries). Its aim is to reterritorialiize politics and globalize war, beginning with a unilateral definition of 'terrorism' and form the unilateral recognition of the terrorist enemy against whom it is legitimate to wage absolute and discriminatory war. However, this war, despite all its aggressive aspects, is waged with the intent of constructing a limes [fortified frontier] toward external barbarians, stabilizing internal space by capturing and controlling portions of space in the Middle East and in central Asia (area that are 'unstable' and that, as such, are in need of 'stabilization') for the purpose of impeding Chinese projects (a motivation very much in keeping with implicit logic of the Great Spaces). The task is to transform the United States's informal Empire (which emerged during the first phase of globalization) into into [] a direct and territorial Empire (one that is, in many ways, 'traditional'). The American response to the attacks of September 11 (the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also Guantanamo Bay and the Patriot Act) seem to amount to an attempt to replace the haziness of the liquid age of the first phase of globalization with the solidity and concreteness of a new iron age--an attempt, in other words, to restore political order, even by means of extra juridical forms, and to tranform global war into constituent war, into a new oriented order. The hallmark of this new order would seem to be a hierarchical relationship, typical of Empire, between center and periphery, between imperial elites and local elites. Its point of orientation would appear to be the physical security of American (brought back to its insular dimension, although not insolation), the indisputable centrality of America's material and cultural living standards, and the preservation of existing power relations between America (the Western world being its extension) and the rest of the world. All of this would seem to amount to a new nomos of the earth, a new orientation for its order. Whether or not this nomos really can create effective order, is, of course, an entirely different discussion." Id. at 97, 127-128. [Note: Obviously, the Obama administration pivoted away from the Bush Administration's neoconservative approach to globalization, adopting a 'first-among-equals' rather than 'America-as-Empire' approach. The Trump administration, though very much lacking intellectual and political clarity, has abandoned both Obama's and Bush's understandings and approaches to globalization and America's place in the world. Instead, the Trump administration advocates American nationalism ("America First"), American isolationism (e.g., weak support for NATO, abandonment of the Paris Climate Accord and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, declining to re-certify Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal, and a cross the board questioning of the legitimacy of global institution--many of which, by the way, were created, structured, and dominated the United States). The likely consequence: a weaken European Union, an emboldened Russia, a lessening of American global influence, and the rise of China on the global stage.] From the back cover: "Janus's Gaze is the culmination of Carlo Galli's ongoing critique of the work of Carl Schmitt. Galli argue that Schmitt's main accomplishment, as well as the thread that unifies his oeuvre, is his construction of a genealogy of the modern that explains how modernity's compulsory drive to achieve order is both necessary and impossible. Galli addresses five key problems in Schmitt's thought: his relation to the state, the significance of his concept of political theology, his reading of Machiavelli and Spinoza, his relation to Leo Strauss, and his relevance for contemporary political theory. Galli emphasizes the importance of passing through Schmitt's thought--and, more important, beyond Schmitt's thought--if we are to achieve insights into the problems of the global age. Adam Sitze provides an illuminating introduction to Schmitt's and Galli's reading of him.").
Raphael Gross, Carl Schmitt and the Jews: The "Jewish Question," the Holocaust, and German Legal Theory, translated from the German by Joel Golb, foreword by Peter C. Caldwell (Madison & London: U. of Wisconsin Press, 2007) (From the book jacket: "Through a reading of Schmitt's corpus . . . Gross highlights the importance of the 'Jewish Question' on the breadth of Schmitt's work. According to Gross, Schmitt's antisemitism was at the core of his work--before, during, and after the Nazi era. His influential polarities of 'friend and foe.' 'law and nomos,' 'behemoth and Leviathan.' and 'Katechon and Antichrist' emerge form a conceptual template in which 'the Jew' is defined as adversary, undermining the Christian order with secularization. The presence of this template at the heart of Schmitt's work, Gross contends, calls for a major reassessment of Schmitt's role within contemporary cultural and legal theory.").
