1,036 words
Carl Schmitt was born on July 11, 1888 in Plettenberg, Westphalia, Germany — where he died on April 7, 1985, at the age of 96. The son of a Roman Catholic small businessman, Carl Schmitt studied law in Berlin, Munich, and Strasbourg, graduating and taking his state exams in Strasbourg in 1915. In 1916, he earned his habilitation in Strasbourg, qualifying him to be a law professor. He taught at business schools and universities in Munich, Greifswald, Bonn, Berlin, and Cologne.
During the Third Reich, Schmitt joined the NSDAP (on May 1, 1933). He was appointed Prussian State Counselor and President of the Union of National Socialist Jurists. He particularly enjoyed the confidence and patronage of Hermann Göring, but from 1936 on was regarded as ideologically unsound by some within the SS. In 1945, he was arrested and interned for more than a year by American occupiers. Schmitt refused “de-Nazification” and retired to the village of his birth where he continued to write, receive visitors, and quietly maintain his political contacts until the end of his life. Among his many visitors were Ernst Jünger, Alexandre Kojève, Guillaume Faye, and Jean-Louis Feuerbach.
Schmitt is now widely recognized as one of the great anti-liberal political and legal theorists, whose works are valued on the anti-liberal left as well as on the right. His books are steadily being translated into English. Available titles include:
- Political Romanticism (1919, 1925), trans. Guy Oakes (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986).
- Dictatorship: From the Origin of the Modern Concept of Sovereignty to Proletarian Class Struggle (1921), trans. Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014).
- Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (1922, 1934), trans. George D. Schwab (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985).
- Roman Catholicism and Political Form (1923), trans. G. L. Ulmen (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996).
- The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (1923, 1926), trans. Ellen Kennedy (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1988).
- The Idea of Representation: A Discussion (1923), trans. E. M. Codd (Washington, D.C.: Plutarch Press, 1988), reprint of The Necessity of Politics: An Essay on the Representative Idea in the Church and Modern Europe (London: Sheed and Ward, 1931).
- The Concept of the Political (1927, 1932), trans. George D. Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996; expanded edition 2006, with an Introduction by Tracy B. Strong).
- Constitutional Theory (1928), trans. Jeffrey Seitzer (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007).
- Four Articles, 1931–1938, trans. Simona Draghici (Washington, D.C.: Plutarch Press, 1999). (See below.)
- Legality and Legitimacy (1932), trans. Jeffrey Seitzer (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004).
- On the Three Types of Juristic Thought (1934), trans. Joseph Bendersky (Westport, Conn: Praeger, 2004).
- Writings on War (1937–1945), trans. Timothy Nunan (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011).
- The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol (1938), trans. George D. Schwab & Erna Hilfstein (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996).
- The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of Jus Publicum Europaeum (1950), trans. G. L. Ulmen (New York: Telos Press, 2003).
- Land and Sea (1954), trans. Simona Draghici (Washington, D.C.: Plutarch Press, 1997). (See below.)
- Land and Sea: A World-Historical Meditation (1954), trans. Samuel Garrett Zeitlin (New York: Telos Press, 2015).
- Hamlet or Hecuba: The Intrusion of the Time into the Play (1956), trans. David Pan and Jennifer R. Rust (New York: Telos Press, 2009).
- Theory of the Partisan: Intermediate Commentary on the Concept of the Political (1963, 1975), trans. G. L. Ulmen (New York: Telos Press, 2007).
- Political Theology II: The Myth of the Closure of any Political Theology (1970), trans. Michael Hoelzel and Graham Ward (Malden, Mass.: Polity Press, 2008).
- The Tyranny of Values & Other Texts (1979), trans. Samuel Garrett Zeitlin (New York: Telos Press, 2018).
- The Tyranny of Values (1979), trans. Simona Draghici (Washington, D.C.: Plutarch Press, 1996). (See below.)
Schmitt is one of the most significant political theorists for the North American New Right, and one measure of the embryonic state of our movement is that we are just beginning to come to grips with him. Counter-Currents has published a number of works by Schmitt online:
- Land and Sea
- State, Movement, People, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
- “Total Enemy, Total State, and Total War,” an essay from Four Articles, 1931–1938
- “The Way to the Total State,” an essay from Four Articles, 1931–1938
- “Further Development of the Total State in Germany,” an essay from Four Articles, 1931–1938
- “Neutrality According to International Law and National Totality,” an essay from Four Articles, 1931–1938
- “The Tyranny of Values, 1959,” from The Tyranny of Values
- “The Tyranny of Values, 1967,” from The Tyranny of Values (in Romanian)
- “Isolationism and Pan-Interventionism”
- “The Question of Legality” (1950)
We have also published several studies of Schmitt:
- “The Lesson of Carl Schmitt,” by Guillaume Faye and Robert Steuckers
- “Reflections on Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political,” by Greg Johnson (Translations: Estonian, French, Polish)
