Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism
Against Politics as Technology

McCormick furnishes a comprehensive account of Carl Schmitt's critique of liberalism.

John P. McCormick (Author)

9780521664578, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 13 June 1999

368 pages
23.4 x 15.6 x 1.9 cm, 0.52 kg

"...this extremely well researched work is filled with nuanced and intelligent discussions of Schmitt's legal philosophy, his changing attitude towards commissarial and sovereign dictatorship, his relationship to Lukacs, and a host of other topics. All serious students of Schmitt, Weber, the Frankfurt School, neo-Hegelianism, political representation, and the politics of technology will want to read it." American Political Science Review

This is the first in-depth critical appraisal in English of the political, legal, and cultural writings of Carl Schmitt, perhaps this century's most brilliant critic of liberalism. It offers an assessment of this most sophisticated of fascist theorists without attempting either to apologise for or demonise him. Schmitt's Weimar writings confront the role of technology as it finds expression through the principles and practices of liberalism. Contemporary political conditions such as disaffection with liberalism and the rise of extremist political organizations have rendered Schmitt's work both relevant and insightful. John McCormick examines why technology becomes a rallying cry for both right- and left-wing intellectuals at times when liberalism appears anachronistic, and shows the continuities between Weimar's ideological debates and those of our own age.

Introduction
Part I. Between Critical Theory and Political Existentialism: Schmitt's Confrontation with Technology: 1. Antinomies of 'economic-technical thought': attempting to transcend Weber's Categories of Modernity
2. Myth as antidote to the 'Age of Neutralizations': Nietszche and cultural conflict as response to technology
Part II. Liberalism as Technology's Infiltration of Politics: 3. Emergency powers
4. Representation
5. Law
6. The state
Part III. Liberalism and Fascism: Technology and Politics: Epilogue and summary
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy, from c 1900 - [HPCF]