Andreas Kalyvas, Democracy and the Politics of the Extraordinary: Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt (New York: Cambridge U. Press, 2008) ("Although the modern age is often described as the age of democratic revolutions, the subject of popular founding has not captured the imagination of contemporary political thought. Most of the time, democratic theory and political science treats as the object of their inquiry normal politics, institutionalized power, and consolidated democracies. The aim of Andreas Kalyvas's study is to show why it is important for democratic theorists to rethink the question of democracy's beginnings. Is there a founding unique to democracies? Can a democracy be democratically establish? What are the implications of expanding democratic politics in light of the question of whether and how to address democracy's beginnings? Kalyvas addresses these question and scrutinizes the possibility of democratic beginnings in terms of the category of the extraordinary, as he reconstructs it from writings of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt and their views on the creation of new political, symbolic, and constitutional orders." Id. at i. "It is . . . their thoughts on foundations and on the creation of new political, symbolic, and constitutional orders that I discuss. I argue that Weber's theory of charisma, Schmitt's conception of the constituent power, and Arendt's notion of new beginnings represent three distinct variations on a single theme--namely, the extraordinary dimensions of the political as the ordinary, instituting moment of society. [] Despite their different paths, all three thinkers explored the perplexing relationship between radical founding acts and politics as usual in a secular age, when, with the entrance of the masses into the public sphere, references to ultimate foundations of authority and to an extrasocial source of power had begun to appear more dubious than ever. Id. at 10-11.).
Ellen Kennedy, Constitutional Failure: Carl Schmitt in Weimar ( Durham & London: Duke U. Press, 2004) ("With Hitler's appointment, liberal constitutionalism ceased in Germany. It was dead as legal theory, and its forms too would soon cease. The foundation of law, as Schmitt recognized, was no longer ratio but voluntas, now conceived as 'the will of the furrier.' What remained of the constitution was 'mere text' successively reshaped by Enabling Law . . . , presidential decrees, and constitutional reform laws. Less than a year after becoming chancellor, Adolf Hitler presided over a Germany legally and constitutionally unrecognizable from that a few years earlier." Id. at 169. Note: Bear in mind, many sophisticated political commentators drew parallels between the weakened status of America's democracy in the coming and, now, realized Trump-era, on the one hand, and Weimar Germany and the rise of Adolf Hitler, on the other. Less than a year into the Trump presidency, key institutions have been attacked and undermined: the press, the courts, the intelligence community, the FBI, the Justice Department, the electoral process, facts, the integrity of the Oval Office, the emoluments clause (e.g, making money off being president), etc. So, read Constitutional Failure and determine whether you see any parallels.).
Reinhard Mehring, Carl Schmitt: A Biography, translated from the German by Daniel Steuer (Cambridge, England, & Malden, Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2014) (From the "Translator's Preface": "If Schmitt's biography--even, and maybe especially, when viewed from the most factual and impartial perspective--proves one thing, it is that intelligence is neither a protection against delusion nor a guarantee of moral integrity. And, whereas we may assume that Hitler believed in his ideological constructs, at times not even that much is clear in the case of Schmitt. Rather, the 'case of Schmitt' is also the case of Germany, in that it raises the question of why there was so little solidarity with the victims, and how it was possible to install, practically overnight, an exclusionist and totalitarian the defied any legal or moral standard. These questions are still relevant today, not only in Germany." Id. at xii. Relevant today, say, in Trump' America.).
Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue; Incuding Strauss's Noteson Schmitt's Concept of the Political andThree Letters from Strauss to Schmitt, translated from the German by J/ Harvey Lomax, foreword by Joseph Cropsey (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 1995) (From the "Foreword": "Schmitt's own mortal enemy is liberalism, which he demonizes as the pacifistic, all-tolerating, rationalist-atheist antithesis of 'the political' conceived as he defined it. Liberalism is thus complicitous with communism in standing for the withering away of the political and replacing it with the technological--the reduction of humanity to the last man." Id. at x.).
