Carl Schmitt

Este artículo busca interrogar el sentido de lo político en el pensamiento de Karl Marx a partir de la lectura de Carl Schmitt. Aunque, por un lado, el jurista alemán considera que el marxismo subsume los problemas políticos bajo cuestiones económicas, por otro lado, destaca que Marx pensó lo político a partir de la agudización del antagonismo y de la dictadura del proletariado. Sin embargo, para Schmitt, estos dos elementos de lo político en Marx están construidos sobre la base de la lógica hegeliana de la historia. En este texto se discute esta herencia hegeliana en el pensamiento político marxiano y se sugiere una alternativa para pensar la política a partir del “materialismo práctico”, en el cual se acentúa la acción contingente que emerge en medio de la coexistencia humana.

Tesi di laurea triennale in filosofia in cui, attraverso la lettura dei testi di A. Kojève, si cerca di rendere chiavi di lettura perfettamente idonee alla comprensione del mondo in cui viviamo quei concetti-cardine del pensiero del russo-francese quali la fine della storia e la fine della politica.

Inhalt
Christoph Binkelmann: Enthusiasmus und Skepsis. Das europäische Pendel
Burkhard Nonnenmacher: Kants Postulatenlehre als Prüfstein für Heideggers »These der neuzeitlichen Ontologie«?
Günter Zöller : Ex aliquo nihil. Fichtes Anti-Kreationismus
Kai U. Gregor: Eine Kritik innerhalb der Grenzen der Vernunft. Wilhelm Weischedels Grundlegungsversuch einer Philosophischen Theologie im Zeitalter des Nihilismus und ein Gedanke Fichtes
Marco Rampazzo Bazzan: Die Staatslehre Fichtes unter dem Aspekt der
politischen Theologie nach Carl Schmitt
Cristiana Senigaglia: Die Spur der Andersheit: Fichte und Levinas
Detlev Pätzold Hegels Philosophie der Religion: Die Stellung der Religion zwischen Kunst und Philosophie
Arthur Kok: Absoluter Geist und Schöpfung. Jan Hollaks neothomistische Hegelkritik
Kazimir Drilo: Kritik des religiösen Bewusstseins. Falk Wagners theologische Interpretation von Hegels »Wissenschaft der Logik«
Jakub Kloc-Konkołowicz: »Der Mensch lebt in zwei Welten […]«. Religion und Staat in Hegels Ansicht und in der heutigen Debatte
Elena Ficara: Der ontologische Gottesbeweis bei Hegel und in der analytischen Philosophie 
Robert Marszałek: Die Gegenwart der Religionslehre des mittleren Schelling
Mildred Galland-Szymkowiak Philosophie und Religion bei K.W.F. Solger.
Ein Beitrag zur nachkantischen Frage nach dem Prinzip der Philosophie
Patrick Grüneberg: Der transzendentale Gott
Wibke Rogge: Emmanuel Lévinas: Über die Beziehung des Unendlichen zum Seienden als Gemeinschaft in der Trennung
Ansgar Lyssy : Darwin, Gott und Neurotheologie. Was können uns die Biowissenschaften über die Religion sagen?

