Political Theology

Political Theology is Carl Schmitt’s 1922 decisionist account of sovereignty. It matters here because it names the state-of-exception problem: legal order depends on a power that can decide when normal legality is suspended.

Text Status

The raw source is extracted from a Platypus-hosted PDF of the George Schwab translation in the University of Chicago Press edition. It includes Tracy Strong’s foreword, Schwab’s introduction, the 1934 preface, four chapters, and index.

Argument Map

Schmitt’s famous formula places sovereignty at the boundary of normal legal order. The sovereign is not merely the administrator of rules; the sovereign decides when the situation is exceptional and what must be done to restore or preserve order.

The book also argues that major concepts in modern state theory are secularized theological concepts. That claim should be treated as Schmitt’s conceptual genealogy, not as a libertarian argument.

Place in This Wiki

State of Exception gives the state-as-parasite thesis a non-libertarian way to discuss emergency power. The ordinary state presents itself as bound by law, but Schmitt’s question is what happens when the same order claims authority to suspend normal constraints.

See Also

• Carl Schmitt - author reference
• State of Exception - central concept from this work
• The Concept of the Political - sibling Schmitt work
• Enemy Distinction - sibling Schmitt concept
• Critiques of Sovereignty and Power - topic collecting non-libertarian power critiques
• State Power and Intervention - libertarian state-power concept sharpened by exception theory
• The State as Parasite: A Thesis - thesis briefly updated with the exception problem

Sources

• Political Theology - extracted Schwab translation text