Abstract

Although Schmitt was not a professional historian, his last major work, Der Norms der Erde (1950), generalizes about the last tour centuries of European and world history. While his essay on The Concept of the Political was an attempt “to frame theoretically an immense problem,” Der Nomos der Erde traces the historical transformation ot the political. Both are addressed “to specialists on the Jus Publicum Europaeum,” both are “strongly didactic.” As in “The Plight of European Jurisprudence,” Schmitt's concern in Der Nomos der Erde is with “the existential question of jurisprudence itself, which today will be eroded between theology and technology if the basis of its present character is not maintained in a way that is both conceptually clear and historically correct.”