Transcendence and Power. Carl Schmitt's Political Theology

L' opera di CarI Schmitt (1888-1985) rappresenta una delle più forti provocazioni del pensiero del Novecento. La sua ricerca intellettuale e politica spazia nei diversi ambiti del diritto costituzionale e internazionale, della filosofia e della scienza della politica, della storia delle istituzioni, della letteratura e della teologia e si intreccia singolarmente con le vicende più drammatiche della storia contemporanea, in particolare
con la fine della repubblica di Weimar e con i primi anni del regime nazista, che lo vedono coinvolto in ruoli di primo piano. Il suo pensiero, riscoperto in questi ultimi anni, si trova oggi al centro di un serrato dibattito e di accese controversie.
Una delle provocazioni più significative di Schmitt è quella legata alla sua interpretazione del concetto di "teologia politica", un concetto destinato, pur con diverse interpretazioni, ad avere notevole fortuna nel pensiero teologico del '900, tanto da essere ancora oggi al centro dell'attenzione. Questo volume ricostruisce analiticamente, a partire dai primi
scritti fino alle ultime elaborazioni, la genesi, lo sviluppo e le applicazioni del concetto di "teologia politica" collocandolo sullo sfondo della sua ricerca e analizzando le reazioni e le critiche suscitate negli ambienti filosofici e teologici. Dall'angolo visuale della "teologia politica" l'intera opera schmittiana riceve una nuova e suggestiva luce e assume in certo senso valore di simbolo dell'itinerario della riflessione contemporanea sul politico, sul potere e sul suo ineliminabile riferimento alla trascendenza.

"Weimar Cumhuriyeti’nin çarpıcı bir özelliği, dönemin yetkin kamu hukukçularının, karşılaştıkları güncel sorunlara yoğun bir ilgi göstermeleri ve bu çerçevede kapsamlı tartışmalar yürütmeleridir. Kelsen ve Schmitt arasındaki tartışmayı özel kılan, kamu hukukunun pek çok temel kavramına dair iki farklı görüşü içermesidir. Her şeyden önce, korunacak olan anayasanın anlamı, bir koruyucu arayışına yol açan tehlikenin kaynağı, koruyucunun kim olacağı ve tüm bu sorunların arka planında yer alan başlıca mesele olarak demokrasi kavramı... Fakat tartışma konuları ve karşıtlıklar bunlarla da sınırlı kalmaz; devletin niteliği, kuvvetler ayrılığının anlamı, parlamentarizmin özellikleri ve sorunları, siyasi partilerin işlevi, yargısal kararın ayırt edici özellikleri ve tabii Rousseau’nun demokrasi kuramının yorumu konusunda da aynı keskinlikle devam eder."

Weimar döneminde yaşanan bir kamu hukuku tartışmasının bugün bir güncelliği var mıdır? Dünyanın popülist sağ siyasetlerin eksenine kaydığı, anayasanın ve kamu tarifinin “kişisel ihtiyaçlara” göre sündürüldüğü, demokrasinin pekâlâ siyasal “mugalata” olarak ele alınabildiği bir dönemde kuşkusuz bu sorunun yanıtı “evet”tir! Berke Özenç Demokrasiyi ve Anayasayı Korumak’ta içinde yaşadığımız çağın siyasal tartışma başlıklarından -belki de- en önemlisini, Weimar döneminin ışığında kapsamlı bir şekilde ele alıyor.

The twenty-first century has seen a renewal of scholarly interest in religion that might seem surprising, especially given how many scholars have for so long steadfastly behaved as though religion was in progressive decline since sometime in the eighteenth century, and that this decline was inevitable (Berger). Precisely because religion has thwarted this and other assumptions, there is today a pervasive uncertainty about just how to understand religion. What is especially perplexing, as José Casanova observes, is “the assumption of public roles by precisely those religious traditions which both theories of secularization and cyclical theories of religious revival had assumed were becoming ever more marginal and irrelevant in the modern world” (5). Rather than abandon politics for the safety of private life, in other words, religion has found new and creative ways to adapt and reinvigorate itself in the public sphere. In response to this state of affairs, some have proposed that political theology is the rubric best suited to reconsidering the relationship between religion and politics. Political theology, in this context, refers to the “stories we tell ourselves about our nature as humans, our aspirations for order and justice in light of the sacred, and what, thereby, constitutes and limits legitimate rule over our collective lives” (Kessler 1). But it also refers “to the impossibility of both to completely separate and to completely conflate politics and religion” (Vardoulakis 125). To understand why interest in political theology has emerged at this particular moment, when there seems to be pervasive uncertainty about the fate of religion in the modern world, it is important to recognize that its appeal is not so much its analytic bite but the synthetic possibilities it offers; political theology offers new possibilities for charting relationships that cross otherwise hard and fast barriers. It is clearly this desire to capitalize on new possibilities for thinking about religion and politics that motivates Hent de Vries to argue, in his introduction to Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World, that political theology “reach[es] further . . . upon the central questions of political philosophy and political theory” than other approaches to religion, and offers, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 2014 Vol. 36, No. 3, 269–285, https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08905495.2014.919991

The Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa once wrote that ‘the village is larger than the city’ because you can see ‘more of the world from there’ than you can from anywhere else. In this small world, the familiar and intermittent sounds of bells dictate the time of our childhood; a stroll through its worn alleys makes us imagine the echo of our ancestors’ steps; the tired light coming from an old window suggests the lingering presence of lost loves. The village is larger than the city, and even than the modern metropolis, because, as Pessoa writes, in it ‘I am the size of what I see, and not the size of my height.’1 To be the size of what we see: there is an abyssal truth in these words. Within this form of life, the mantle of representation fits perfectly on the shoulders of existence. Here in the village, according to Pessoa, seeing and being coincide.

The contemporary world rests on a decisive reversal of these two experiences. Today the human is no longer the living being who has sight; if anything, she is the seeing creature who pictures life.

From the mid-1990’s on, contingency developed into one of the leading
key concepts of the social science and achieved an axiomatic status in leftist political and social theory, first and foremost through the central postmarxist thesis of the “Lack of Foundations in the Social”. That the Renaissance of contingency is embedded in the historical parallel rise of decisionistic theories, which helped make the concept popular again, is the historical situation from where the argument in the article starts and which provoked the following research question: are the historical parallel renaissances of contingency and decision based theories coincidental or is their logical relation necessary? The goal of the first chapter is to outline the semantic complexity of contingency and its context-dependent varieties. Two extremes of the concept will be separated from each other. One of those extremes, today’s popular one, will be identified as decisionisms corresponding contingency. The discussion of why decisionistic arguments are a problem within theories with progressive intentions, will conclude the article.

A exploração do espaço sideral é um tema recorrente na cultura pop: filmes, séries e livros dedicam suas páginas e tempo de tela às concepções imaginárias (ou “nomos” imaginários) do que seria uma vida fora do planeta Terra. Desde os princípios da ficção científica no século XIX até a segunda metade do século XX, a humanidade passou por diversas revoluções tecnológicas que moldaram a sua imaginação. E vice-versa, como a imaginação inspirou a ciência. Enfim, foi durante a Guerra Fria que a tão sonhada corrida espacial se tornou algo concreto: o lançamento do satélite Sputnik (1957), o primeiro homem no espaço (Yuri Gagarin) em 1961, e o homem na Lua em 1969, por exemplo, são três marcos da exploração humana no espaço que se realizaram em um curto intervalo temporal. Desde então, as descobertas astronômicas muito evoluíram, como mostra a recente descoberta das ondas gravitacionais previstas por Einstein, e conseguimos mapear cada vez melhor o espaço infinito que nos entorna, principalmente graças aos nossos satélites e sondas espaciais cada vez mais eficientes, capazes de explorar os confins do nosso sistema solar e nos enviar imagens cada vez mais perfeiçoadas ver (a mais recente imagem do buraco negro, por exemplo).

