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Carl Schmitt and the Jews: the "Jewish Question," the Holocaust, and German legal theory

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posted on 2023-06-08, 00:35 authored by Raphael Gross
German jurist and legal theorist Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) significantly influenced Western political and legal thinking in the last century, yet his life and work have also stirred considerable controversy. While his ideas have been used and diffused by prominent philosophers on both the left and the right, such as Jurgen Habermas and Leo Strauss, his Nazi-era past, especially his active efforts to remove Jewish influence from German law, has cast a cloud over his life and oeuvre. Still, his many supporters have generally been successful in claiming that Schmitt's was an "antisemitism of opportunity," a temporary affectation to gain favor with the Nazis. In "Carl Schmitt and the Jews", available in English for the first time, historian Raphael Gross vigorously repudiates this "opportunism thesis." Through a reading of Schmitt's corpus, some of which became available only after his death, Gross highlights the importance of the "Jewish Question" on the breadth of Schmitt's work. According to Gross, Schmitt's antisemitism was at the core of his work - before, during, and after the Nazi era. His influential polarities of "friend and foe," "law and nomos," "behemoth and Leviathan," and "ketechon and Antichrist" emerge from a conceptual template in which "the Jew" is defined as adversary, undermining the Christian order with secularization. The presence of this template at the heart of Schmitt's work, Gross contends, calls for a major reassessment of Schmitt's role within contemporary cultural and legal theory.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Publisher

University of Wisconsin Press

Pages

344.0

ISBN

9780299222406

Series

George L Mosse series in modern European cultural and intellectual history

Department affiliated with

  • History Publications

Notes

Also in Japanese translation, published by Hosnei University Press Japan 2002.

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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