Carl Schmitt

Gottfried looks at Schmitt as a critic of modern liberalism and as a defender of the national state who carefully examined Western historical and political traditions. Challenging the view that Schmitt was a mere polemicist who set out to subvert "German Democracy," Gottfried's work argues instead, that Schmitt criticized liberal democracy from a highly liberal reflective position that combined analytical depth with staggering erudition. This new source also provides a useful bibliography on secondary literature dealing with Carl Schmitt's work.

The relationship between economic and political thinking has reached a crisis at the end of the 20th century. Already at the beginning of this century, in Roman Catholicism and Political Form, Carl Schmitt juxtaposed a juridical interpretation of religion oriented to the political sphere to Max Weber's sociological interpretation oriented to the economic sphere in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

Seitzer seeks to provide a more effective criticism of Schmitt than commentaries that focus on Schmitt's treatment of key works and concepts in legal and political theory. He elaborates a concrete form of normative theory, which uses comparative history to identify and test institutional changes that enhance the overall system's capacity for self-correction.

This book investigates one of the oldest questions of legal philosophy---the relationship between law and legitimacy. It analyses the legal theories of three eminent public lawyers of the Weimar era, Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen, and Hermann Heller. Their theories addressed the problems of legal and political order in a crisis-ridden modern society and so they remain highly relevant to contemporary debates about legal order in the age of pluralism. Schmitt, the philosopher of German fascism, has recently received much attention. Kelsen is well-known as one of the main exponents of the philosophy of legal positivism. Heller is virtually unknown outside Germany. Dyzenhaus exposes the dangers of Schmitt's legal philosophy by situating it in the legal context of constitutional crisis to which he responded. He also points out the severs inadequacies of Kelsen's legal positivism. In a wide-ranging account of the predicaments of contemporary legal and political philosophy, Heller's position is argued to be the most promising of the three.

This selection of the major works of constitutional theory during the Weimar period reflects the reactions of legal scholars to a state in permanent crisis, a society in which all bets were off. Yet the Weimar Republic's brief experiment in constitutionalism laid the groundwork for the postwar Federal Republic, and today its lessons can be of use to states throughout the world. Weimar legal theory is a key to understanding the experience of nations turning from traditional, religious, or command-and-control forms of legitimation to the rule of law.

Only two of these authors, Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt, have been published to any extent in English, but they and the others whose writings are translated here played key roles in the political and constitutional struggles of the Weimar Republic. Critical introductions to all the theorists and commentaries on their works have been provided by experts from Austria, Canada, Germany, and the United States. In their general introduction, the editors place the Weimar debate in the context of the history and politics of the Weimar Republic and the struggle for constitutionalism in Germany. This critical scrutiny of the Weimar jurisprudence of crisis offers an invaluable overview of the perils and promise of constitutional development in states that lack an entrenched tradition of constitutionalism.

Providing a lively and informed introduction to the last hundred years of political thinking--from T.H. Green's lectures to Ronald Dworkin's Taking Rights Seriously--the third volume in the successful Political Classics series has been designed to enable all students of political ideas to gain a fuller appreciation of the great works which form the foundation of the subject. Besides giving a full analysis of the contents of each text, this book also highlights what makes the texts of central importance to an understanding of political philosophy. The twelve chapters concentrate on the ideas contained in the texts, rather than on the lives of their writers, and each chapter is supplemented with useful suggestions for further reading.

Koskenniemi traces the emergence of a liberal sensibility relating to international matters in the late 19th century, and its subsequent decline after the Second World War. He combines legal analysis, historical and political critique and semi-biographical studies of key figures, including Hersch Lauterpacht, Carl Schmitt and Hans Morgenthau. Finally, his discussion of legal and political realism at American law schools ends in a critique of post-1960 "instrumentalism". This wide-ranging study provides a unique reflection on the future of critical international law.

"The brilliance of Diner's essays stems in good part from the astonishingly wide perspectives in which he sets his inquiries and from the interdisciplinary synthesis he is able to master. Publication in English is of extreme importance in enriching the debates on Nazism and the Holocaust in this country."--Saul Friedlander, author of "Nazi Germany and the Jews"

"One of the most probing and intellectually sophisticated historians of the German Jewish conundrum, Dan Diner has a quality of mind and an intellectual depth and precision that are altogether unique."--Anson Rabinbach, author of "In the Shadow of Catastrophe

Instances of corruption, extremism, and public distrust have increasingly raised the question of political legitimacy in recent years. The author examines the issue by looking at the conditions necessary for a "rule of law" to exist. He argues that in a democracy the greater the powers given to a political leader, the greater that leader's responsibilities toward society. In order to enjoy legitimacy therefore, our rulers must assume these responsibilities and be held accountable for them. This book will be of interest to political and social theorists and political philosophers.

As Harle shows, identity politics are nothing new. Post-Cold War ethnic conflicts and genocides are mere examples in a tradition where political conflicts are seen as struggles between good and evil. This tradition extends from ancient Iranian Zoroastrianism and classical Greek political theory up to present day American, Russian, and European politics.

A radical critique of Hans Kelsen's pure theory of law lies at the heart of this work, marking Voegelin's definitive departure from Neo-Kantian epistemology. For the first time, Voegelin elaborates on the important distinction between theoretical concepts and political symbols as a basis for explaining the nontheoretical and speculative character of ideologies, both left and right. He shows that total and authoritarian are symbols of ideological self-interpretation that have no theoretical value, a distinction basic to his later work in The New Science of Politics.