The Tyranny of Values and Other Texts

by Carl Schmitt

Translated by Samuel Garrett Zeitlin
Edited by Russell A. Berman and Samuel Garrett Zeitlin
With a Preface by David Pan

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 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

"Meticulous, learned, thoughtful, these translations by Samuel Zeitlin are a tremendous achievement and will be an invaluable resource for Schmitt scholars in the English-speaking world."
—Martin A. Ruehl, Senior Lecturer in German Intellectual History, University of Cambridge

"Samuel Garrett Zeitlin gives us a vivid and true translation of these important texts whilst allowing the reader to appreciate the peculiarities of Schmitt's thought and mode of expression. To anyone who wants to understand the trajectory of Carl Schmitt as a political thinker, these translations will be a highly illuminating read."
—Clara Maier, Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung

"The Tyranny of Values is one of Carl Schmitt's most provocative later works. Schmitt raises the concern that, by seeing the world in terms of commensurable values, humans are driven toward substantively unreasonable aims and ultimately violent conflict with one another. He also reflects on his earlier Weimar-era ideas, including the dynamic of legality and legitimacy, the political, and the liberal rule of law. Also included in this volume are several of Schmitt's shorter works that broaden our understanding of his views on the future of international order. In all, these translations shed invaluable additional light on many facets of his thought including concepts like the partisan and enmity as well as major historical thinkers such as Machiavelli, Hobbes, Shakespeare, and Weber."
—Benjamin A. Schupmann, Duke Kunshan University, and author of Carl Schmitt's State and Constitutional Theory: A Critical Analysis

Contents

Preface by David Pan

Note on the Edition and Translation

Acknowledgments

The Tyranny of Values

Introduction

The Tyranny of Values: Reflections of a Jurist on Value Philosophy

Other Texts

Machiavelli, on the 22nd of June 1927

The Forming of the French Spirit via the Legists

Amnesty or the Force of Forgetting

Three Hundred Years' Leviathan

The Historical Structure of the Contemporary World-Opposition between East and West

What Have I Done?

The Order of the World after the Second World War

To the True Johann Jakob Rousseau, on the 28th of June 1962

Dialogue on the Partisan

On the TV-Democracy: The Aggressiveness of Progress

Works Consulted

ISBN 978-0-914386-73-5
230 + xx pages
Pub. Date: December 17, 2018