Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Kant

Sovereignty and International Law

Bibliographic Data

ID6350212
AuthorsSeyla Benhabib (0000-0002-7318-028X, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume40
Issue6
Pages688-713
Publication date2012-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0090-5917 • E-ISSN: 1552-7476
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0090591712460651
OpenAlexW2160499242
LanguageEN
Citations received9

Carl Schmitt’s critique of liberalism has gained increasing influence in the last few decades. This article focuses on Schmitt’s analysis of international law in The Nomos of the Earth, in order to uncover the reasons for his appeal as a critic not only of liberalism but of American hegemonic aspirations as well. Schmitt saw the international legal order that developed after World War I, and particularly the “criminalization of aggressive war,” as a smokescreen to hide U.S. aspirations to world dominance. By focusing on Schmitt’s critique of Kant’s concept of the “unjust enemy,” the article shows the limits of Schmitt’s views and concludes that Schmitt, as well as left critics of U.S. hegemony, misconstrue the relation between international law and democratic sovereignty as a model of top–down domination. As conflictual as the relationship between international norms and democratic sovereignty can be at times, this needs to be interpreted as one of mediation and not domination

Democracy · Hegemony · International law · Law and economics · Liberalism · Political science · Politics · Principle of legality · Sociology · Sovereignty · Law · Philosophy · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought · War, Ethics, and Justification

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