There are lines of relationship that seem bizarre, especially when they are found in one and the same person. Without a doubt, Carl Schmitt belongs in such a register, and this is even though he personally did not undergo any significant shedding of his skin, but remained largely true to himself in his philosophy, from Political Theology to his late writings. More than the thinker, therefore, his followers leave behind the impression of a hopelessly fragmented, indeed downright multiple, intellectual bunch. That Carl Schmitt (who, in the Weimar Republic, was still courted by the Communists and revered by Walter Benjamin) should become the intellectual stirrup holder of the National Socialists is a turn of events that could be explained by the horseshoe theory, according to which the political extremes touch each other. But it is, however, much stranger that the crown jurist of the Third Reich, with his writing on the partisan, should become the spokesman for the Red Army Faction. After all, their impulse was precisely settling accounts with their parent's generation and the National Socialist legacy – which should have prohibited Schmitt's invocation. That he was nevertheless rediscovered had to do with the shared contempt for liberal democracy (which Schmitt derided as a
Carl Schmitt and his Heirs
Carl Schmitt and his Heirs
Carl Schmitt and his Heirs
There are lines of relationship that seem bizarre, especially when they are found in one and the same person. Without a doubt, Carl Schmitt belongs in such a register, and this is even though he personally did not undergo any significant shedding of his skin, but remained largely true to himself in his philosophy, from Political Theology to his late writings. More than the thinker, therefore, his followers leave behind the impression of a hopelessly fragmented, indeed downright multiple, intellectual bunch. That Carl Schmitt (who, in the Weimar Republic, was still courted by the Communists and revered by Walter Benjamin) should become the intellectual stirrup holder of the National Socialists is a turn of events that could be explained by the horseshoe theory, according to which the political extremes touch each other. But it is, however, much stranger that the crown jurist of the Third Reich, with his writing on the partisan, should become the spokesman for the Red Army Faction. After all, their impulse was precisely settling accounts with their parent's generation and the National Socialist legacy – which should have prohibited Schmitt's invocation. That he was nevertheless rediscovered had to do with the shared contempt for liberal democracy (which Schmitt derided as a