Writing in the new issue of Philosophy in Review, Adam Sliwowski reviews Carl Schmitt’s The Tyranny of Values and Other Texts, translated by Samuel Garrett Zeitlin, edited by Russell A. Berman and Samuel Garrett Zeitlin, with a preface by David Pan. Order your copy in our online store, and save 20% on the list price by using the coupon code BOOKS20 during the checkout process.
An excerpt:
The works of Carl Schmitt—a German jurist and political theorist infamous for his involvement with National Socialism—continue to have wide international appeal, influencing scholars in a number of fields from political science and jurisprudence to political-theology and existential philosophy. Nevertheless, much of his prolific oeuvre, written over the span of almost 70 years, remains untranslated into English. With The Tyranny of Values and Other Texts, Samuel Garrett Zeitlin takes a step in filling this gap with an edited collection of finely translated and helpfully annotated texts that appear in English for the first time. This collection of occasional pieces, spanning from the Weimar era to the Cold War, shows Schmitt responding to a diverse array of socio-political exigencies and world-historical developments, while also shedding light on many of the central themes of Schmitt’s work, such as the distinction between legality and legitimacy, land and sea, the nomos of the earth, and the figure of the partisan. . . .
Overall, the collection contributes to our understanding of Carl Schmitt not merely as a political theorist or legal scholar, but as a philosopher of history. While Schmitt’s reprehensible politics often lie just below the surface, his ideas nevertheless must be taken seriously if we wish to confront the socio-economic and political-moral challenges facing our late modern, increasingly secular, post-industrial capitalist world. In an age of growing populism and restless discontent, nothing could be timelier. As David Pan rightfully argues in his preface to the collection, these texts are of more than merely historical-scholarly interest, as Schmitt’s concepts help us to understand the structure and bearing of many key contemporary political conflicts. Samuel Zeitlin thus does us a great political service with these translations, as Schmitt’s essays should be read not only by scholars but by all those concerned with the fate of liberal democracy.
Read the full review here.
