Law as Politics

Law as Politics

Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism

  • Author: Dyzenhaus, David
  • Publisher: Duke University Press
  • ISBN: 9780822322276
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780822377849
  • Place of publication:  Durham , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 1998
  • Month: December
  • Pages: 336
  • DDC: 320/.092
  • Language: English
While antiliberal legal theorist Carl Schmitt has long been considered by Europeans to be one of this century’s most significant political philosophers, recent challenges to the fundamental values of liberal democracies have made Schmitt’s writings an unavoidable subject of debate in North America as well. In an effort to advance our understanding not only of Schmitt but of current problems of liberal democracy, David Dyzenhaus presents translations of classic German essays on Schmitt alongside more recent writings by distinguished political theorists and jurists. Neither a defense of nor an attack on Schmitt, Law as Politics offers the first balanced response to his powerful critique of liberalism.
One of the major players in the 1920s debates, an outspoken critic of the Versailles Treaty and the Weimar Constitution, and a member of the Nazi party who provided juridical respectability to Hitler’s policies, Schmitt contended that people are a polity only to the extent that they share common enemies. He saw the liberal notion of a peaceful world of universal citizens as a sheer impossibility and attributed the problems of Weimar to liberalism and its inability to cope with pluralism and political conflict. In the decade since his death, Schmitt’s writings have been taken up by both the right and the left and scholars differ greatly in their evaluation of Schmitt’s ideas. Law as Politics thematically organizes in one volume the varying engagements and confrontations with Schmitt’s work and allows scholars to acknowledge—and therefore be in a better position to negotiate—an important paradox inscribed in the very nature of liberal democracy.
Law as Politics will interest political philosophers, legal theorists, historians, and anyone interested in Schmitt’s relevance to current discussions of liberalism.

Contributors. Heiner Bielefeldt, Ronald Beiner, Ernst-Wolfgang Bockenforde, Renato Cristi, David Dyzenhaus, Robert Howse, Ellen Kennedy, Dominique Leydet, Ingeborg Maus, John P. McCormick, Reinhard Mehring, Chantal Mouffe, William E. Scheuerman, Jeffrey Seitzer

  • Contents
  • Foreword - Ronald Beiner
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction: Why Carl Schmitt? - David Dyzenhaus
  • Part I. Political Theory and Law
    • Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism: Systematic Reconstruction and Countercriticism - Heiner Bielefeldt
    • The Concept of the Political: A Key to Understanding Carl Schmitt's Constitutional Theory - Ernst-Wolfgang Bockenforde
    • From Legitimacy to Dictatorship-and Back Again: Leo Strauss's Critique of the Anti-Liberalism of Carl Schmitt - Robert Howse
    • Hostis Not Inimicus: Toward a Theory of the Public in the Work of Carl Schmitt - Ellen Kennedy
    • Pluralism and the Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy - Dominique Leydet
    • Liberalism as a "Metaphysical System": The Methodological Structure of Carl Schmitt's Critique of Political Rationalism - Reinhard Mehring
    • Carl Schmitt and the Paradox of Liberal Democracy - Chantal Mouffe
  • Part II. Legal Theory And Politics
    • Carl Schmitt on Sovereignty and Constituent Power - Renato Cristi
    • The 1933 "Break" in Carl Schmitt's Theory - Ingeborg Maus
    • The Dilemmas of Dictatorship: Carl Schmitt and Constitutional Emergency Powers - John P. McCormick
    • Revolutions and Constitutions: Hannah Arendt's Challenge to Carl Schmitt - William E. Scheuerman
    • Carl Schmitt's Internal Critique of Liberal Constitutionalism: Verfassungslehre as a Response to the Weimar State Crisis - Jeffrey Seitzer
  • Notes on Contributors
  • Index

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