[DE] Die Rezeptionsgeschichte des Werks von Carl Schmitt lässt sich grob in zwei Etappen gliedern. Während zunächst seine Kritik an der liberalen Demokratie im Zentrum des Interesses stand, verlagerte sich der Fokus nach dem Ende des Kalten Krieges auf seine Philosophie der internationalen Beziehungen. In diesem Artikel wird gezeigt, dass auch Jürgen Habermas’ aufmerksame Lektüre von Schmitts Texten diesen Schritten weitgehend folgt. Statt einer naiven Verwendung und Übernahme Schmitt’scher Kategorien findet sich bei Habermas allerdings eine kritische Aneignung ihres explikativen Potenzials. Darüber hinaus zeigt er große Vorbehalte gegenüber zentralen Ideen des sogenannten »Kronjuristen des Dritten Reiches«. Dies betrifft insbesondere das in alternativen politischen Kreisen bis heute weit verbreitete Konzept des »Politischen«.
[EN] While initially criticism of liberal democracy was the aspect of Carl Schmitt’s work which received attention, since the end of the Cold War interest has shifted towards his philosophy of international relations. Throughout this article it is shown that to a large extent Jürgen Habermas’ attentive reading of certain Schmitt texts follows in these steps. Rather than naively using Schmitt’s categories, Habermas practices a critical appropriation of his explanatory potential. Nevertheless, he manifests enormous reservations regarding the elongated shadow cast by his ideas and, in particular, by his concept of the political which is so prevalent today in alternative political circles.

Starting from observing the prevailing confusion about the meaning of "political theology", this paper individuates three main meanings for the concept, then showing how each of them is "impossible" in the specific sense of contradicting the validity claims it would itself raise. The main argument proceeds by reprising Augustine's philosophical critique of the first meaning of political theology, then showing how and in what sense the other two are also subject to it. The conclusion is that "political theology" may be useful as a sociological/descriptive concept, but it is not an appropriate object of philosophy, not even as a polemical foil, except than to demonstrate its impossibility.

El presente artículo revisa la teoría de la evolución
histórica de Carl Schmitt, usando como hilo conductor
sus escritos sobre el concepto de nomos. En ellos se
distinguen los estadios históricos por un modo
específico de ordenar el territorio y un particular
imaginario colectivo sobre el espacio, elementos que
tienen consecuencias jurídicas, políticas y militares. En
base a ese esquema, se revisa la «gran revolución
espacial» que Schmitt situó en los siglos XVI y XVII.
Luego se discuten las particularidades del estadio
histórico contemporáneo, iniciado según el autor en el
siglo XX, pero difusamente caracterizado a lo largo de
su obra. Se postula que, para Schmitt, la etapa actual
de la historia universal es identificada principalmente
por la apropiación de grandes terrenos industriales y
una comprensión del espacio como campo de fuerzas
en donde la humanidad despliega su energía,
actividad y esfuerzo.

des Politischen" : zu einem Dialog unter Abwesenden / Heinrich Meier. -3. durchges. und erw. Aufl. -Stuttgart ; Weimar : Metzler, 2013. -200 S. ; 21 cm. -ISBN 978-3-476-02467-1 : EUR 19.95 [#3058] Es ist nicht übertrieben, wenn man das kleine Buch Heinrich Meiers als Standardwerk bezeichnet, auch wenn dieser Begriff andererseits nicht wirklich trifft, worum es diesem Buch zu tun war und ist. Lange Zeit ist das Buch vor allem als Beitrag zur anschwellenden Sekundärliteratur zu Carl Schmitt verstanden worden. Die Fokussierung Meiers auf Leo Strauss und damit in erster Linie auf die Sache, die mit dem Namen Strauss, verbunden war, erschien manchem Leser wohl als bloß okkasionelle Angelegenheit. Spätestens aber mit dem Buch Die Lehre Carl Schmitts hätte der aufmerksame Leser des Untertitels dieser Arbeit verstehen können, daß es Meier um des Selbstverständnisses der Philosophie willen um die Unterscheidung zwischen Politischer Theologie und Politischer Philosophie ging. 1 Es muß angesichts mancher Mißverständnisse, die sich in der Sekundärliteratur vor allem zu Schmitt immer wieder finden, 2 darauf hingewiesen werden, daß Meiers Exponierung der Politischen Theologie im Werk Schmitts sich in keiner Weise dem Ziel einer Schmitt-Apologie verdankte und nicht als Affirmation einer Politischen Theologie im emphatischen Sinne gemeint war. Ande-1 Siehe Die Lehre Carl Schmitts : vier Kapitel zur Unterscheidung politischer Theologie und politischer Philosophie / Heinrich Meier. -3. Aufl., mit einem Rückblick: Der Streit um die politische Theologie. -Stuttgart ; Weimar : Metzler, 2009. -304 S. : Ill. ; 21 cm. -ISBN 978-3-476-02314-8 : EUR 19.95 [#0563]. -Rez.: IFB 09-1/2 https://swbplus.bsz-bw.de/bsz309033500rez1.htm 2 Siehe exemplarisch Carl Schmitt als politischer Philosoph : Versuch einer Bestimmung seiner Stellung bezüglich der Tradition der praktischen Philosophie /

