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Carl Schmitt was the most famous and controversial defender of political theology in the twentieth century. But in his best-known work, The Concept of the Political, issued in 1927, 1932, and 1933, political considerations led him to conceal the dependence of his political theory on his faith in divine revelation. In 1932 Leo Strauss published a critical review of Concept that initiated an extremely subtle exchange between Schmitt and Strauss regarding Schmitt’s critique of liberalism. Although Schmitt never answered Strauss publicly, in the third edition of his book he changed a number of passages in response to Strauss’s criticisms. Now, in this elegant translation by J. Harvey Lomax, Heinrich Meier shows us what the remarkable dialogue between Schmitt and Strauss reveals about the development of these two seminal thinkers.

Meier contends that their exchange only ostensibly revolves around liberalism. At its heart, their “hidden dialogue” explores the fundamental conflict between political theology and political philosophy, between revelation and reason­and ultimately, the vital question of how human beings ought to live their lives.

Constitutional Failure is a major contribution to studies of the German political philosopher Carl Schmitt (1888–1985), the Weimar Republic, and the relationship of constitutionalism, political economy, and democracy. An internationally renowned scholar of Weimar legal theory, Ellen Kennedy brought Schmitt’s neglected work to the attention of English-speaking readers with her highly regarded translations of his work and studies of its place in twentieth-century political theory. In this eagerly awaited book, she tracks Schmitt’s contribution to the canon of Western political philosophy during its most difficult and dangerous moment—the time of Weimar Germany and the Third Reich—demonstrating the centrality of his thought to understandings of the modern constitutional state and its precarious economic and social foundations.

Kennedy reveals how Schmitt’s argument for a strong but neutral state supported the maximization of market freedom at the cost of the political constitution. She argues that the major fault lines of Weimar liberalism—emergency powers, the courts as “defenders of the constitution,” mass mobilization of anti-liberal politics, ethnic-identity politics, a culture of resentment and contested legitimacy—are not exceptions within the liberal-democratic orders of the West, but central to them. Contending that Schmitt’s thought remains vital today because liberal norms are inadequate to the political challenges facing constitutional systems as diverse as those of Eastern Europe and the United States, Kennedy develops a compelling, rigorous argument that unsettles many assumptions about liberalism, democracy, and dictatorship.

Carl Schmitt’s magnum opus, Constitutional Theory, was originally published in 1928 and has been in print in German ever since. This volume makes Schmitt’s masterpiece of comparative constitutionalism available to English-language readers for the first time. Schmitt is considered by many to be one of the most original—and, because of his collaboration with the Nazi party, controversial—political thinkers of the twentieth century. In Constitutional Theory, Schmitt provides a highly distinctive and provocative interpretation of the Weimar Constitution. At the center of this 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 as 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. This edition includes an introduction by Jeffrey Seitzer and Christopher Thornhill outlining the cultural, intellectual, and political contexts in which Schmitt wrote Constitutional Theory; they point out what is distinctive about the work, examine its reception in the postwar era, and consider its larger theoretical ramifications. This volume also contains extensive editorial notes and a translation of the Weimar Constitution.

First published in Italian in 2008 and appearing here in English for the first time, Janus's Gaze is the culmination of Carlo Galli's ongoing critique of the work of Carl Schmitt. Galli argues 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 readings 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 insight into the problems of the global age. Adam Sitze provides an illuminating introduction to Schmitt and Galli's reading of him.

 

While antiliberal legal theorist Carl Schmitt has long been considered by Europeans to be one of this century’s most significant political philosophers, recent challenges to the fundamental values of liberal democracies have made Schmitt’s writings an unavoidable subject of debate in North America as well. In an effort to advance our understanding not only of Schmitt but of current problems of liberal democracy, David Dyzenhaus presents translations of classic German essays on Schmitt alongside more recent writings by distinguished political theorists and jurists. Neither a defense of nor an attack on Schmitt, Law as Politics offers the first balanced response to his powerful critique of liberalism.
One of the major players in the 1920s debates, an outspoken critic of the Versailles Treaty and the Weimar Constitution, and a member of the Nazi party who provided juridical respectability to Hitler’s policies, Schmitt contended that people are a polity only to the extent that they share common enemies. He saw the liberal notion of a peaceful world of universal citizens as a sheer impossibility and attributed the problems of Weimar to liberalism and its inability to cope with pluralism and political conflict. In the decade since his death, Schmitt’s writings have been taken up by both the right and the left and scholars differ greatly in their evaluation of Schmitt’s ideas. Law as Politics thematically organizes in one volume the varying engagements and confrontations with Schmitt’s work and allows scholars to acknowledge—and therefore be in a better position to negotiate—an important paradox inscribed in the very nature of liberal democracy.
Law as Politics will interest political philosophers, legal theorists, historians, and anyone interested in Schmitt’s relevance to current discussions of liberalism.

