Carl Schmitt

Carl Schmitt enters this wiki as a non-libertarian, anti-liberal theorist of sovereignty and political decision. His value here is diagnostic: he exposes exception and friend/enemy conflict as dimensions of state power that liberal legal language often tries to neutralize.

Biographical Frame

Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) was a German jurist and political theorist associated with decisionism, sovereignty, political theology, and the friend/enemy distinction. His Nazi Party membership and role in legitimating authoritarian and anti-liberal politics make him a dangerous source rather than a sympathetic authority.

Works Present Here

Political Theology supplies the sovereign-decision formula and the state-of-exception problem.

The Concept of the Political supplies the friend/enemy distinction and the critique of liberal depoliticization.

Place in This Wiki

Schmitt is not a libertarian and should not be normalized as one. His critique of liberal neutrality converges with the wiki only at the level of suspicion toward legal and administrative disguises of power. His remedies and commitments point in a different and often authoritarian direction.

See Also

• Political Theology - Schmitt work on sovereignty and exception
• The Concept of the Political - Schmitt work on friend/enemy distinction
• State of Exception - concept from Political Theology
• Enemy Distinction - concept from The Concept of the Political
• Critiques of Sovereignty and Power - topic collecting Schmitt and Foucault as non-libertarian state-power critiques
• Michel Foucault - another non-libertarian power critic added with this batch
• The State as Parasite: A Thesis - thesis briefly updated with exception language

Sources

• Political Theology - Schwab translation, University of Chicago Press edition extraction
• The Concept of the Political - Schwab translation, University of Chicago Press expanded edition extraction