Stanley Kubrick’s political films can be revitalized regarding psychoanalytic biopolitics on power, desire, and subjectivity. Paths of Glory exemplifies how the military system renews itself by scapegoating some of its members, making them ‘bare lives’ outside the law. Such a sovereign regime of biopolitical ‘abjection’ targets the communist half of the world in Dr. Strangelove and even the entire humanity except the few selected in a neo-Nazi eugenic dream mixed with polygamic machoism. Here, the Schmittian political theology overlaps with the Lacanian psychoanalytic sexuation: the sovereign’s divine power enacting the state of exception is analogous to the unrestrained desire of a ‘primal father’ figure exceptional to the symbolic order of castration. Alex in A Clockwork Orange appears as an exception to the law, which then puts him in a prison-hospital complex to make him a normal subject. The aversion therapy for this, however, reveals the institutionalization of sovereign power that treats him as an abject for bioengineering, only to leave him back in a society where he is degraded into a total abject. This abjection is redeemed with the final sexual fantasy, which the obscene superego of the regime itself enjoys. Sexuality is repressed in Kubrick, yet with the illusion of fulfillment. Recruits in Full Metal Jacket are trained to be soldiers (subject) equipped with supralegal power (sovereignty) to kill enemies as homo sacer (abject). However, this subjectivation also implies the absurd masculinization of derogated men into machos who, after undergoing the trainer (father)’s rules and his death, enjoy libidinal culture in fascistic male bondage to share commodified women in Vietnam. In short, the universal phallic function for all men, along with its exception (sovereign/superego), totalizes the world in the masculine logic of identity. The Vietnamese female sniper at the end, then, appears as a true embodiment of femininity whose ‘not-all’ is subject to the phallic function, an abject per se whose difference destroys the illusion of desire. Her death opens an abyss of unthinkable otherness. This paper explores the complexity of all these issues drawing on today’s critical theory, as Kubrick’s political unconscious intimates it in different historical settings of the 20th century for critiques of modern humanity.

of Exception regards the conceptualization of the ambiguity between sovereignty and exception and the way these two terms have become interrelated within the legislative and executive procedures of contemporary democratic states. On one hand, the democratic state entails a check of power that usually consists of the president, the legislative branch, and the parliament; on the other hand, a state of exception can be declared which grants absolute power over the whole political body, entailing a cancelation of legislative procedures such as individual rights, along with a cancellation of protection over the exercise of sovereign power over some or all of its citizens. As Schmidt formulates at the very beginning of his Political Theology [Politische Theologie], the "sovereign is he who decides on the excep-

What is it to act in the time of the eschaton, the last days? How does the experience of time, in the shadow of the end, condition human activity? In recent decades, this question has been taken up by a variety of Italian philosophers, via critiques and elaborations of messianism and ‘katechon’. In the following, I approach this question through a tripartite juxtaposition of works of:
(i) the jurist and political theorist Carl Schmitt,
(ii) the protestant theologian Oscar Cullmann and
(iiii) the philosopher  Giorgio Agamben

