Dangerous Minds (Karl Schmitt in Postwar European Thought)

Author: (German) Miller, translated by Zhang Xian, Deng Xiaojing
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2007-06-01
Features: In this richly informative new book, Miller explores the fate of Carl Schmitt's ambiguous intellectual legacy in post-war anti-liberalism. Miller establishes insightful connections between Schmitt's various students, readers, and critics. These connections span the political sphere, covering almost all major European countries. The book not only helps understand Schmitt's later career but also provides significant insights into the landscape of post-war European thought. As a unique perspective that may strike some as unconventional, the book sets its starting point for observing post-war European governmental thought on a notorious former Nazi, yet it reveals a wealth of about the era and the often tragic and conflicting state of contemporary European political theory. It is an important book, and anyone interested in modern political thought can benefit from this paradoxical study. Miller has written an extraordinary work on the life and legacy of Schmitt. Schmitt, once a notorious legal and political thinker, intellectual adventurer, and mythmaker, whose ideas continued to thrive long after his collaboration with the Nazis, continues to attract a large number of post-war European thinkers on the left. The book excellently demonstrates how Schmitt's thought penetrates the orthodox doctrines of liberalism and can also be traced in various ways of maintaining liberal democracy.