In this work, legal theorist and political philosopher Carl Schmitt argues that liberalism's basis in individual rights cannot provide a reasonable justification for sacrificing oneself for the state.

In this, his most influential work, legal theorist and political philosopher Carl Schmitt argues that liberalism’s basis in individual rights cannot provide a reasonable justification for sacrificing oneself for the state—a critique as cogent today as when it first appeared. George Schwab’s introduction to his translation of the 1932 German edition highlights Schmitt’s intellectual journey through the turbulent period of German history leading to the Hitlerian one-party state. In addition to analysis by Leo Strauss and a foreword by Tracy (...) B. Strong placing Schmitt’s work into contemporary context, this expanded edition also includes a translation of Schmitt’s 1929 lecture “The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations,” which the author himself added to the 1932 edition of the book. An essential update on a modern classic, The Concept of the Political, Expanded Edition belongs on the bookshelf of anyone interested in political theory or philosophy. (shrink)

In this, his most influential work, legal theorist and political philosopher Carl Schmitt argues that liberalism's basis in individual rights cannot provide a reasonable justification for sacrificing oneself for the state. This edition of the 1932 work includes the translator's introduction which highlights Schmitt's intellectual journey through the turbulent period of German history leading to the Hitlerian one-party state. It also includes Leo Strauss's analysis of Schmitt's thesis and a foreword by Tracy B. Strong placing Schmitt's work into contemporary (...) context. (shrink)

In this, his most influential work, legal theorist and political philosopher Carl Schmitt argues that liberalism’s basis in individual rights cannot provide a reasonable justification for sacrificing oneself for the state—a critique as cogent today as when it first appeared. George Schwab’s introduction to his translation of the 1932 German edition highlights Schmitt’s intellectual journey through the turbulent period of German history leading to the Hitlerian one-party state. In addition to analysis by Leo Strauss and a foreword by Tracy (...) B. Strong placing Schmitt’s work into contemporary context, this expanded edition also includes a translation of Schmitt’s 1929 lecture “The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations,” which the author himself added to the 1932 edition of the book. An essential update on a modern classic, _The Concept of the Political, Expanded Edition_ belongs on the bookshelf of anyone interested in political theory or philosophy. (shrink)

This volume in the Political Theory and Contemporary Philosophy series examines one of the most important topics in contemporary political theory: how to conceptualize the relationship between the one and the many. The essays discuss how to reconcile multiple ontologies without subsuming them to a totalitarian unity. While one school of thought (Deleuze, Negri) seeks to create a new ontology based on the many instead of the one, (which, politically, is close to anarchy), another proposes to understand the (...) "one" as the "ultra-one" of the event (Badiou). In this groundbreaking work, leading thinkers explore these debates and offer alternative concepts. Building on Jean-Luc Nancy's essay who proposes an ontology of "singular plurality," contributors aim to synthesize the one and the many and suggest different ways of forming collectives, beyond the dominant representative political forms. An original and challenging work, Politics of the One addresses new possible ways of bringing people together, integrating philosophy with theoretical and practical problems of politics. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: -- Introduction to the OneThe Concept of One: From Philosophy to Politics -Artemy Magun Part I. Metaphysics of the One and the Multiple1. More than One -Jean Luc Nancy 2. Condivision, or Towards a Non- communitarian Concatenation of Singularities -Gerald Raunig 3. Unity and Solitude -Artemy Magun 4. The Fragility of the One -Maria Calvacante 5. The One: Construction or Event? For a Politics of Becoming -Boyan Mancher Part II. 20th-Century Thinkers of Unity and Multiplicity (...) 6. Truth and Infinity in Badiou and Heidegger -Alexey Chernyakov 7. Complicated Presence: The Unity of Being in Parmenides and Heidegger -Jussi Bachman 8. The Universal, the General, the Multiple in the Perspective of a Political Utopia: Deleuze and Badiou on the Event -Keti Chukhrov 9. Humanity, Unity and the One -Nina Power Part III. Unity and Multiplicity in Nature 10. Elemental Nature as the Ultimate Common Ground of the World Community -Susanna Lindberg 11. Vegetative Democracy, or the Post-metaphysics of Plants -Michael Marder Part IV. Unity in Action: Forms of Political Consolidation in the Case of Contemporary Russia12. Collectivity in Post-revolutionary Russia -Igor Tchubarov13. Street University: Production of Collective Time and Public Space -Pavel Arsenyev 14. Fighting Together: the Problem of Solidarity -Carine Cle;ment Part V. E Pluribus Unum: Res Publica and Community 5. How Does One Constitute the One? Theology of the Icon, Theory of Non-representative Art and of Non-representative Politics -Oleg Kharkhodin 12. Drawing Lots in Politics: Unity and Totality -Yves Sintomer. (shrink)

