Dangerous Minds: Carl Schmitt in the Intellectual Currents of Postwar Europe

Author: (German) Miller, translated by Zhang Xian, Deng Xiaoqing
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-01
Features: In this richly informative new book, Miller explores the fate of the ambiguous intellectual legacy of Carl Schmitt, a key figure in anti-liberalism, in the post-war era. Miller establishes insightful connections between Schmitt's various students, readers, and critics. These connections span the political sphere, covering almost all important European countries. The book not only helps understand Schmitt's later career but also provides significant insights into the panorama 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 period and the current state of European political theory, marked by sadness and conflict. This is an important book, and anyone interested in modern political thought can benefit from this paradoxical study. Miller has produced an extraordinary work on the life and legacy of Schmitt. Schmitt, once infamous as a legal and political theorist, intellectual adventurer, and mythmaker, whose ideas continued to thrive long after his collaboration with the Nazis, attracting numerous 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 intended to uphold liberal democracy.