Synopses & Reviews
Carl Schmitt, the Thomas Hobbes of the 20th century, joined the Nazi party in 1933 and aspired to become the crown jurist and political philosopher of the Third Reich. But, because of his anti-Nazi past, friendships with Jews and Marxists, and contempt for biological racism, Schmitt was severely attacked by the SS in 1936 and warned to stop posing as a National Socialist thinker. Fearful of what this might imply in the rapidly evolving one-party SS state, Schmitt began to distance himself from his National Socialist adventure--even tempered his recently acquired anti-Semitism--and carefully started to reconnect himself in 1937 and 1938 to the pre-1933 Schmitt. Writing in 1938 under the pretext of studying the significance of the symbol of the leviathan in Hobbes's theory of state, Schmitt alluded to the demise of the Third Reich because of its rapid transformation into a totalitarian polity. As Schmitt recognized, in this state, the Hobbesian protection-obedience axiom was being heavily tilted in favor of obedience at the expense of protection. When this occurred, Schmitt observed, 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. Schmitt survived the fall of the Third Reich, and in the postwar years came to be recognized as one of the most significant political philosophers of the century. This is the first translation available of this important work which will be of great value to scholars andstudents of modern political philosophy, legal theory, and the history of Weimar and Nazi Germany.
Review
“Carl Schmitt is surely the most controversial German political and legal philosopher of this century. . . . We deal with Schmitt, against all odds, because history stubbornly persists in proving many of his tenets right.”
Review
“[A] significant contribution. . . . The relation between Hobbes and Schmitt is one of the most important questions surrounding Schmitt: it includes a distinct, though occasionally vacillating, personal identification as well as an association of ideas.”
Review
“The English translation of this work is truthful to the German original and permits the critical reader to understand Schmitt . . . the way he understood himself.”
Review
"The English translation of this work is truthful to the German original and permits the critical reader to understand Schmitt . . . the way he understood himself."-Mark Lilla, New York Review of Books
Synopsis
One of the most significant political philosophers of the twentieth century, Carl Schmitt is a deeply controversial figure who has been labeled both Nazi sympathizer and modern-day Thomas Hobbes. First published in 1938,
The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes used the Enlightenment philosophers enduring symbol of the protective Leviathan to address the nature of modern statehood. A work that predicted the demise of the Third Reich and that still holds relevance in todays security-obsessed society, this volume will be essential reading for students and scholars of political science.
“Carl Schmitt is surely the most controversial German political and legal philosopher of this century. . . . We deal with Schmitt, against all odds, because history stubbornly persists in proving many of his tenets right.”—Perspectives on Political Science
“[A] significant contribution. . . . The relation between Hobbes and Schmitt is one of the most important questions surrounding Schmitt: it includes a distinct, though occasionally vacillating, personal identification as well as an association of ideas.”—Telos
About the Author
Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) was a legal and political theorist and constitutional lawyer. He is the author of several books published by the University of Chicago Press, including
The Concept of the Political and
Political Theology.
George D. Schwab is the president of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, which he cofounded in 1974, and professor emeritus of history at the City University of New York (Graduate Center and City College). Erna Hilfstein (1925-2003) was a science historian and the author of Sarowolski's Biographies of Copernicus.
Table of Contents
Foreword, 2008
Carl Schmitt and Thomas Hobbes: Myth and Politics
Tracy B. Strong
Foreword, 1996
George Schwab
Introduction
George Schwab
Translators Note
George Schwab and Erna Hilfstein
Introduction
Carl Schmitt
Overview of Chapters I through VII
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Appendix: The State as a Mechanism in Hobbes and Descartes
Index