How Carl Schmitt Thought About the Legal World Revolution

Rüdiger Voigt

How Carl Schmitt Thought About the Legal World Revolution1

From legality to superlegality (Superlegalitaet)

In the following, we will deal with a problem that Carl Schmitt has devoted most of his life to, namely the relationship between legality and legitimacy, but not with regards to domestic politics, but with an eye on the international stage. In 1978, in addition to legality and legitimacy, the concept of superlegality evolved in his thinking, a special form of legality. In a large number of publications of various kinds, Schmitt has dealt with a broad spectrum of topics that go far beyond public law. This makes the classification of Schmitt’s writings all the more important. Here, we are taking the phases in political thinking as a basis that the German political scientist Henning Ottmann has carved out. Ottmann distinguishes between five phases of his political thinking to facilitate the classification of various publications as well as the understanding of Schmitt’s writings:2

Phase 1: Constitutional antipositivism and radical cultural criticism (1910-1916);

Phase 2: Decisionism and State Sovereignty (1919-1932);

Phase 3: Concrete classification and design thinking (1933-1936);

Phase 4: From „Leviathan“ to the end of the Jus publicum Europaeum (1938-1950);

Phase 5: The Political in the Technical World (1950-1978).

The essay The Legal World Revolution belongs to the last phase, dedicated to a French economist, Professor François Perroux (1903-1987) of the Collège de France. It shows Schmitt’s affinity to Romanesque thought traditions.3 While legitimacy played a prominent role for Schmitt in the 1930s, he is primarily concerned with legality of Word Revolution in 1978. In doing so, he developed legality into superlegality. By this Schmitt means norms with a strengthened validity, e.g. procedural norms which make it more difficult to change specific norms by the requirement of qualified majorities.4 These norms are standards that prohibit any action aimed at abolishing the Constitution. Schmitt is primarily concerned with state republican self-defence, on the one hand in France and on the other in Germany. Despite his old age, Schmitt is very concerned about the international situation, as his book Theory of the Partisan (first in 1963) proves. Earlier than others, he predicted China’s rise to superpower and the departure from bipolarity. His works – e.g. on the theory of the expanded territory – are only gradually being received more strongly today. For Carl Schmitt, the question of a new nomos of the earth plays an important role.5

Observer of his time

Carl Schmitt is an extraordinarily „sharp-tongued“ observer of his time, who draws attention to grievances in the state, politics and constitution with his „sharpened pen“ – often also in a polemical way. Many of the terms he coined, such as the „dilatory formula compromise“, which points out that political opponents almost always only agree on a compromise formula in the hope that they have postponed the decision in order to later achieve a more favourable result for themselves („you always meet twice in life“), are still common today, without awareness who authored them. However, Carl Schmitt’s basic orientations – aesthetic sense of form, etatism, nationalism and Catholicism – make it difficult to understand his works, not least because they are not always clearly recognizable or often even contradict each other.6

A careful distinction must of course be made between a scientific work and its reception – or parts thereof. For it is seldom possible to receive a work in the humanities in a neutral or even value-free way. Rather, it is not only time-related interpretations (Hegel’s „Zeitgeist“) that come into play, but also ideological components. In the years between the wars and in the first two decades after the Second World War, Schmitt’s works – especially his book on dictatorship – were received with great approval especially in the then authoritarian states of Europe, Asia and Latin America. In the meantime, however, Schmitt’s reception reaches far beyond that now. Schmitt’s theory of the state of emergency experiences a new bloom in the works of the Italian legal philosopher Giorgio Agamben. And the journal Telos, which was initially oriented towards the New Left in the USA, finally turned to the intellectual history of the 20th century. Since 1984, this journal has published numerous articles on Carl Schmitt’s thinking as well as smaller articles translated into English by Schmitt himself.

Only with difficulty can such an original spirit as Carl Schmitt be pressed into a time-oriented scheme, especially since his writings are not only (but also) reactions to certain time phenomena. Nevertheless, the schema is sometimes useful for classifying individual works. It is obvious that the classification of the essay The Legal World Revolution into the phase Henning Ottmann calls „The Political in the Technical World“ is certainly not wrong, but also not particularly meaningful. This essay clearly goes beyond the framework theme, which is more reminiscent of the works of his „pupil“ Ernst Forsthoff. It shows a certain „affinity“ with his work Theory of the Partisan, which becomes particularly clear in his conversation about the partisan with the German Maoist Joachim Schickel. Ultimately, Schmitt’s post-war essays are about a new nomos of the earth.

