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

Author: (German) Werner Hamacher
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-01
Features: In this richly informative new book, Hamacher explores the fate of the ambiguous intellectual legacy of Carl Schmitt, a leading anti-liberal figure, in the postwar era. Hamacher establishes insightful connections between Schmitt's various students, readers, and critics. These connections span the political field, covering almost all important European countries. The book not only helps understand Schmitt's later career but also greatly benefits in grasping the outline of postwar European thought. As a unique perspective that may strike some as unconventional, the book sets its starting point in observing postwar European government thought from the vantage point of a notorious former Nazi, yet it reveals a wealth of about the period, as well as the state of contemporary European political theory, which is marked by sorrow and conflict. It is an important book, and anyone interested in modern political thought can benefit from this paradoxical study. Hamacher has written 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 postwar 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.