BOOK REVIEW
Reflections on Carl Schmitt’s ‘Concept of the Political’
The legacy of Carl Schmitt, the prophet of the global right and an inspiration model for German fascism in the 1930s, is deeply contested. Still, Schmitt remains as relevant today as he was a century ago.
Often labeled as a political theologian, a leading German political thinker of the Interwar Period (the 1920s-1930s), and a perceived ideologue of the Third Reich, Carl Schmitt upended the way “politics” was considered from a philosophical perspective. Tackling the concept of the political, Schmitt suggested in his infamous article, has nothing to do with normativity.
Before discussing his political philosophy or theology in detail, it must be borne in mind that Schmitt’s worldview was deeply affected by WWI and how the Allied Powers dictated the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty on the defeated Axial Powers, which also included Schmitt’s Germany. Both the U.K. and France singled out Germany as the chief aggressor whose actions they claimed sparked the Great War. The heavy reparations imposed on Berlin, the demilitarization of the Rhineland, and limits on the number of German troops that could be deployed during peacetime, combined with the…
