Where to start with Carl Schmitt?

The U Chicago edition with the super-ugly cover. It's like $20 new because it's from an academic press, but you could find it used on Amazon or get it through the library. Or steal it from the internet. It's short, too, so you should be able to get through it relatively quickly, and Schmitt's a good writer.

Thanks. Let me know if you have any other suggested editions for the rest of his bibliography. Same goes for Strauss for that matter. Hopefully this thread will still be around in the morning when I finally get up.

Strauss has an excellent article on "German nihilism" and the roots of Nazism that is not unsympathetic to the far right. Google Intepretation Journal and search their back catalogue for it; it's free on there somewhere.

The motivating factor beneath both Schmitt and Strauss is 1) disgust at liberal society, its decadence, and its weakness and 2) appreciation of the virtues of liberal society. Schmitt was writing in the 20s to defend, not destroy liberalism. Strauss and Schmitt eventually took a different tact towards liberal society (Strauss, in great part, because he was Jewish.) Their common worldview is pretty well summarized by the Prologue of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (the last man and the tight-rope walker). You wouldn't have to read the whole book to get the gist.

Strauss's explicit politics subside after the war, though you can always detect that an appreciation of the vulnerability of liberal democracy motivates his researches into the classics.

His big two books are Persecution on the Art of Writing (where he lays out his esotericism thesis) and The City and Man. The former is really hard and deals with some pretty obscure Jewish philosophers going backwards in time from Spinoza. The City and Man is a little more accessible. It also reads backwards, but starting from Aristotle and moving through Plato to Thucydides. His point in this book is that the closer one can get to an honest, immediate response to political events, the more vital thought is. So Aristotle is kinda bad (political science), Plato is really good (political philosophy), but Thucydides is without peer (politics, simply.) This is also the root of his antipathy towards social science, psychology, and historicism; these fields and method of operating obscure, rather than clarify, the common sense understand of human events by loading them up with a ton of jargon.

If you're into America and the liberal tradition, Natural Rights and History is worth a read. I've found it a little obscure, myself, though I think it was popular. Some would swap out Persecution in my previous paragraph and put Natural Rights there. What Is Political Philosophy? is also a useful book of essays.

There's been a lot of good secondary literature on Strauss very recently (I'm talking within the last ten years).

I don't know anything about Schmitt's writings post-WW2, which is why I sperged out on Strauss above. Heinrich Meier has a book on Strauss and Schmitt, for what that's worth.

Any knowledge of Balakrishnan, Gopal (2000). "The enemy: an intellectual portrait of Carl Schmitt"? I have seen it thrown about in a few of these threads before and wanted to get some input on these and other secondary source suggestions.

I have a friend who likes it, but he's a literal communist. Haven't read it myself. Can't hurt, though; even if it's wrong, then you can train your mind by arguing against Balakrishnan.

As is the rule with new academic books, though, make the library buy it for you or download it, don't buy it yourself.

Also, for what it's worth, lefties LOVE Carl Schmitt. I keep have someone recommending I read Chantal Mouffe on him. Haven't done it because I prefer my left-wing to be classically liberal; pomo left-wingery is hopelessly confused. But, hey, another recommendation. Just read the primary texts (ie, Schmitt's own book[s]) first, though.

It's quite good as a quick rundown on all of his work while also telling you what was going on in his life. There's some interesting biographical stuff there that I don't think you can learn anywhere else in english. But Balakrishnan is an left academic so you should expect two things: 1 small critiques of Schmitt here and there. 2 Bad writing. I mean, the writing isn't so terrible but Schmitt is by far a better writer. Don't let this put off from reading it or buying it. It's a great reference work.

Thinking of it as a nice little intellectual sparing match sounds like a good way to approach it.
None of the Schmitt biographies seem too expensive so I could probably buy them all over time. It's not like I'm writing anything on him myself and need all of these works right away after all.

Good to know. Hopefully we can all grow a nice large list of useful secondary sources as this thread ages.

Not be dogmatic or anything, but why do leftists find value in somebody considered right-wing? Usually that never happens.

Schmitt gave a really solid btfo'ing of liberalism. So any commie who dislikes liberalism and wants to go beyond it, reads Schmitt.

Sort of like how a lot of new-right people (Euro, not American) will read Gramsci about hegemony and the intellectual class and find use in him.

