Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt : the Politics of Order and Myth.

212 Pages·2013·2.427 MB·English

by  Tralau, Johan

Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt
Thomas Hobbes, the English 17th century philosopher, and Carl Schmitt,
Hitler’s ‘crown jurist’, a political thinker and authorof an enigmatic bookon
Hobbes, are increasingly relevant today for two reasons. First, they address
the problemof political order, so important when wewitness failed states, the
privatisation of war, and the rise of political violence that does not derive
from the state. Secondly, they are both crucial sources for the use of mythol-
ogy in politics; moreover, they address the key issue of our time, namely, the
relation betweenpolitics and religion. This collection ofimportant newessays
addresses Hobbes and Schmitt as political thinkers, their importance for pre-
sent-day politics and society, their conceptions of myth and politics, and
Schmitt’s use of Hobbes in (and some say against) the Third Reich. When
myth, violence and revelation re-emerge as political forces, it is important to
understand Hobbes’s and Schmitt’s answers to the problems of their time –
and to those ofours.
This book was based on a special issue of the Critical Review of Interna-
tional Social and Political Philosophy.
Johan Tralau teaches Politics at Uppsala universitet, Sweden.
234 x 156 HARDBACK
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Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt
The Politics of Order and Myth
Edited by
Johan Tralau
Firstpublished2011
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Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
Acknowledgements 1
1. Introduction: Thomas Hobbes, Carl Schmitt, and three
conceptions of politics
Johan Tralau 3
2. Schmitt’s Behemoth
Tomaž Mastnak 17
3. Hobbes and Schmitt on the name and nature of
Leviathan revisited
Patricia Springborg 39
4. Re-imagining Leviathan: Schmitt and Oakeshott on Hobbes
and the problem of political order
Jan-Werner Müller 59
5. Hobbes’s paradox redux
Roberto Farneti 79
6. The liberal slip of Thomas Hobbes’s authoritarian pen
Gabriella Slomp 99
7. Does Hobbes have a concept of the enemy?
Stephen Holmes 113
8. From Roman Catholicism to mechanized oppression: on
political-theological disjunctures in Schmitt’s Weimar thought
John P. McCormick 133
9. Hobbes, Schmitt, and the paradox of religious liberality
Karsten Fischer 141
10. The significance of Hobbes’s conception of power
John Dunn 159
v
CONTENTS
11. Order, the ocean, and Satan: Schmitt’s Hobbes, National
Socialism, and the enigmatic ambiguity of friend and foe
Johan Tralau 177
Index 195
vi
Notes on Contributors
John Dunn studied history at Cambridge and Harvard. He is a Fellow of
King’s College and Professor of Political Theory in Cambridge. His books
include The Political Thought of John Locke (1969), The Politics of Soci-
alism (1984), Locke (1984), The History of Political Theory (1996), and
Setting the People Free (2005). He has been avisiting professor in Ghana,
India, Japan, Canada, Italy, and the United States (Tulane, the University
of Minnesota, Yale). He is a Fellow of the British Academy, chaired its
Political Studies Section from 1994–1997 and served on its Council from
2004–2007. He is also Foreign Honorary Member of the American Acad-
emy of Arts and Sciences.
Roberto Farneti is Assistant Professor of Politics at the School of Economics
and Management of the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano and the reci-
pient of an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship at the J.W. Goethe Uni-
versität, Frankfurt am Main. His work has appeared in peer-refereed
journals such as History of Political Thought, Critical Inquiry, Polity,
Theory&Event,Philosophy&SocialCriticism, TheReviewofPolitics,and
Philosophia. He is the author of the book Il canone moderno: Filosofia
politica e genealogia (Turin, 2002).
Karsten Fischer studied political science, philosophy and public international
law at the Universities of Bonn and Frankfurt am Main; 1998 Dr. rer. soc.
at Humboldt-University Berlin; 1998–2002 Postdoctoral Research Fellow
and coordinator of the interdisciplinary research group ‘Common Good
and Civic Spirit’ at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences; 2003–
2006 Assistant Professor; 2006–2009 Associate Professor; 2009–2010 Visit-