“From the concept of the political to the event of politics”: as always, the title is a promise and a contract. In keeping with this titular undertaking, which outlines a certain itinerary or trajectory, the reader might expect to be guided from the abstract sterility of the concept to the concrete level of political events as they unfold in history, from a higher to a lower level of analysis, from the general to the singular, from the (...) speculative (in the Hegelian sense) to the positively demonstrable.1 Right from the outset, let us be clear on the terms of the contract…. (shrink)

In this paper, I present the beginnings of a resemblance theory of representation. I start by surveying the contemporary philosophical debate surrounding musical representation and reveal that its main interlocutors share a conception of artistic representation as a mode of meaningful communication. I then show how conceiving of artistic representation in this way severely limits music’s possibilities as a medium for representation. Next, I propose an alternative conception of representation that, despite its widespread acceptance outside of the philosophy of art, (...) has been largely denigrated within it: namely, that representation fundamentally depends on structural resemblance. Finally, I demonstrate how conceiving of artistic representation as grounded upon structural resemblances, rather than as a mode of meaningful communication, provides us with a more accurate picture of both (a) how music represents and (b) how we perceive and appreciate musical representations. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the ways in which human bodies, payback, and comestibility become inescapably entangled in cultures in which honor is the prevailing virtue. Shakespeare was deeply sensitive to the social and psychological processes through which these concepts become entwined when honor is at stake—to the ways in which, as a means of corrective response, men who transgress a code of honor can be rightly reduced to their bodies, similar to how those who are not allowed to be (...) full participants in an honor culture (most particularly women) always already are. I begin by examining Shakespeare’s earliest depictions of honor cultures in Titus Andronicus and The Rape of Lucrece, and then briefly discusses how the ideas they trade in are further developed and complicated later in his career, focusing specifically on Othello. -/- . (shrink)

The concept of the public realm is the most fundamental of all political concepts because it is only the shared relationship it constitutes between rulers and ruled that makes government more than mere domination. It is therefore not surprising that the question of how the public realm is to be defined has been a central concern of political thinkers from Plato to more recent philosophers like Hannah Arendt. Although the answers they have given have of course varied (...) greatly, what is relevant in the present context is simply the assumption, for well over two thousand years, that there could be an answer. What is novel today, by contrast, is the increasing realization that political theory cannot in principle provide philosophical guidance of any kind about how the public realm can be finally and definitively identified, in a way which would clearly distinguish it from the private realm and thereby enable an incontestable limit to be set to the proper scope of politics and of state action. The present essay considers how some leading contemporary political thinkers have responded to this situation. (shrink)

This book critically investigates the notion of democracy without demos by unravelling the link that modern history has established between the concepts of democracy and the sovereignty of the people. This task is imposed on us by globalization. The individualization of the subject of rights is the result of the destruction of regimes of special rights of ancient societies by the centralizing action of a territorial power. This individualization, because it implies equality, has created a new form of political (...) subjectivity that has been the driving force of the democratization of democracies during the 19th and 20th centuries. Democracy and subjective rights discusses how asserting itself as the only guarantor of rights, the modern state has also nationalized citizenship. However, the author argues, the legal and judicial monopoly of the nation-state is weakened today by the multiplication and heterogeneity of the powers on which the rights of individuals depend. This situation forces us to denationalize citizenship without sacrificing, however, the specific form of political subjectivity that the individualization of rights has made possible. (shrink)

This essay investigates the tradition of interwar German-Jewish political theology associated most of all with Leo Strauss and Franz Rosenzweig. It is suggested here that the Straussian notion of an eternal conflict between politics and religions may be derived, in part, from Rosenzweig's image of the depoliticized Jewish community. Furthermore, this "concept of the apolitical" represents something like a modernist reprisal of Stoic ideals, most especially the ancient ideal of ataraxia, or "freedom from disturbance." This apoliticism is distinguished (...) most of all by two interlocking principles; first, that politics is mere disorder if not a return to the state of unredeemed nature; and second, that religious peace must accordingly be found elsewhere than politics. This argument for the near-incommensurability of politics and religion represents the special if not altogether unique contribution of Weimar German-Jewish intellectuals to the enduring tradition of political theology. It is therefore worth posing the following question: Why does Hannah Arendt's political theory appear to bear almost no trace whatsoever of this political-theological tradition? By what logic did Arendt dissent from the political-theological principles that so captivated her German-Jewish contemporaries? And which tradition should command our allegiance today? (shrink)

Malcolm Bull offers an entirely original perspective on political agency for the twenty-first century in which uncertainty and idleness are limned with utopian promise.