Personally, I don't really see Schmitt as right-wing per se or even Nazi/fascist. He just seems like a Catholic socialist reactionary. Where you put him on the left-right spectrum probably says more about yourself. Like, his Weimar era work was aimed at showing how Weimar liberalism would eventually implode and lead to either Nazism or Communism... The Nazis cucked him when they were in power anyway.

Nice threat. I approve.

What did Schmitt think of America?

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After the failure of the revolutionary project to create utopia, left-wing politics became only about power to the caste of intellectuals. Carl Schmitt did a great analysis of politics as power conflict, so he was useful.

That's a pretty excellent Freudian slip.

I wasn't the original poster behind it but I agree.

What?

Someone know what this is?

I wonder what is written.
>to lazy to use translator

I would still read Mouffe just for the standard know your enemy approach.

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plz staph

Concept of the Political

paзмepa пoбoльшe нe нaшёл :(

нaдo жe чeм тo пoбaмпaть гoдный тpeд

I refuse to use the translator. i am to lazy 2 du so

I thought you razmovlyaesh rossiyskoyu :(

Godammit. This is the exact reason I hate myself for being a lazy fuck who don't start to learn glorious russian tongue.

What are these in English?

Theory of the Partisan

Come on, it's very basic Russian. No one has an excuse for being that illiterate.

But I am.

Top: Political Romanticism
Bottom: Theory of the Partisan

Not even sure what the point of the Russianposting in the thread was. Oh well hopefully the actual Schmittposters return to give their input on the thread.

>they don't know Russian
Putain de plébéiens, soyez un peu moins cons.

Actually it always happens. Adorno did it, Benjamin did it, Zizek does it a lot. Foucault did it. The ones who openly avoid right-wing thinkers are normal liberals and neo-liberals.

>Adorno
Literally a reactionary larping as a marxist.
>Zizek
Literally a meme.
>Foucault
Literally a classical liberal who happened to be a marxist for a bit.

I like your thinking, but who are real leftists to you? Rawls and Popper?

Not that poster but Rawls isn't a leftist but is to the left certainly. I don't know why anyone would think Popper is classified as even left leaning.

>Foucault
>classical liberal
WHERE? I am serios, where? From the few a read, sounds more like marxist pandering over stuff for 300+ pages and comming to amoust no conclusion.

plz no slavespeak

Original poster here. Fuck.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault
The only place I know of which mentions his liberalism.
radicalarchives.org/2015/09/14/macey-foucault-pcf-drs-plot/
His falling out with communism.
iep.utm.edu/fouc-pol/#H1
Also relevant stuff, explicitly mentions his distantiation from marxism and his later interest in the greeks(which lends credence to the wikipedia page).

Rawls and Popper are peak neoliberalism dude

Sprinkle it with some Habermas.

I think this is Schmitt's Concept of the Political in Russian

A little late to the party bucko.

Lumping everything in under the neoliberalism mass fails to notice key distinctions.

this

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>Personally, I don't really see Schmitt as right-wing per se or even Nazi/fascist. He just seems like a Catholic socialist reactionary.
Schmitt absolutely was not a socialist. Grab a copy of Renato Cristi's study Carl Schmitt and Authoritarian Liberalism if you can. He believed in free enterprise.

> read some secondary source shit, it will explain why Schmitt isn't wholly nostalgic for medieval Catholicism

Read Nomos of the Earth BY Carl Schmitt.

Just read Roman Catholicism and Political Form BY Carl Schmitt, both of you

I have, and Nomos of the Earth does it better. It's an early work and he didn't stick with a lot of the ideas he presented in it.

This guy seems to think socialism begins and ends with Marx and ownership of the means of production. I give no fucks about how a 2nd rate Chilean scholar tries to make Schmitt out to be a neo-con.

And what makes you more qualified than this "second rate Chilean scholar"?

You mean we should read the book in which he wanted to try to show Weber that Catholics can into capitalism(any pretty much anything) too?

>This guy seems to think socialism begins and ends with Marx and ownership of the means of production. I give no fucks about how a 2nd rate Chilean scholar tries to make Schmitt out to be a neo-con.
The main evidence doesn't come from Cristi's book (which is first rate), but from a translation it provides of a speech he made to business leaders around 1932 which proves his pro-market orientation decisively.

Think you could post the speech here?

Sounds like an interesting thesis.

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