The Contemporary Relevance Of Carl Schmitt

What does Carl Schmitt have to offer to ongoing debates about sovereignty, globalization, spatiality, the nature of the political, and political theology? Can Schmitt’s positions and concepts offer insights that might help us understand our concrete present-day situation? Works on Schmitt usually limit themselves to historically isolating Schmitt into his Weimar or post-Weimar context, to reading him together with classics of political and legal philosophy, or to focusing exclusively on a particular aspect of Schmitt’s writings. Bringing together an international, and interdisciplinary, range of contributors, this book explores the question of Schmitt’s relevance for an understanding of the contemporary world. Engaging the background and intellectual context in which Schmitt wrote his major works – often with reference to both primary and secondary literature unavailable in English – this book will be of enormous interest to legal and political theorists.

Carl Schmitt is the last thinker to provide a complete, original definition of politics. His work influences many debates in contemporary political theory through a collection of concepts he created: political theology, the katechon, friend and enemy. Despite how influential his ideas are, they tend to be employed metaphorically, and sometimes incorrectly. This miscalculation is due to Carl Schmitt himself, who never gave us a final, complete version of his political thought, or even of some of his most famous concepts. In this book, I aim to reconstruct his political thought using three key concepts: political theology, the concept of the political, and the theory of modernity. To do so, I have consulted all his published works, but also the archival documents, in particular those with ties to Spain, which had previously received little attention. This reconstruction offers readers a qualitative introduction to Schmitt’s political thought that aims to blend logical clarity with document-based evidence.

There has been and continues to be a remarkable revival in academic interest in Carl Schmitt's thought within politics, but this is the first book to address his thought from an explicitly legal theoretical perspective, as it addresses the actual and potential significance of Schmitt's thought for debates within contemporary Anglo-American legal theory that have emerged during the past three decades.

The Sovereign Collection consists of the three most influential works by renowned legal theorist and jurist Carl Schmitt. These works are indispensable in the effort to understand contemporary and future political developments. The first work, Political Theology, consists of four essays, which address, respectively: Sovereignty, political power, 'decisionism' (decision theory), and the state of exception. It is renowned among English-speaking dissidents for its hard-hitting description of the relationship between political leaders, the norms of legal order, and Schmitt's definition of the 'Sovereign'. The Concept of the Political is Carl Schmitt's most influential work and one of the most influential works of political philosophy. First published in 1932 as an elaboration of a 1927 journal article, Schmitt lays out the concept of the political - the friend-enemy distinction - and delivers a cogent critique of the impossibility and impracticability of anything that seeks to abolish that distinction. Schmitt also sets up a cohesive theory that takes account of the varying intensities of the political. His theory cuts to the heart of the political phenomena and provides insight that will prove increasingly relevant for coming generations. The concluding text, Theory of the Partisan, consists of two lectures, delivered by Carl Schmitt in 1962, addressing the transformation of war in the post-European age. This accessible work analyzes the origin, evolution, and practical effects of the modern partisan. With the rise of political terrorism and the universal acceptance of critical theory, Schmitt's Theory of the Partisan emerges today more relevant than ever. All three works are newly translated by C.J. Miller in 2020. These translations are more faithful to the original German. Antelope Hill Publishing is proud to present an original collection of Carl Schmitt's most cutting and eternally relevant contributions to political philosophy, The Sovereign Collection.

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. This edition of the 1932 work includes the translator's introduction (by George Schwab) which highlights Schmitt's intellectual journey through the turbulent period of German history leading to the Hitlerian one-party state. It also includes Leo Strauss's analysis of Schmitt's thesis and a foreword by Tracy B. Strong placing Schmitt's work into contemporary context.

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 political theorists of the twentieth century. Focusing on the relationships among political leadership, the norms of the legal order, and the state of political emergency, Schmitt argues in Political Theology that legal order ultimately rests upon the decisions of the sovereign. According to Schmitt, only the sovereign can meet the needs of an "exceptional" time and transcend legal order so that order can then be reestablished. Convinced that the state is governed by the ever-present possibility of conflict, Schmitt theorizes that the state exists only to maintain its integrity in order to ensure order and stability. Suggesting that all concepts of modern political thought are secularized theological concepts, Schmitt concludes Political Theology with a critique of liberalism and its attempt to depoliticize political thought by avoiding fundamental political decisions.

Schmitt's thought serves as a warning against the dangers of complacency entailed by triumphant liberalism. In this collection of essays Schmitt reminds us that the essence of politics is struggle.

Almost 100 years have passed since Carl Schmitt gave his controversial definition of the sovereign as the one who decides on the exception in his by now classic Political Theology (1922). Written at a time of crisis, the book sought to establish the institution of sovereignty, not from within a well-functioning governing machine of the state in a situation of normality, but rather as the minimal condition of state order in the moment of governmental breakdown. The book appeared anachronistic already at its publication. Schmitt went against Max Weber's popular thesis defining secularization as a disenchantment of the world characterizing modern societies, and instead suggested that the concepts of modern politics mirrored a metaphysics originating in Christianity and the church. Nevertheless, the concept of political theology has in recent years seen a revival as a field of research in philosophy as well as political theory, as studies in the theological sub-currents of politics, economics and sociality proliferate.