This essay investigates the tradition of interwar German-Jewish political theology associated most of all with Leo Strauss and Franz Rosenzweig. It is suggested here that the Straussian notion of an eternal conflict between politics and religions may be derived, in part, from Rosenzweig's image of the depoliticized Jewish community. Furthermore, this "concept of the apolitical" represents something like a modernist reprisal of Stoic ideals, most especially the ancient ideal of ataraxia, or "freedom from disturbance." This apoliticism is distinguished (...) most of all by two interlocking principles; first, that politics is mere disorder if not a return to the state of unredeemed nature; and second, that religious peace must accordingly be found elsewhere than politics. This argument for the near-incommensurability of politics and religion represents the special if not altogether unique contribution of Weimar German-Jewish intellectuals to the enduring tradition of political theology. It is therefore worth posing the following question: Why does Hannah Arendt's political theory appear to bear almost no trace whatsoever of this political-theological tradition? By what logic did Arendt dissent from the political-theological principles that so captivated her German-Jewish contemporaries? And which tradition should command our allegiance today? (shrink)

The purpose of the study is the hermeneutic reconstruction of the political in the original concepts of K. Schmitt and H. Arendt. The scientific novelty lies in the analysis of the approaches of K. Schmitt and H. Arendt to the identification of the essence of the political. As a result, the differences between the theoretical approaches of K. Schmitt and H. Arendt were revealed, which correlate with each other according to the principle of complementarity. According to K. Schmitt, (...) in the era of modernity there is a monopolization of politics by the state, which acquires an external character and is implemented in the space of international relations. H. Arendt considers the political as the quintessence of active life, which is carried out by free people, first in the space of the ancient polis, and in later times – in other formats of publicity. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article offers an unconventional interpretation of Carl Schmitt’s conception of the political. It first identifies two alternative readings – an ‘exceptionalist’ and a ‘concretist’ one – to make the claim that in the late 1920s he laid the foundations for a theory of politics that overcame the flaws of his theory of exception. It then explains why the concretist reading provides an insightful key to Schmitt’s take on the relationship between politics and law as a whole. Despite this, (...) the chief aim of this analysis is not interpretive. Rather, the article claims that such a paradigm change was related to Schmitt’s pondering on the elements that were menacing to draw the experience of modern statehood to an end even more seriously than any upheavals and revolutions. For he came to the conclusion that the mere claim to political self-sufficiency on the part on non-state social entities was able to defy the idea of the state as the political entity par excellence. While these reflections urged Schmitt to reformulate many features of his conception of the political, the article contends that this particular juncture in his production sheds light on a crucial feature of contemporary politics. (shrink)

In the past few decades, much political-philosophical reflection has been dedicated to the realm of "the political." Many of the key figures in contemporary political theory—Jacques Rancière, Alain Badiou, Reinhart Koselleck, Giorgio Agamben, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj i ek, among others—have dedicated themselves to explaining power relations, but in many cases they take the concept of the political for granted, as if it were a given, an eternal essence. In An Archaeology of the Political, (...) Elías José Palti argues that the dimension of reality known as the political is not a natural, transhistorical entity. Instead, he claims that the horizon of the political arose in the context of a series of changes that affirmed the power of absolute monarchies in seventeenth-century Europe and was successively reconfigured from this period up to the present. Palti traces this series of redefinitions accompanying alterations in regimes of power, thus describing a genealogy of the concept of the political. Perhaps most important, An Archaeology of the Political brings to theoretical discussions a sound historical perspective, illuminating the complex influences of both theology and secularization on our understanding of the political in the contemporary world. (shrink)

Recently, some have read Turkish political developments from the perspective of Carl Schmitt’s political theory. This paper aims to modify aspects of these readings and offer in response a Schmitti...