Heinrich Meier, The Lesson of Carl Schmitt: Four Chapters on the Distinction between Political Theology and Political Philosophy, Expanded Edition, translated from the German by Marcus Brained, with new Essays translated by Robert Berman (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2011).
Jan-Werner Muller, A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2003) ("This book is about what precisely 'one of the most equivocal and notorious' modern intellectuals has meant for the twentieth-century European political thought and cultural life--and why his thought has meant so much and so many seemingly contradictory things to so many. Just why has it been so difficult to lay Schmitt's ghost to rest? In February 1920, a few weeks before his death, Max Weber, after a discussion with Oswald Spengler, told his students that 'the integrity of a scholar today . . . can be measured by how he positions himself vis-a-vis Nietzsche and Marx'. Something similar appears to have happened with Schmitt in the late twentieth century. The question 'What does Carl Schmitt mean for us?' or 'Why Schmitt?' has been posed numerous times without yielding a satisfactory answer. Just why have his theories had such a polarizing effects, often prompting the observation that his claim that a distinction between friend and enemy was the essence of politics, however flawed in other respects, holds true for the reception of his own work? Why has no other thinkers--except perhaps Max Weber and Machiavelli--been associated with the 'demonic' so frequently? Was it simply because Schmitt was himself so prone to invoking devilish forces?" Id. at 2, citations omitted. From the back cover: "Carl Schmitt is at once one of the most sinister and one of the most interesting, and in his warped way stimulating and insightful, legal intellectuals of the twentieth century. A leader of anti-liberal thought, this reactionary Catholic and later Nazi thinker nevertheless managed to attract a strong posthumous following among the European New Left, and his thought remains fascinating, seductive, and dangerous--all as brilliantly shown in Muller's book. Liberals ignore Schmitt at their peril."--Richard A. Posner, judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit).
Kam Shapiro, Carl Schmitt and the Intensification of Politics (Modernity and Political Thought) (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008, 2010) ("On the side of sovereignty, formal hostilities between symmetrical powers have been supplanted not by a comprehensive form of global control, but by ongoing, fragmented, or 'limited' warfare, perhaps better termed by Sylvere Lotringer 'State terrorism.' [Note: I would suggest the means by which Russia tampered with the 2016 U.S. Presidential election constitute such "ongoing, fragmented, or limited warfare."] In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari display similar prescience. The new war machine, they write, has 'set its sights on a new type of enemy, no longer another State, or even another regime, but the 'unspecified enemy.'' In light of recent developments, these formulations gain an air of clairvoyance. As recent commentaries from across the political spectrum show, it is all too easy to draw parallels between Schmittt's ideas and the polemical definition of enemies of liberal democracy in the Bush administration's strategy and rhetoric surrounding the 'war on terror.' This enemy today is notoriously vague, characterized precisely by a lack of territorial or legal integrity. In the name of a global war against it, the United States has made substantial progress toward a unilateral order only to reveal the limits of such a project. . . On the whole, the occasional violent assertion of universal norms has taken precedence over attempts to define them in concrete terms. Waged against criminalized and stateless groups ('unlawful enemy combatants'), or 'criminal' states, the war on terror proceeds by extrajudicial decrees, secret detention centers, administrative delegations, constitutional evasions, and a general preference of Arcanum over open discussion." Id. at 102-103, citation omitted.).
Jacob Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul, edited by Aleida Assmann & Jan Assmann, translated from the German by Dana Hollander (Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press, 2004) (From the back cover: "Taubes also takes issue with the 'political theology' advanced by the conservative Catholic jurist Carl Schmitt.").
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[PDF]A Fascist Philosopher Helps Us Understand Contemporary Politics
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From the issue dated April 2, 2004. A Fascist Philosopher Helps Us Understand Contemporary. Politics. By ALAN WOLFE. To understand what is distinctive ...TO BE CONTINUED.
