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Renewing the West by Renewing Common Sense Announcing a call for papers and plenary session panelists for an international congress to discuss the revolutionary proposal “Renewing the West by Renewing Common Sense” Location: Seminary of the Immaculate Conception, 440 West Neck Road, Huntington, Long Island, NY 11743 Dates: Thursday afternoon July 17, 2014, to Sunday morning July 20, 2014 As an occasional feature on TELOSscope, we highlight a past Telos article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Beau Mullen looks at Gabriella Slomp’s “Thomas Hobbes, Carl Schmitt, and the Event of Conscription” from Telos 147 (Summer 2009). Obama’s New Iran Policy and the Temptation of Appeasement Matthias Küntzel, author of Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism, and the Roots of 9/11 (Telos Press, 2008), will speak on “Obama’s New Iran Policy and the Temptation of Appeasement,” at Columbia University on Wednesday, March 12th, at 5:30pm. The event is being sponsored by LionPAC, the Columbia University Chapter of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, and the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy. The location of the event will be Uris Hall, Room 141. The Oligarchs of Silicon Valley Who: Author Joel Kotkin (Forbes, Daily Beast) What: The Oligarchs of Silicon Valley Where: St. Francis College, Maroney Forum for Arts, Culture & Education, 180 Remsen Street, Brooklyn Heights, NY 11201 When: Thursday, March 20, 6:00pm to 8:00pm This event is free and open to the public. In celebration of Small Press Month, Telos Press is now offering a 20% discount on all books and all back issues of Telos purchased at our website during the month of March. It’s a great chance for you to catch up on our latest books, including Ernst Jünger’s The Forest Passage and The Adventurous Heart, as well our recent special issues on Italian Jews and Fascism, Politics After Metaphysics, and Hans Blumenberg. As an occasional feature on TELOSscope, we highlight a past Telos article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Linas Jokubaitis looks at Paul Piccone and Gary Ulmen’s “Schmitt’s ‘Testament’ and the Future of Europe” from Telos 83 (Spring 1990). |
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As Gabriella Slomp points out in the opening of her article “Thomas Hobbes, Carl Schmitt, and the Event of Conscription,” scholars are split on how to view the relationship between Hobbes and Schmitt. Some see Schmitt as Hobbes’s heir apparent, while others think that Schmitt’s thinking is in fact a rejection of much of Hobbes’s work. Both thinkers emphasize man’s warlike nature, they hold that the state exists to protect men from violent death at the hands of other men, and they maintain that a strong state with unlimited power is best suited to this aim. Both agree that man has an obligation to the state that is reciprocal to the duty of the state to provide security. In this piece, Slomp examines both Schmitt’s and Hobbes’s views of the extent of this obligation and comes to the conclusion that the two are in fact in disagreement. Using their writings on conscription, Slomp reveals that Hobbes has much more concern for the sovereignty of the individual whereas Schmitt never wavers in his affording primacy to the group or state. 
A Presentation by Matthias Küntzel 
When Schmitt drafted his lecture “The Plight of European Jurisprudence” in 1944, he had reasons to believe that it would be his last lecture. After a failed assassination attempt on Hitler, his friend Johannes Popitz was arrested as an important conspirator in the plot and was later put to death. This is why the article by Paul Piccone and Gary Ulmen on this lecture is called “Schmitt’s ‘Testament’ and the Future of Europe.” The lecture did not prove to be Schmitt’s last. The irony is that what Schmitt wrote as his own testament can today be read as a testament of Europe. The validity of this claim depends only on how one views the current state of Europe. 