This volume collects thirteen original essays that address the concept of will in Classical German Philosophy from Kant to Schopenhauer. During this short, but prolific period, the concept of will underwent various transformations. While Kant identifies the will with pure practical reason, Fichte introduces, in the wake of Reinhold, an originally biological concept of drive into his ethical theory, thereby expanding on the Kantian notion of the will. Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer take a step further and conceive (...) the will either as a primal being, as a socio-ontological entity, or as a blindly striving, non-rational force. Thus, the history of the will is marked by a complex set of tensions between rational and non-rational aspects of practical volition. The book outlines these transformations from a historical and systematic point of view. It offers an overview of the most important theories of the will by the major figures of Classical German Philosophy, but also includes interpretations of conceptions developed by lesser-studied philosophers such as Maimon, Jacobi, Reinhold, and Bouterwek. (shrink)

Democracy has been a flawed hegemony since the fall of communism. Its flexibility, its commitment to equality of representation, and its recognition of the legitimacy of opposition politics are all positive features for political institutions. But democracy has many deficiencies: it is all too easily held hostage by powerful interests; it often fails to advance social justice; and it does not cope well with a number of features of the political landscape, such as political identities, boundary disputes, (...) and environmental crises. Although democracy is valuable it fits uneasily with other political values and is in many respects less than equal to the demands it confronts. In this volume prominent political theorists and social scientists present original discussions of such central issues. Democracy's Values deals with the nature and value of democracy, particularly the tensions between it and such goods as justice, equality, efficiency, and freedom. (shrink)

In Verfassungslehre, Carl Schmitt spells out the radical implications of his own analysis in Der Begriff des Politischen of the concept of the political. He argues in this respect that the political component of modern constitutions, which is suppressed by liberal thinking through its privilege of the rule of law, is the most important component of these constitutions. The political component refers essentially to the form of the political unity of a people. In showing the (...) priority of the political component, Schmitt inter alia insists on drawing a distinction between the constitution and constitutional laws, the resurrection of the concept of sovereignty, understanding equality as first of all and necessarily implying an inequality in respect of those who are excluded from the political unity, and on the subjection of freedom to the political component of the constitution. What would the implications be for constitutional theory if one were to take seriously Derrida’s deconstruction of Schmitt’s concept of the political in Politiques de l’amitié? This essay takes the first tentative steps in this direction, by exploring in detail Derrida’s analysis as well as the new structure of the political that comes to the fore in this text. (shrink)

Leading philosopher Peg Birmingham explores the relation between political deception, violence, and law in an attempt to renew the concept of the political.

The political self is a concept which is fundamental to political theory. This work focuses an liberal democratic theory because this type of political theory privileges the individual. It is ideal ground for rethinking a concept of the political self. ;I propose to look at abstractions and idealizations which are theoretical tools used in determining a concept of the political self. These: valuable theoretical manoeuvres are not value-neutral. A critical stance must always (...) be taken when such conceptualizations are undertaken. The conception of the political person in the theory of John Rawls will be examined through the lens of the concepts of autonomy and difference. This will focus our attention to the particular theoretical endeavours which-have excised certain features from the concept of the political person. I argue that the fiction of the 'persons in the original position' in Rawls's theory has been extended to an ideal of the political person which excludes certain individuals. This extension is unwarranted and detrimental to some individuals. ;I analyze the categories of the public-private since these are tied to a notion of the self. I claim that profound difference cannot be accommodated within the public realm of traditional liberal theory; it forces the concerns of certain individuals, such as care givers and persons with severe incapacities, into the private realm. These individuals are relegated to the private sphere only and consequently suffer from a devalued moral status. This devalued moral status within political society comes from the fact that they can not approximate the ideal of a fully cooperating member of society. This, I argue, goes against the ideal of a just society which values selves as individuals of equal moral worth. ;Finally, I suggest that our theorisation has always involved a certain detachment from bodily concerns. These have been erased from our theoretical considerations; I claim they have theoretical import. I suggest that we need to think of the political self as a whole self. The liberal focus on interests or goods should be supplemented by an understanding of needs. The latter address our interdependency as well as our vulnerability. The call for political presence is more than just a call to be heard, it's a call to be seen and recognized in the flesh. (shrink)

In an attempt to reaffirm Deleuze's Nietzschean affinities, this article argues that it is possible to detect in his thought an alternative concept of the political which gives ontological priority to difference. In order to map this out, a Deleuzian reading of the Zapatista experience will be provided, with particular attention given to the manner in which power is re-conceptualised, resistance strategised, subjectivities recast, and political solidarities formed anew. Once this has been established, the paper will argue (...) that not only does Deleuze provide us with a meaningful basis for political action, he offers us possibilities for creating new forms of political solidarity that no longer take Hegelian inspired dialectical enmity or dangerous Kantian unfulfilment as their point of theoretical departure. (shrink)

