The Contemporary Relevance of Carl Schmitt: Law, Politics, Theology

What does Carl Schmitt have to offer to ongoing debates about sovereignty, globalization, spatiality, the nature of the political, and political theology? Can Schmitt's positions and concepts offer insights that might help us understand our concrete present-day situation? Works on Schmitt usually limit themselves to historically isolating Schmitt into his Weimar or post-Weimar context, to reading him together with classics of political and legal philosophy, or to focusing exclusively on a particular aspect of Schmitt's writings. Bringing together an international, and interdisciplinary, range of contributors, this book explores the question of Schmitt's relevance for an understanding of the contemporary world. Engaging the background and intellectual context in which Schmitt wrote his major works - often with reference to both primary and secondary literature unavailable in English - this book will be of enormous interest to legal and political theorists.

Editors' Introduction, Matilda Arvidsson, Leila Brannstroem and Panu Minkkinen ; I. Law ; 1. Carl Schmitt's Definition of Sovereignty as Authorized Leadership, Leila Brannstroem ; 2. Carl Schmitt and the Problem of Constitutional Guardianship, Lars Vinx ; 3. Political Community in Carl Schmitt's International Legal Thinking, Markus Gunneflo ; 4. Carl Schmitt and the Tyranny of Values, Juha-Pekka Rentto ; 5. A Law without the Political: Carl Schmitt, Romanticism, and Friedrich Durrenmatt's The Execution of Justice, Panu Minkkinen ; 6. Social Acceleration, Motorized Legislation, and Framework Laws, Carl-Goeran Heidegren ; II. Politics ; 7. Law, Decision, Necessity: Shifting the Burden of Responsibility, Johanna Jacques ; 8. Representation and the Unrepresentable: Ernst Junger, Carl Schmitt, and the Limits of Politics, Marten Bjoerk ; 9. Rethinking the Concept of the Political: Derrida's reading of Schmitt's `The Theory of the Partisan', Jacques De Ville ; 10. Eschatology and Existentialism: Carl Schmitt's Historical Understanding of International Law and Politics, Walter Rech ; 11. Carl Schmitt and the New World Order: A View from Europe, Massimo Fichera ; III. Theology ; 12. `Im Kampf um Rom': Carl Schmitt's Critique of Rudolph Sohm and the Post-Secular Turn, Hjalmar Falk ; 13. Processes of Order and the Concreteness of the Sacred: On the Contemporary Relevance of Carl Schmitt's Critique of Nihilism, Jon Wittrock ; 14. Beyond the Jurist as a Theologian of Legal Science: The Question of Carl Schmitt and the International Legal Order, Peter Langford and Ian Bryan ; 15. From Teleology to Eschatology: The Katechon and the Political Theology of the International Law of Belligerent Occupation, Matilda Arvidsson