Order, the ocean, and Satan

Schmitt’s Hobbes, National Socialism, and the enigmatic ambiguity of friend and foe

Dados Bibliográficos

ID12609479
AutoresJohan Tralau (Uppsala University, autor correspondente)
Ano2010
Volume13
Fascículo2-3
Páginas435-452
Data de publicação2010-05-28
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1369-8230 • E-ISSN: 1743-8772
EditoraTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13698231003787851
OpenAlexW2005421469
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas18

Schmitt’s book on Hobbes’s Leviathan, published in 1938, has attracted much interest among scholars. Yet few have addressed the enigmatic vagueness and ambiguity of his interpretation of the monster Leviathan. In this essay it is argued that there was a political reason for this ambiguity. Schmitt used the image of the Leviathan as a kind of mirror of his relationship to the National Socialist state; in so doing, he made the image as ambiguous as possible. After his fall from public recognition, and after the demise of traditional statehood, he could no longer side with Hitler’s state; but he could not reject it completely either. Schmitt’s interpretation of Hobbes’s Leviathan, then, served as an arcane substitute for a discussion of National Socialism that was no longer possible

Ambiguity · Demise · Interpretation (philosophy · LEVIATHAN (cipher · Political science · Politics · State (computer science · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought

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