Abstract

This paper deals with the intellectual relationship between Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt. It takes as starting point Benjamin’s famous letter to Schmitt on The Origin of German Tragic Drama as well as Benjamin`s mentions of Schmitt’s Political Theology in his work on the Baroque. Nevertheless, I prove the importance of Schmitt’s book on Dictatorship for Benjamin’s portrayal of sovereignty during the Baroque period and therefore its character of hidden reference for the Jewish thinker. The last section is devoted to Schmitt`s public and private reading of The Origin of German Tragic Drama and to his critique of Benjamin’s Habilitationsschrift, namely his incapacity of understanding the difference between Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Hobbes’s Leviathan.