New from Telos Press: The Tyranny of Values and Other Texts, by Carl Schmitt. Translated by Samuel Garrett Zeitlin, edited by Russell A. Berman and Samuel Garrett Zeitlin, and 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.
Written during the Weimar Republic, the Nazi era, and the Cold War, this collection of occasional pieces provides an instructive look at the ways in which Carl Schmitt employed his theories in order to make judgments about contemporary historical events and problems. Covering topics such as the political significance of universalism and jurisprudence, the meaning of the partisan, the world-historical significance of the Cold War, the deterioration of metaphysics into “values,” the relationship between theoretical concepts and concrete historical situations, and his views on thinkers such as Machiavelli, Bodin, and Rousseau, these essays establish a revealing counterpoint to his more formal work. They react on the one hand directly to contemporary political questions and demonstrate the way in which he saw the immediate historical significance of his ideas. On the other hand, he also feels free to provide in these pieces the kinds of methodological reflections that help us to better understand the particular epistemological framework that makes his thought so unique.
Praise for Carl Schmitt’s The Tyranny of Values and Other Texts
“Although he didn’t coin the term ‘political correctness,’ Carl Schmitt certainly penned the first critique of the phenomenon in The Tyranny of Values—and what an incendiary critique it was. Sam Zeitlin’s fine translation brings to the fore all the nuance and bile of Schmitt’s broadside against the ethical legacy of the Enlightenment in postwar Germany. The volume also includes wide-ranging essays by Schmitt on authors such as Machiavelli and Hobbes, and on developments such as Maoism and Vatican II. The Tyranny of Values and Other Texts is a crucial contribution to the study of far-right conservatism in the Cold War era—and in our own.”
—John P. McCormick, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago
“This is a brilliantly curated selection of texts. Many of these essays have been difficult to locate in their original form. More important, they exemplify important transitions and transformations in Schmitt’s thinking about law and politics as he confronted the challenges of the Second World War and its aftermath, in Europe and across the globe.”
—David Bates, Professor, Department of Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley
“In a new translation of impressive accuracy, we can now read additional brilliant evidence of the critical spirit of one of the sharpest and most controversial intellectuals of the twentieth century, who again proves himself able to return from his hunt with a rare and valuable game.”
—Carlo Galli, Professor of History of Political Theory, University of Bologna, and author of Janus’s Gaze: Essays on Carl Schmitt