- “The Political Soldier: Carl Schmitt’s Theory of the Partisan,” by Greg Johnson (Czech translation here)
- “Mircea Eliade, Carl Schmitt, and René Guénon,” by Greg Johnson
- “Notes on Schmitt’s Crisis & Ours,” by Greg Johnson
- “Carl Schmitt on the Tyranny of Values,” by Greg Johnson (in Spanish)
- “Schmitt, Sovereignty, and the Deep State,” by Greg Johnson (Translations: Portuguese, Slovak, Spanish)
- “Schmitt, the Man,” by Nicholas R. Jeelvy
- “Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political,” by Michael O’Meara
- “Notes on Liberal Democracy and its Alternative,” by John Gordon
The following essays make substantial reference to Schmitt:
- “The Lesson of Carl Schmitt,” by Guillaume Faye and Robert Steuckers
- Chad Crowley, “Racial Realities”
- Chad Crowley, “White Awakening”
- Ricardo Duchesne, “Carl Schmitt is Right: Liberal Nations Have Open Borders Because They Have No Concept of the Political”
- Ricardo Duchesne, “The Masculine Preconditions of Individualism, the Indo-Europeans, and the Modern Hegelian Concept of Collective Freedom”
- Julius Evola, “Historiography of the Right”
- Nicholas R. Jeelvy, “When They Fight, They Fight”
- Greg Johnson, “Leo Strauss, the Conservative Revolution, and National Socialism,” Part 1, Part 2
- Greg Johnson, “Lessing’s Ideal Conservative Freemasonry” (Translations: French, Spanish)
- Greg Johnson, “Mark Sedgwick’s Key Thinkers of the Radical Right”
- Greg Johnson, “Superheroes, Sovereignty, and the Deep State” (Czech translation here)
- Greg Johnson, “What Populism Isn’t”
- John Law, “Thoughts on the European New Right,” Part 1, Part 2
- James J. O’Meara, “The Geopolitics of Jason Jorjani”
- J. J. Przybylski, “Only a God Can Save Us Now: Butchering Cultured Meat”
- Edouard Rix, “Geopolitics of Leviathan,” Part 1
- Robert Steuckers, “The Era of Pyropolitics is Coming” (Romanian translation here)
- Lucian Tudor, “The German Conservative Revolution and its Legacy”
Schmitt is also the subject of conversation in some of our podcasts:
- Counter-Currents Radio no. 280, “Carl Schmitt’s The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy,” with Greg Johnson and Nicholas R. Jeelvy
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2 comments
Greg,
What ought to be read first about Schmidtt? What worof Schmidtts ought to be the first tackled?
Thanks.
This looks to be an excellent CC collection. I have neglected Carl Schmitt, though I first heard of him from a special issue of the leftist journal TELOS in the early 90s. It might interest one and all to know that Schmitt is becoming too important to ignore: the excellent (if expensive) Oxford Handbooks series now has a volume devoted to him. Here are the contents:
The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt
Edited by Jens Meierhenrich and Oliver Simons
A Chronology of Carl Schmitt’s Life
A List of Carl Schmitt’s Writings
Part I-Introduction
1 “A Fanatic of Order in an Epoch of Confusing Turmoil”: The Political, Legal, and Cultural Thought of Carl Schmitt
Jens Meierhenrich and Oliver Simons
Part II-the lives of Carl Schmitt
2 “Catholic Layman of German Nationality and Citizenship”? Carl Schmitt and the Religiosity of Life
Reinhard Mehring
3 The “True Enemy”: Antisemitism in Carl Schmitt’s Life and Thought
Raphael Gross
4 Schmitt’s Diaries
Joseph W. Bendersky
5 Carl Schmitt in Plettenberg
Christian Linder
Part III-the political thought of Carl schmitt
6 Fearing the Disorder of Things: The Development of Carl Schmitt’s Institutional Theory, 1919-1938
Jens Meierhenrich
7 Carl Schmitt’s Political Theory of Dictatorship
Duncan Kelly
8 The Political Theology of Carl Schmitt
Miguel Vatter
9 Teaching in Vain: Carl Schmitt, Thomas Hobbes, and the Theory of the Sovereign State
John P. McCormick
10 Concepts of the Political in Twentieth-Century European Thought
Samuel Moyn
11 Carl Schmitt’s Defense of Democracy
William Rasch
12 Same/Other versus Friend/Enemy: Levinas contra Schmitt
Aryeh Botwinick
13 Carl Schmitt’s Concepts of War: A Categorical Failure
Benno Teschke
14 Carl Schmitt’s Concept of History
Matthias Lievens
15 What’s “Left” in Schmitt? From Aversion to Appropriation in Contemporary Political Theory
Matthew G. Specter
Part IV-the legal thought of Carl Schmitt
16 A Jurist Confronting Himself: Carl Schmitt’s Jurisprudential Thought
Giorgio Agamben
17 Carl Schmitt and the Weimar Constitution
Ulrich K. Preuss
18 The Concept of the Rule-of-Law State in Carl Schmitt’s Verfassungslehre
David Dyzenhaus
19 Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt: Growing Discord, Culminating in the “Guardian” Controversy of 1931
Stanley L. Paulson
20 States of Emergency
William E. Scheuerman
21 Politonomy
Martin Loughlin
22 Carl Schmitt and International Law
Martti Koskenniemi
23 Demystifying Schmitt
Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule
Part V-the Cultural Thought of Carl Schmitt
24 Carl Schmitt and Modernity
Friedrich Balke
25 Is “the Political” a Romantic Concept? Novalis’s Faith and Love or The King and Queen with Reference to Carl Schmitt
Rüdiger Campe
26 Walter Benjamin’s Esteem for Carl Schmitt
Horst Bredekamp
27 Legitimacy of the Modern Age? Hans Blumenberg and Carl Schmitt
Alexander Schmitz
28 Tragedy as Exception in Carl Schmitt’s Hamlet or Hecuba
David Pan
29 At the Limits of Rhetoric: Authority, Commonplace, and the Role of Literature in Carl Schmitt
Johannes Türk
30 Carl Schmitt’s Spatial Rhetoric
Oliver Simons
Bibliography
Index
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