The Challenge of the Exception: An Introduction to the Political Ideas of Carl Schmitt Between 1921 and 1936; Second Edition, With a New Introduction (Contributions in Political Science)

Politics & Social Sciences

Schwab, George

Politics & Government

Praeger

Format Hardcover Subject Literary Collections Publisher Greenwood Publishing Group Incorporated

United States Foreign Policy at the Crossroads (Contributions in Political Science)

The Challenge of the Exception is the key that unlocked the ideas of Carl Schmitt, a leading political theorist and jurist who influenced the thoughts of, among others, Hannah Arendt, Carl Joachim Friedrich, Otto Kirchheimer, Hans Morgenthau, Franz Neumann, and Leo Strauss. Professor Schwab clearly articulates Schmitt's key concepts and relates their centrality to politics and the state, to the political theory of liberalism, democracy and authoritarianism, and to international relations. When Schwab treats Schmitt's interpretations of constitutional questions, for example, he shows how political theory in Germany is inextricably linked with constitutional law, legal theory, and the country's history.
Not content to merely deal with Schmitt's profound contributions to twentieth-century thought, Schwab devotes considerable space to the unconscionable compromises that he made with the Third Reich. This, however, failed to help him become the political and legal theorist of Hitler's Germany. Schwab shows how the new Schmitt was suspect from the beginning and, by 1936, Schmitt the hunter had become Schmitt the hunted. Schwab's presentation of the multifaceted Carl Schmitt exposes the reader to a truly interdisciplinary excursion into the humanities and social sciences.

History

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 and students of modern political philosophy, legal theory, and the history of Weimar and Nazi Germany.

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Philosophy

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Books by Schwab, George

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Schwab, George. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Challenge of the Exception: An Introduction to the Political Ideas of Carl Schmitt Between 1921 and 1936; Second Edition, With a New Introduction (Contributions in Political Science)

United States Foreign Policy at the Crossroads (Contributions in Political Science)

The Challenge of the Exception: An Introduction to the Political Ideas of Carl Schmitt Between 1921 and 1936; Second Edition, With a New Introduction (Contributions in Political Science)

The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol (Contributions in Political Science) (Global Perspectives in History and Politics)