Dedicated to François Perroux

Carl Schmitt had originally intended to write the essay The Legal World Revolution in French as early as 1973 to honour the economist François Perroux of the Collège de France. Schmitt met Perroux in Berlin. The German constitutional lawyer Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde proposed to write a contribution for the Festschrift for François Perroux because he felt the upheaval of 1932/33 had to be discussed once again under the criteria of „legality and legitimacy“. However, Schmitt’s contribution does not appear in the Festschrift für Perroux published in 1978. Schmitt’s editor Günter Maschke suspects scheming in the editorial circle. It therefore lasts several more years until the essay is finally available in German. So the question arises why Schmitt, whose creative power was necessarily limited by his age – after all, he was 90 years old by now – still considered such a task.

Affinity to Romanesque thought traditions

So what do the Frenchman François Perroux and his way of thinking mean to him? An explanation for this project can be found in Schmitt’s clearly discernible affinity to the Romanic linguistic area and its traditions of thought. Schmitt not only knows Spanish literature well and wrote an important book about Juan Donoso Cortés (1809-1853). To an even greater degree, the French thinkers are very close to his heart, above all the „inventor“ of sovereignty Jean Bodin [„Bodinus“] (1529-1596), but also the contemporary jurist Maurice Hauriou (1856-1929), on whose institutional theory he relies. He felt almost as much a „soul mate“ to Bodin as to the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). In his diary-like writing Ex Captivitate Salus – still in the Nuremberg prison – he expressed his bond with these „heroes“ by declaring them „brothers“, „with whom I grew into a family over the centuries“.

Perroux’s Theory of Domination

But who is François Perroux, to whom the essay should be dedicated? Perroux is one of the few Frenchmen who, with their innovative ideas, have succeeded – at least temporarily – in breaching the English-speaking dominance in economics. With his theory of domination, he has set himself the goal of analysing the totality of all economic power phenomena in national and international economic relations. Instead of a general theory of equilibrium, he has a general theory of imbalance. He is concerned with the intended and unintended effects of supremacy. „According to Perroux, supremacy describes the asymmetrical, irreversible influence that emanates from a company or economic unit with a relatively stronger position of power, showing itself as a dominating effect in the company or economic unit with a relatively weaker position of power.“ Perroux’s theoretical considerations go beyond the framework of economic theory. His idea of the supremacy („domination“) of relatively strong powers over weaker powers can also be applied to other areas, such as international relations. This is exactly what Schmitt did in his essay The Legal World Revolution.

Perroux’s methodology is inspired by his great compatriot René Descartes (1596-1650), the founder of modern rationalism, while Perroux’s feels more like a socialist with evolutionist visions. This includes, in particular, his fierce criticism of the development policies of rich countries. In his view, the economic, social and cultural peculiarities of the „Third World“ countries are not sufficiently taken into account. He therefore appeals to these countries to become aware of their own cultural value. In 1952, Perroux publishes an essay on his theory in the Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie in German. Carl Schmitt undoubtedly read Perroux’s work L’économie du XXe siècle in the original. In his fundamental reflections on legal legality and superlegality, Schmitt refers to these works of the economic theorist Perroux.

Living and thinking in the Cold War

Schmitt did not live to see the Soviet empire collapse. For him, the context of his reflections is the Cold War, which affects the world as a whole. Schmitt sees this as part of the worldwide revolutionary war. This also includes the ideological power struggle of the two superpowers USA and USSR in Latin America, Asia and Africa. While America, as the leading power of the West, propagates freedom and at the same time rather unabashedly pursues its own imperial interests – also with the support of rebel movements – the Soviet Union-led so-called Eastern bloc fights against Western capitalism and for a victory of communism, as the Soviet communists understand it, namely as unity of the earth and its „submission to lord of the earth, legitimized by world history“. This idea of the unity of the world is based on the doctrine of dialectical materialism by Karl Marx (1818-1883), a philosophy of history that follows on from Hegel. Since about 1975, however, the communist parties of Western Europe have begun to look for their own way to communism. In Italy, the Communist Party strives for a „historical compromise“ with the Christian Democratic Party. One of the so-called Eurocommunists is the Spaniard Santiago Carrillo Solares (1915-2012), who is of particular interest to Schmitt because it is precisely at this time that Spain is being transformed from the authoritarian Franco era into a democratic state. Schmitt had a particularly close relationship to Spain. Carillo was Secretary General of the Spanish Communist Party from 1960 to 1982.