John Hobson claims that throughout its history most international theory has been embedded within various forms of Eurocentrism. Rather than producing value-free and universalist theories of inter-state relations, international theory instead provides provincial analyses that celebrate and defend Western civilization as the subject of, and ideal normative referent in, world politics. Hobson also provides a sympathetic critique of Edward Said's conceptions of Eurocentrism and Orientalism, revealing how Eurocentrism takes different forms, which can be imperialist or anti-imperialist, and showing how these (...) have played out in international theory since 1760. The book thus speaks to scholars of international relations and also to all those interested in understanding Eurocentrism in the disciplines of political science/political theory, political economy/international political economy, geography, cultural and literary studies, sociology and, not least, anthropology. (shrink)

The articles in this volume offer a fresh perspective on the important role of the concept of law (lex) in the moral and political philosophy of the 'School of Salamanca'.

In a 1979 memo about governmentality, Michel Foucault establishes that the analysis of governmentality as a “singular universality” implies that everything is political.1 Foucault explains his conclusion by “de-constructing” the phrase “everything is political.” This leads to the set of questions that he introduces when he talks about the terms biopolitics and biopower, whose meaning provides a new perspective regarding the history and development that shaped modern forms of government. I will characterize these problems in detail before I (...) return back to the aforementioned passage. These problems pertain to the question of the status of the political raised by the…. (shrink)

This paper presents and defends Kant’s non-voluntarist conception of political obligations. I argue that civil society is not primarily a prudential requirement for justice; it is not merely a necessary evil or moral response to combat our corrupting nature or our tendency to act viciously, thoughtlessly or in a biased manner. Rather, civil society is constitutive of rightful relations because only in civil society can we interact in ways reconcilable with each person’s innate right to freedom. Civil society is (...) the means through which we can rightfully interact even on the ideal assumption that no one ever succumbs to immoral temptation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article examines the prominent Japanese postwar thinker Maruyama Masao’s critical engagement with his contemporary German legal theorist Carl Schmitt. Maruyama engaged with Schmitt’s decisionistic notion of “the political” and sovereignty since he found it useful in addressing the pathological elements of Japanese political culture, namely, the widespread political passivity and fatalistic ethos of the Japanese public. In his view, such a “decision-avoiding” political culture, which had contributed to the rise of fascism in interwar and (...) wartime Japan, posed a fundamental threat to the viability of Japan’s postwar democracy. Although Maruyama objected to Schmitt’s authoritarian theory of political leadership, he nevertheless believed Schmitt provided important insights into the key concepts of modern politics, such as political agency and the constituent power of the people. In his efforts to foster political subjectivity and liberal individuality in postwar Japan, Maruyama attempted to strike a balance between two extremes: Schmittian normless decisionism, on the one hand, and a politically naïve liberal constitutionalism, on the other. I conclude by suggesting that the hitherto overlooked intellectual affinity between Maruyama and one of the leading Weimar-era constitutional theorists—Hermann Heller—can enrich our understanding of Maruyama’s unceasing effort to formulate and insist on the imperative role of political subjectivity and liberal individuality in consolidating liberal democracy in postwar Japan. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article examines the prominent Japanese postwar thinker Maruyama Masao’s critical engagement with his contemporary German legal theorist Carl Schmitt. Maruyama engaged with Schmitt’s decisionistic notion of “the political” and sovereignty since he found it useful in addressing the pathological elements of Japanese political culture, namely, the widespread political passivity and fatalistic ethos of the Japanese public. In his view, such a “decision-avoiding” political culture, which had contributed to the rise of fascism in interwar and (...) wartime Japan, posed a fundamental threat to the viability of Japan’s postwar democracy. Although Maruyama objected to Schmitt’s authoritarian theory of political leadership, he nevertheless believed Schmitt provided important insights into the key concepts of modern politics, such as political agency and the constituent power of the people. In his efforts to foster political subjectivity and liberal individuality in postwar Japan, Maruyama attempted to strike a balance between two extremes: Schmittian normless decisionism, on the one hand, and a politically naïve liberal constitutionalism, on the other. I conclude by suggesting that the hitherto overlooked intellectual affinity between Maruyama and one of the leading Weimar-era constitutional theorists—Hermann Heller—can enrich our understanding of Maruyama’s unceasing effort to formulate and insist on the imperative role of political subjectivity and liberal individuality in consolidating liberal democracy in postwar Japan. (shrink)