Carl Schmitt

Bibliographic Data

ID23214512
AuthorsJacob Taubes, Keith Tribe (0000-0003-0726-0756), Mike Grimshaw (0000-0001-8829-061X)
Year2013
Pages1-18
Publication date2013-05-07
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueTo Carl Schmitt (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherColumbia University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.7312/columbia/9780231154123.003.0001
OpenAlexW4241720067
ISBN9780231154123
LanguageEN
Citations received13

In the lecture presented in this chapter, Jacob Taubes attests to his respect for Carl Schmitt, even though as a “conscious Jew” he belongs among those whom Schmitt has marked as the “enemy.” At the outset, Taubes claims that to truly understand Schmitt one should not turn to his “major, clamorous texts” but rather should read his “broken confessions,” which were published as Ex Captivitate Salus in 1950. Taubes argues that Schmitt's “enemy,” defined from the perspective of a legal theorist, offers something that a theological definition does not. According to Taubes, the theological enemy is usually defined as one to be destroyed. The alternative possibility offered by the nontheological, legal enemy is that such an enemy must still be opposed, but not necessarily destroyed. Taubes also comments on Schmitt's engagement with and within National Socialism, as well as his treatise Political Theology, suggesting that Schmitt can be read and understood both as a jurist and as an apocalyptic prophet of the counterrevolution. For Taubes, the drive of political theology is that of “an apocalypse of the counterrevolution”.

Adversary · Epistemology · Nazism · Political philosophy · Political science · Political theology · Politics · Humanities and Social Sciences · Law · Philosophy · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought

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