Legality and Legitimacy

The differentiation between legitimacy and legality dates back to the beginning of the 19th century. It is the French priest and philosopher Hugues Felicité de la Mennais (1782-1854) who, in his work Des Progrès de la Révolution et de la Guerre contre l’Église of 1828, drew the attention of the world public to the difference between legitimacy and legality. „Legitimacy means the formula of moral or ideological identity and of self-representation of state order. In his studies on this subject, Carl Schmitt soon realized how explosive the contrast between legitimacy and legality could be as soon as there was no monarch to whom the legitimacy of rule could be referred to. The source of legitimacy in democratic states in which the people are sovereign, on the other hand, is their consent. But how can this consent – possibly generalised – be established? Must the people be consulted in a state of emergency, and if so, in what form? Schmitt’s central concern in the essay The Legal World Revolution (1987) is now legality, which he confrontated with legitimacy in his much-noticed paper Legality and Legitimacy. In this paper from 1932, one year before Hitler seized power, legitimacy plays the decisive role. Schmitt repeatedly criticizes the „legality monopoly of the legislative state“. The parliamentary legislative state „adopts the situation created by princely absolutism, namely the abolition of every right of resistance and the ‚great right‘ to unconditional obedience; but it gives it the consecration of legitimacy, which it creates through its general, previously determined standardizations“. Unlike the Federal Republic, the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) kept the „gate of legality“ open for system alternatives.

Exchange of Thought

Now – after more than seven decades of intensive work on these problems – Schmitt poses the most important questions for him:

  1. How did the German overemphasis on legality occur, which – according to Schmitt – led to Hitler?
  2. How can the state be preserved, which Schmitt still regards as the most important structural quantity in politics despite the ‚world revolution‘?
  3. What ‚progress‘ is there in world politics, which – according to Schmitt – is advancing from land seizure to industrial seizure to space exploration?
  4. How is the National Socialist regime to be characterized, which Schmitt sees as the result of a „legal“ but not legitimate revolution, which he tried to fend off?
  5. Is it possible to achieve world peace through world organization? An issue that Schmitt categorically denied.

Carl Schmitt is in constant correspondence with many of his contemporaries, including Hans Blumenberg (1920-1996) and Hans-Dietrich Sander (1928-2017) as well as Ernst Forsthoff (1902-1974), Ernst-Rudolf Huber (1903-1990), Hans Barion (1899-1973), Armin Mohler (1920-2003), Álvaro d’Ors (1915-2004) and Ernst Jünger (1895-1998). He shared a lifelong friendship with Jünger. Forsthoff and Huber were Schmitt’s „pupils“, and Huber was also a close confidant who also maintained contact with the Reichswehr. Schmitt’s correspondence with Blumenberg, who at the time was professor of philosophy at the University of Münster, was not only, but primarily, about legitimacy. In 1966 Blumenberg presented his famous study The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. For Schmitt, Blumenberg’s thinking is particularly interesting because of his anthropological background and his interpretation of myths and metaphors. In his essay The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes, Schmitt himself has repeatedly pointed out the significance of myths, which seems obvious, since Leviathan himself is the most important myth of the state. On July 25, 1978, Schmitt sent a copy of his essay The Legal World Revolution with a personal dedication to Blumenberg.

From legality to superlegality

In his 1978 essay, Schmitt now develops this legality into superlegality. In doing so, he adopts a term from the French jurist Maurice Hauriou he so highly appreciates, who emphasized the „increased validity of certain norms“. It is the modern ideologies of progress that act as the driving forces of superlegality in the process of legal world revolution. Ultimately, this was about the ideological universalization of certain constitutional ideals. In this context, Schmitt again criticizes the „legality monopoly of the legislative state“. Schmitt sees such a monopoly in the fundamental prohibition of anti-constitutional parties (Article 21:2 of the German Federal Republic’s Basic Law), for whom the Basic Law has completely closed the „gateway to legality“. It was precisely with this that the path of superlegality had been taken. Against the backdrop of his famous friend and foe distinction, Schmitt warns – once again – of the consequences of an exaggerated thinking in terms of legality. „The claim to legality makes any resistance and any resistance an injustice and illegality, an ‚illegality‘. If the majority can dispose of legality and illegality arbitrarily, they can in particular declare their domestic competitors illegal, i.e. hors-la-loi, and thus exclude them from the democratic homogeneity of the people. With the formula of „arguable democracy“ a gateway is now also being created in the Federal Republic of Germany which hands the executive almost „control-free political means of power to eliminate oppositional opinion-forming“.