Contributors. Heiner Bielefeldt, Ronald Beiner, Ernst-Wolfgang Bockenforde, Renato Cristi, David Dyzenhaus, Robert Howse, Ellen Kennedy, Dominique Leydet, Ingeborg Maus, John P. McCormick, Reinhard Mehring, Chantal Mouffe, William E. Scheuerman, Jeffrey Seitzer

Carl Schmitt ranks among the most original and controversial political thinkers of the twentieth century. His incisive criticisms of Enlightenment political thought and liberal political practice remain as shocking and significant today as when they first appeared in Weimar Germany. Unavailable in English until now, Legality and Legitimacy was composed in 1932, in the midst of the crisis that would lead to the collapse of the Weimar Republic and only a matter of months before Schmitt’s collaboration with the Nazis. In this important work, Schmitt questions the political viability of liberal constitutionalism, parliamentary government, and the rule of law. Liberal governments, he argues, cannot respond effectively to challenges by radical groups like the Nazis or Communists. Only a presidential regime subject to few, if any, practical limitations can ensure domestic security in a highly pluralistic society.

Legality and Legitimacy is sure to provide a compelling reference point in contemporary debates over the challenges facing constitutional democracies today. In addition to Jeffrey Seitzer’s translation of the 1932 text itself, this volume contains his translation of Schmitt’s 1958 commentary on the work, extensive explanatory notes, and an appendix including selected articles of the Weimar constitution. John P. McCormick’s introduction places Legality and Legitimacy in its historical context, clarifies some of the intricacies of the argument, and ultimately contests Schmitt’s claims regarding the inherent weakness of parliamentarism, constitutionalism, and the rule of law.

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.

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.

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.

This book is the culmination of Heinrich Meier's acclaimed analyses of the controversial thought of Carl Schmitt. Meier identifies the core of Schmitt's thought as political theology—that is, political theorizing that claims to have its ultimate ground in the revelation of a mysterious or supra-rational God. This radical, but half-hidden, theological foundation unifies the whole of Schmitt's often difficult and complex oeuvre, cutting through the intentional deceptions and unintentional obfuscations that have eluded previous commentators.

Relating this religious dimension to Schmitt's support for National Socialism and his continuing anti-Semitism, Meier compels the reader to come to terms with the irreconcilable differences between political theology and political philosophy. His book will give pause to those who have tended to gloss over the troubling aspects of some of Schmitt's ideas.

With editions in German, French, Italian, and now English, Meier's two books on Schmitt have dramatically reoriented the international debate about Carl Schmitt and his significance for twentieth-century political thought.

"Standing far above the rest . . . is Heinrich Meier's new study, Die Lehre Carl Schmitts, which covers all of Schmitt's writings. . . . Meier's work has forced everyone to take a second look at the assumptions underlying Schmitt's better-known writings and reconsider some that have been ignored."—Mark Lilla, reviewing the German edition in The New York Review of Books

Heinrich Meier’s work on Carl Schmitt has dramatically reoriented the international debate about Schmitt and his significance for twentieth-century political thought. In The Lesson of Carl Schmitt, Meier identifies the core of Schmitt’s thought as political theology—that is, political theorizing that claims to have its ultimate ground in the revelation of a mysterious or suprarational God. This radical, but half-hidden, theological foundation underlies the whole of Schmitt’s often difficult and complex oeuvre, rich in historical turns and political convolutions, intentional deceptions and unintentional obfuscations.

 

In four chapters on morality, politics, revelation, and history, Meier clarifies the difference between political philosophy and Schmitt’s political theology and relates the religious dimension of his thought to his support for National Socialism and his continuing anti-Semitism. New to this edition are two essays that address the recently published correspondences of Schmitt—particularly with Hans Blumberg—and the light it sheds on his conception of political theology.