ing Professor for Political Science at Humboldt-University Berlin. Since
2010, he has held the position of Full Professor (Chair) for Political
Theory at University of Munich (LMU). His main focus in research and
teaching is political theory, history of political ideas, politics and religion,
theories of statehood, democratic theory, politics and law. For his pub-
lications, see http://www.gsi.uni-muenchen.de/personen/professoren/fischer/
publikat_fischer.html.
vii
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Stephen Holmes is Walter E. Meier Professorof Lawat New York University
School of Law.
Tomaž Mastnak is Director of Research in the Institute of Philosophy, Slo-
veneAcademyofSciences andArtsinLjubljana.HeiscurrentlyaVisiting
Fellow at the Critical Theory Institute, University of California at Irvine.
His field of research is history of Western political thought, with special
focus on Hobbes and his Behemoth; the historyof the idea of Europe; and
Europe and the Muslim world. He is currently working on Schmitt’s cri-
tique of Hobbes. His publications include Crusading Peace: Christendom,
the Muslim World, and Western Political Order (2002; Arabic translation
2003; Croatian translation 2005); and Evropa: istorija politickog pojma
[Europe: history of a political concept] (Belgrade, 2007).
John P. McCormick, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chi-
cago, is the author of Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism (1997), Weber,
Habermas and Transformations of the European State (2006), and
Machiavellian Democracy (2010), all published by Cambridge University
Press.
Jan-Werner Müller teaches in the Politics Department at Princeton Uni-
versity. He is the authorof Constitutional Patriotism (2007), A Dangerous
Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-war European Thought (2003) and Another
Country: German Intellectuals, Unification and National Identity (2000).
He is completing a new history of political thought in twentieth-century
Europe.
Gabriella Slomp isSenior Lectureratthe UniversityofStAndrews.Sheisthe
author of Thomas Hobbes and the Political Philosophy of Glory (Macmil-
lan Palgrave, 2000) and of Carl Schmitt and the Politics of Hostility, Vio-
lence and Terror (Palgrave, 2009); she is editor of Thomas Hobbes
(Ashgate, 2008) and co-editor (with R. Prokhovnik) of After Hobbes
International Political Theory (Palgrave, 2010). She has contributed several
articles on Hobbes and Schmitt to journals such as History of Political
Thought, PoliticalStudies,JournalofMoralPhilosophy,Telos,andCritical
Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.
Patricia Springborg, formerly Professor in Political Theory at the University
of Sydney, is now professore ordinario in the School of Economics of the
FreeUniversityofBolzano,Italy.AmemberoftheAustralianAcademyof
the Social Sciences, she has been a Visiting Fellow at research institutes in
Berlin, Oxford, and Uppsala, and was the recipient of a John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur Award, taken up at the Brookings Institution in
Washington, DC. She is the author of The Problem of Human Needs and
the Critique of Civilization: Patriarchal Monarchy and the Feminine Prin-
ciple; Royal Persons; Western Republicanism and the Oriental Prince;
Mary Astell: Theorist of Freedom from Domination, and three editions of
viii
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Mary Astell’s writings. She is the editor of the Cambridge Companion to
Hobbes’s Leviathan, and co-editor of the first critical edition of Hobbes’s
Historia eccesiastica (Honoré Champion, 2008).
Johan Tralau teaches politics at Uppsala universitet. He has been a visiting
scholar in Tokyo, Berlin, at the New School of Social Research, in Rome,
and in Hanover. In 2007–2008, he hosted his own TV show, Kanon-TV, on
the Swedish channel Axess TV. His publications include his books, Män-
niskoskymning (2002, German trans. 2005), and Draksådd. Den grekiska
tragedin som politiskt tänkande (2010); his work has been (or will shortly
be) published in journals such as Political Theory; Philosophisches Jahr-
buch; Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und
Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft; European Journal of Political Theory; and
History of Political Thought.
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