Abstract
Carl Schmitt, the supreme jurist of the Third Reich, bestowed legal legitimacy on Hitler's dictatorial rule. A genealogy of his primary writings of the German jurist shows that his romance with the Nazis was not the result of an historical accident, and proves that there is a thread running from his early theoretical writings to his juridical position and his radical political activity during the thirties. Schmitt is a member of the ‘nihilist order’—thinkers, artists and cultural critics who promogulated the nihilistic position which at the same time was a dynamic structure on a totalitarian basis. The members of the ‘nihilist order’ generally moved from nihilistic criticism to totalitarian conclusions. Schmitt, on the other hand, took the opposite route—from totalitarianism to nihilism.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 273-300 |
Number of pages | 28 |
Journal | Politics, Religion and Ideology |
Volume | 20 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 3 Jul 2019 |
Keywords
- Carl Schmitt
- decisionism
- fascism
- national-socialism
- nihilism
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Molecular Biology
- Religious studies
- Philosophy