By legal world revolution, Schmitt understands the revolutionary power of the established law, which can assert itself and assert itself as the sole source of legitimacy. In this way, legality gains its own legitimacy – to a certain extent as a premium for the legal possession of power. Each party program can then legalize its basic values, which means: to obtain the state „opportunity to force obedience“ for all laws and state acts. In addition to the disposition of the military, police and finance, administration and justice, distribution of the social product, offices, positions and subsidies, this also includes the power of interpretation over continuously arising new situations. German sociologist Hanno Kesting (1915-1975) has added his philosophical theory of history of the World Civil War. According to this, the European Civil War erupted openly in 1789 with the French Revolution, and since then has dominated events with numerous revolutions, large and small, to transform itself into the world civil war of the present with the intervention of the USA in the First World War (1917) and the Bolshevik October Revolution (1917). Recent events, such as the civil war in Nicaragua („Contra-War“, 1981-1990) or the clashes over Ukraine (from 2004) can easily be incorporated into this world civil war. Schmitt regards the project of a European Union as a failure because it did not formulate a systematic alternative to economic-technical „progress“.

The Role of the State in the World Revolution

Right at the beginning of his essay, Carl Schmitt references Santiago Carrillo, who recently published his book ‚Eurokommunism‘ and the State. In it, Carrillo emphasises the special role of the state as the bearer of legality and notes that the state is no longer dead, but more necessary and alive than ever. In this state a communist revolution – unlike Lenin’s October Revolution at the time – could only be carried out by legal means. Schmitt expressly emphasizes that in this essay, he dealt with the possibilities of a legal, not a legitimate world revolution. In a letter to Schmitt dated 18 August 1978, Sander writes: “ On the point of the state, I do not understand how a tactical volte-face of a Eurocommunist can induce you […] to reveal the state of knowledge that you established on this subject with the essay ‚State as a Concrete Concept Linked to a Historical Era‘ and the third comment on the essay ‚Further Development of the Total State in Germany‘.

Sander is a former staff member of the German daily newspaper Die Welt, who wrote his doctorate on Marxist ideology and general art theory, but despite his best efforts was unable to gain a foothold in the academic world – mainly because of his political attitude (he was regarded as „right-wing“). His correspondence with Carl Schmitt lasted a total of fourteen years (1967-1981). What did Sander, whom Schmitt supported intellectually to the best of his ability, refer to in his criticism? What initially irritates him is that Schmitt speaks of the legality of a world revolution. He – Sander – has, on the other hand, always understood the Expanded Territory „as a contrast to universal concepts“ such as the world revolution. Sander particularly refers to Schmitt’s writing Expanded Territory versus universalism. The international legal struggle over the Monroe Doctrine, which is based on a lecture given by Schmitt at the Institute for Politics and International Law at the University of Kiel in spring 1939 and first published in extended form in 1941. In fact, in his best-known book The Concept of the Political, Schmitt formulated – in a certain way conclusively – the following about the state: „The State as the model of political unity, […] this sparkling gem of European form and occidental rationalism, is being dethroned. […] the epoch often he State is coming to an end“.

State or Expanded Territory?

The state has been replaced by the Expanded Territory, which is dominated by an empire. Carl Schmitt’s starting point in particular, the economic Expanded Territory from which a political Expanded Territory can emerge, offers links to the current global situation. Economic conurbations (European Union, Mercosur, NAFTA, JEFTA, etc.) are forming all over the world, which are seeking forms of cooperation that, on a case-by-case basis, also include the political and, if necessary, can extend to a political union (Europe). In this context, Schmitt is repeatedly concerned with the question of legitimacy beyond legality. The question of legitimacy is particularly urgent in the case of the European Union, which has emerged as a project of often self-appointed European elites. The European Union has no power to shape space. The democratic deficit of this union of states is particularly evident in times of the euro crisis. Moreover, it has no real capacity for alternative constitutional design, as has become clear since the failure of the European Convention, which drafted the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe.

