Carl Schmitt

Carl Schmitt remains one of the 20th century's most unsettling and influential political thinkers, a figure whose sharp critiques of liberal democracy are inseparable from his deeply compromised personal history. A brilliant German jurist, he sought to uncover the raw, pre-legal foundations of politics, arguing that the core concept was the distinction between friend and enemy. His work on sovereignty—centered on who holds the power to declare a 'state of exception' and suspend the law—provided a theoretical framework for authoritarian rule. While his ideas were eagerly utilized by the rising Nazi regime, which he joined in 1933, his later fall from favor did little to dim the provocative power of his thought. Post-war, barred from academic life, his writings continued to haunt philosophers and theorists, forcing relentless questions about the limits of law and the nature of political authority.