The Concept of the Political

Description

The Concept of the Political

Foreword: Dimensions of the New Debate around Carl Schmitt, by Tracy B. Strong

Translator’s Note to the 1996 Edition and Acknowledgments

Introduction, by George Schwab

Translator’s Note to the 1976 Edition

The Concept of the Political, by Carl Schmitt

“The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations” (1929), by Carl Schmitt

Notes on Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, by Leo Strauss

Index of Names

or Schmitt, the political is reducible to the existential distinction between friend and enemy.

Schmitt attacks the “liberal-neutralist” and “utopian” notions that politics can be removed of all warlike, agonistic energy, arguing conflict existed as embedded in existence itself, likewise constituting an ineradicable trait of anthropological human nature.

Schmitt attempts to substantiate his ideas by referencing the declared anthropological pessimism of “realistic” Catholic (and Christian) theology.

The anti-perfectibilist pessimism of Traditional Catholic theology Schmitt considers esoterically relevant to the inner ontological being of politics and political activity in the contemporary world, modern people subconsciously secularizing theological intellectual ideas and concerns.

Schmitt criticizes political “radicals” as basically ignorant, deluded, pseudo-messianic in mentality, and oblivious to the stark, hard knowledge of unveiled human nature, its esse, encoded in ancient theology, wherein Original Sin held central, axial place, intertwining his own ideas of meta-politics with a reformulated “metaphysics of evil”.

The Concept of the Political

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