Jeremy Rabkin has captured a good sense of Carl Schmitt in his Liberty Forum essay. Like him, I agree that it is difficult to grapple with the author’s exceedingly abstract prose. But there is a certain urgency that requires us to try, if only because, as Rabkin has also shown, the allure is proving all too powerful for a certain set of intellectuals for whom Schmitt, precisely because of the taboo quality of his oeuvre, projects an “enduring fascination.” As much then as we might like to ignore him, that won’t do. We have to unpack the arguments and their…
In response to: Springtime for Schmitt
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At the outset of his provocative Liberty Forum essay, Jeremy Rabkin notes that the most remarkable thing about Carl Schmitt is “his appeal to contemporary academics in the English-speaking world.” Schmitt’s literary afterlife and the current level of interest in his works are, indeed, surprising given his infamous political trajectory and his ambiguous and unconvincing…
Encountering Carl Schmitt for the first time is a shock, especially if one is raised to respect what Jeremy Rabkin, in his Liberty Forum essay, correctly describes as the liberal pieties. But if one cares about liberalism it would be a mistake to write Schmitt off as a Nazi, a nihilist, or a promoter of…
I am grateful to the other contributors to this forum for enlarging our discussion of Carl Schmitt. They have not persuaded me to temper my own conclusion: Schmitt offered a great deal of poison, which is not rendered more palatable by his large admixtures of well-aged snake oil. Perhaps the best way to explain my obduracy…
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