An assignment for world revolution?

Although Carl Schmitt was physically severely restricted in 1978 – mainly due to his visual impairment – mentally, he is still very much on top of things. At the age of 90, he follows world politics with great interest, although he no longer focuses on details so much. For decades, Schmitt has written down all his essentials in his diaries in a short handwriting he designed himself. This includes not only his assessment of the books he is reading, but also of people he has met and of political events. And finally, Schmitt is a writer of letters on a scale hardly imaginable to us today. These letters bear witness to Schmitt’s immense density of communication.

Maos revolution export

According to Marxist views, the world revolution is a revolution that originates from national revolutions that affect all countries of the world. According to this, the Russian October Revolution in autumn 1917 which led to the foundation of the Soviet Union should have triggered a world revolution. For many reasons, however, this did not happen. Following the end of the Second World War, the balance of power between the USA and the USSR, each with its satellite states and alliance systems, was initially unstable, but over time became increasingly robust. Although this bipolar world order ensures that the two superpowers do not fall into a possibly deadly nuclear confrontation, „proxy wars“ in different parts of the world are commonplace. The People’s Republic of China does not yet play a decisive role in the balance of power at this time, but it sees itself as an exporter of revolutions. Mao Zedong (1893-1976) develops a theory of the urban-rural struggle, which receives a boost in almost all parts of the world by the „dirty“ Vietnam War (1964-1973) of the USA. In the 1960s China massively supported Maoist and Communist rebels in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Geostrategy and Empire

However, the time of successful partisan and guerilla movements is now over. They have been replaced by „wars“, which – mostly terrorist attacks – are carried out by Islamists. As the successor to the Soviet Union, Russia is concentrating more on maintaining and possibly improving its geostrategic position, for instance through the annexation of the Crimea 2014. China is beginning to establish itself as a superpower that is using its unbridled economic power rather than its ideological strength to slowly but surely strengthen and sustain its position in the global balance of power. Simultaneously, China is expanding its military strength significantly by modernizing and arming the People’s Liberation Army. The global „fight against terrorism“ proclaimed by the USA also serves all three superpowers to stigmatize resistance and turmoil, to deprive it of its legitimacy, thus being able to fight it by all means. In this context, US literary scholar Michael Hardt’s and Italian political scientist and neo-Marxist philosopher Antonio Negri’s trilogy has fallen on fertile ground all over. These scientists partly also refer to Carl Schmitt, but always point out that Schmitt – just like the German philosopher Martin Heidegger – was a „reactionary“. Hardts and Negri’s ideas of sovereignty and of a new democracy are a worthwhile addition to the context of interest here.

Farewell to Bipolarity

After the end of the Second World War, Carl Schmitt became increasingly interested in the international situation. He predicted China’s rise to third superpower. As early as 1978, he saw three established Expanded Territories: the USA, the USSR and China – regardless of the bipolar world order generally referred to as such. In contrast, the Federal Republic of Germany, which emerged from the three western occupation zones, does not seem to him to be so much a worthwhile object for his scientific efforts. He rather largely rejects the Bonn Republic. In a letter to the Spanish jurist Álvaro d’Ors on 12 February 1960 he wrote: „The situation in Germany today is appalling, much worse than most people suspect, because they are blinded by the economic miracle. As an old man I suffer badly from it and feel true „Cassandra depressions“. Instead, Schmitt feels great sympathy for the authoritarian Spain of Caudillo Francisco Franco (1892-1975), whom Hitler helped to victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) through the deployment of German troops („Legion Condor“). In this Spain he sees a real alternative to the „westernization“ of the Federal Republic. This positive assessment certainly also encompasses the strong position of the Catholic Church in Franco’s Spain.

New Nomos of Earth?

