Carl Schmitt was arrested by the Russians in Berlin in April 1945, interrogated and released. In September 1945 he was arrested by the Americans and held in internment camps until March 1947, when he was brought to Nuremberg as a potential defendant in the War Crimes Trials. Although he was released in a matter of weeks without being charged, this episode has created further suspicion about Schmitt's role in the Third Reich. Without oversimplifying the complexity of the question, since everything (...) about this enigmatic jurist and political thinker defies simple or even concise explanation, the decision to interrogate him at Nuremberg was largely due to the infamous reputation he had acquired abroad. (shrink)

Covering the theories of, among others, Derrida, Lefort and Laclau, this volume opens up space to the political (polemicisation). Chapters cover themes such as social structure, ethical arguments, and political organisation.

I have experienced the tribulations of fate.Victories and defeats, revolutions and restorations.Inflations and deflations, bombings,Defamations, broken regimes and broken pipes,Hunger and cold, internment and solitary confinement.Through it all I have passed,And through me it all has passed.I am acquainted with the abundant varieties of terror,The terror from above and the terror from below,Terror on the land and terror from the air,Terror legal and extra-legal,Brown, red and checkered terror,And worst of all, the terror none dares to name.I am acquainted with them (...) all and know their grip. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt's work on the international order during the Second World War has been comparatively neglected. There is, however, a strong connection between Schmitt's understanding of political concepts and the nature of the political and his writings on the international order. In order to understand those writings and the contemporary response that they provoked it is necessary to set them in the context of the dilemmas of Nazi occupation policy. This article concludes that Schmitt failed to resolve those dilemmas but (...) also that his attempt to solve them reveals the deficiency of Schmitt's understanding of the nature of political concepts. (shrink)

Because of its characterization of National Socialism as a form of 'totalitarian monopoly capitalism', many critics of Franz Neumann's pioneering book of 1942, Behemoth, have rejected what they see as a crude Marxist analysis of the subject. This not only does little justice to the richness of Neumann's book, it also distorts its central focus. By contrast, this paper suggests that a proper appreciation of the impact of Max Weber in general, and Carl Schmitt in particular, on the development of (...) Neumann's thought permits a more detailed assessment of both the merits and the shortcomings of his most famous analysis. (shrink)

Here, I have tried to show that a second look at the young Schmitt's legal thinking does bring clarity to the ‘confused ’ and ‘polemical ’ debate about his theoretical and political legacy. Pace Schmitt, it helps demonstrate that Schmitt's embrace of German fascism was anticipated by key elements of his thinking about the dilemma of legal indeterminacy -- well before Hitler's rise to power.