Carl Schmitt Books

When Germany was defeated in 1945, both the Russians and the Americans undertook mass internments in the territories they occupied. The Americans called their approach 'automatic arrest'.

Written during the Weimar Republic, the Nazi era, and the Cold War, this collection of occasional pieces provides an instructive look at the ways in which Carl Schmitt employed his theories in order to make judgments about contemporary historical events and problems. Covering topics such as the political significance of universalism and jurisprudence, the meaning of the partisan, the world-historical significance of the Cold War, the deterioration of metaphysics into "values," the relationship between theoretical concepts and concrete historical situations, and his views on thinkers such as Machiavelli, Bodin, and Rousseau, these essays establish a revealing counterpoint to his more formal work. They react on the one hand directly to contemporary political questions and demonstrate the way in which he saw the immediate historical significance of his ideas. On the other hand, he also feels free to provide in these pieces the kinds of methodological reflections that help us to better understand the particular epistemological framework that makes his thought so unique.

Provides an interpretation of the Weimar Constitution. This book presents an argument that the legitimacy of a constitution depends on a sovereign decision of people. It develops an understanding of liberal constitutionalism that makes room for a strong, independent state. It includes an introduction by Jeffrey Seitzer and Christopher Thornhill.

Carl Schmitt is widely recognized as one of the most important political theorists of the 20th century. This is the only remaining work by Carl Schmitt which has not yet been translated into English.

The only English-language translation of one of Schmitt's most controversial works.

Carl Schmitt ranks among the original and controversial political thinkers of the twentieth century. This book contains translations of Schmitt's 1958 commentary on the work, explanatory notes, and an appendix including articles of the Weimar constitution.

Written in the intense political and intellectual tumult of the early years of the Weimar Republic, this book develops the distinctive theory of sovereignty that made Carl Schmitt one of the most significant and controversial political theorists of the twentieth century. Schmitt concludes this book with a critique of liberalism.

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.

Writing in 1938 under the pretext of studying the significance of the symbol of the leviathan in Hobbes' theory of state, Schmitt alludes to the demise of the Third Reich because of its rapid transformation into a totalitarian polity. As Schmitt recognizes, in this state, the Hobbesian protection-obedience axiom is being heavily tilted in favor of obedience at the expense of protection. When this occurs, Schmitt observes, "the soul of a people" betakes "itself on the 'secret road' that leads inward. Then grows the counterforce of silence and stillness," and public power and force "may be ever so completely and emphatically recognized and ever so loyally respected, but only as a public and only an external power it is hollow and already dead from within."

»Souverän ist, wer über den Ausnahmezustand entscheidet« ist der erste Satz von Carl Schmitts Schrift »Politische Theologie«. Er wird national und international zitiert, oft ohne Nennung des Urhebers, so dass ein weiteres Diktum Schmitts zutrifft, dass er ›Gemeingut aller Gebildeten‹ geworden ist. Die kleine Schrift über Begriff und Problem der Souveränität, Dezisionismus, Politische Theologie als Soziologie juristischer Begriffe und die der Gegenrevolution wird seit Erscheinen im Jahr 1922 bis heute besprochen, gedeutet und kritisiert. Die 11. Auflage enthält Satzkorrekturen aus Schmitts Handexemplar und ein Personenverzeichnis.