Although Carl Schmitt has been increasingly involved with people‘ s international law since the end of the 1930s, he soon realised that its political effectiveness and legal binding force had diminished considerably by the course of the East-West conflict at the latest. Schmitt therefore increasingly turns to problem areas in the international context („new nomos of the earth“ or „unity of the world“?), which he considers politically explosive. His lecture Die Ordnung der Welt nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (The World Order after World War II), which he held in Madrid in 1962 in Spanish, is of particular importance with regard to the post-war political order. Since the 1960s, Schmitt has assumed that the bipolar world will be replaced by a multipolar world order. Later developments proved him right. His analysis of the international situation also includes the partisan question, which initially played a major role in the fight against the German Wehrmacht in Europe during World War II, shifted to Africa and Asia after the end of the war, and with the guerilla movement subsequently gained new relevance in Latin America. Schmitt is also intensively concerned with Mao Zedong’s theory of partisan warfare. The fact that he has addressed a core problem with the partisan question is exemplified by the long life of the Maoist movement Sendero Luminoso („Shining Path“) in Peru. But even modern terrorism, which operates worldwide and can hardly be fought effectively, seems to have – apart from its Islamic fundamentalist orientation – at least its theoretical roots in the partisan movement. Even after the communists finally had to give up their claim to World Revolution initiative, the asymmetric conflicts still live on, albeit in a new form.

Hitler’s „Legal Revolution“

In his essay The Legal World Revolution, Carl Schmitt frequently changes levels by mixing his contemporary analysis with a historical review of „Hitler’s legal revolution from 1933 to 1945 as a precedent“. Schmitt dates Hitler’s first „legal revolution“ to January 30, 1933, the day Hitler seized power. A second „legal revolution“ had then taken place on 24 March 1933, when the Reichstag had approved the abolition of the separation of powers and further measures to consolidate the dictatorship with the passing of the Enabling Act (Law for the Removal of the Plight of the People and the Reich). This „legal revolution“ in Germany – like similar revolutions in other countries – could only have succeeded as a „national revolution“. Of course, the reader wonders what significance the time of National Socialism, more than seventy years ago, could play for him personally or in general. Not to mention the question of whether Hitler’s seizure of power is accepted as a „legal revolution“. However, it turns out that Schmitt always works with historical examples that frequently refer to situations of upheaval such as the turn of the years 1932/33. It is therefore the exemplary that interests Schmitt; he is less interested in theoretically conceivable constellations and their moral evaluation than in real historical situations that can be supported by facts and analyzed scientifically. It is well known that he takes unconventional paths and arrives at conclusions that not everyone can easily share. However, little attention has been paid so far to the fact that Carl Schmitt has not only expressed his view of the post-war order in this essay, but that it is definitely his final word.

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Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political. Expanded Edition (1932), trans. G. Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

Carl Schmitt, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes. Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol (1938), trans. G. Schwa

Carl Schmitt, „Großraum versus universalism. The international legal struggle over the Monroe Doctrine” (1939), trans. M. Hannah, in Spatiality, Sovereignty and Carl Schmitt. Geographies of the nomos, ed. Stephen Legg (New York: Routledge, 2011): 46-54.b and E. Hilfstein (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008).

Carl Schmitt, Dictatorship (1921), trans. M. Hoelzl and G. Ward (Polity: Cambridge, 2014).

Carl Schmitt, Ex Captivitate Salus. Experiences, 1945-47 (1950), trans. M. Hannah (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017).

Carl Schmitt, The Tyranny of Values and Other Texts (1967), trans. A. Berman and S.G. Zeutlin (Candor, NY: Telos Press, 2018).

Carl Schmitt/Hans-Dietrich Sander, Werkstatt-Discorsi, ed. G. Maschke and E. Lehnert (Schnellroda: Edition Antaios, 2008).

Gary L. Ulmen, Politischer Mehrwert. Eine Studie über Max Weber und Carl Schmitt (Weinheim: VCH Acta Humaniora, 1991).

Rüdiger Voigt (ed.), Großraum-Denken. Carl Schmitts Kategorie der Großraumordnung (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2008).

Rüdiger Voigt, Denken in Widersprüchen. Carl Schmitt wider den Zeitgeist (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2015).

Rüdiger Voigt, Die Arroganz der Macht. Hochmut kommt vor dem Fall (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2017).

Qi Zheng, Carl Schmitt, Mao Zedong and the Politics of Transition (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

  1. First published in German in Voigt 2015, pp. 121-136; translated by Lena Falkenhagen, Berlin. []
  2. Ottmann 1990, pp. 61-87. []
  3. See Neumann 2014, pp. 356-369. []
  4. Schmitt 1978, p. 324; Neumann 2014, p. 556. []
  5. Schmitt 2006; see Legg (ed.) 2011. []
  6. Voigt 2010, pp. 367-372. []