"…ein Denkmal des neuen Deutschlands." Der frühe Gehlen über Staat und Philosophie Einleitung Die philosophische Szene der 1930er Jahre in Deutschland zeichnet sich trotz ihrer starken Ideologisierung und Einstimmigkeit durch eine beeindruckende Anzahl veröffentlichter Bücher und Artikel aus. Jedes veröffentlichte Buch wurde von einer Vielzahl überwiegend positiver Rezensionen begleitet. Zwar gab es gegensätzliche Meinungen darüber, wie das philosophische Denken weiterzuentwickeln wäre, aber hinsichtlich der Frage, ob die Philosophie eine ‚rechte' deutsche Philosophie sei bzw. ob sie durch die ideologische Grundlage von Blut und Boden deutscher Nation und die ‚messianische' Führung bestimmt sein soll, herrschte weitgehende Einigkeit. 1 Nach Hitlers Machtergreifung im Jahr 1933 und der Vertreibung ,nicht-arischer' Philosophen von Universitäten und wissenschaftlichen Einrichtungen in ganz Deutschland war es, als hätte sich der ,Zeitgeist' der geistigen Mobilisierung der verbliebenen deutschen Philosophen bemächtigt. All ihre intellektuellen Bemühungen richteten sie auf eine Neubegründung der ,wahren' deutschen Wissenschaft und Erneuerung von Rechtsphilosophie und politischer Philosophie. Es kann sogar gesagt werden, dass die 1930er Jahre in Deutschland das bislang größte informelle philosophische Projekt in Europa waren. Ein Projekt, in dem verschiedene Individuen und verschiedene philosophische Strömungen miteinander konkurrierten, um die offizielle Ideologie der nationalsozialistischen politischen Bewegung durch ihr eigenes Programm zu ersetzen.

ESTICA: Editoriale culturale, politice, recenzii (7 Octombrie 2014) https://www.estica.eu/article/revolutia-conservatoare-germana-si-mostenirea-sa/ În perioada dintre Primul război mondial şi stabilirea celui de-al Treilea Reich, criza economică, politică şi socială care a lovit subit Germania -rezultat al înfrângerii acesteia în războia dat naştere unei mişcări cunoscute sub numele de "Revoluţia Conservatoare" sau şi mai bine cunoscută drept "Mişcarea Revoluţionară Conservatoare", iar membrii acesteia erau denumiţi fie "revoluţionari conservatori" fie "neoconservatori".

This thesis explores the work of two German Jewish émigré scholars, Karl Loewenstein and John H. Herz, and how they confronted the conflict between fascism and democracy throughout the 1930s and during World War II. Loewenstein, in academic publications and later through a campaign of public advocacy, urged the adoption of his theory of militant democracy for the protection of democratic institutions. Originally conceived as temporary legislation to deprive fascists of the fundamental rights they abused in order to seize power, this theory evolved into the understanding by Loewenstein that fascist and democratic states could not coexist, and that fundamental changes must be implemented within the legislative and executive branches of democratic governments to create a more responsive, flexible system. Defined by his pessimistic worldview, Loewenstein was acutely anxious about fascism, especially after the start of World War II. In contrast to Loewenstein, and despite his own pessimism, Herz conceived of an international system that combined both realism and idealism in order to obviate man’s violent and suspicious anthropology and create a peaceful international order in which nations, regardless of their particular political ideology, could coexist.

Mein Vortrag basiert auf meiner Masterarbeit, die sich mit der Rezeption von Carl Schmitts Diagnose des Weltbürgerkrieges durch eine Reihe von Schülern auseinandersetzte. Dabei habe ich mir angesehen wie der Historiker Reinhart Koselleck, die Soziologen Hanno Kesting und Nicolaus Sombart, sowie der Staats-und Verwaltungsrechtler Roman Schnur das Theorem vom Weltbürgerkrieg zur Beschreibung der Situation des Kalten Krieges aufgriffen, ausarbeiteten und schließlich auch veränderten. Heute werde ich mich in erster Linie aber auf Carl Schmitt und den Grundgedanken der These vom Weltbürgerkrieg konzentrieren. (Vielleicht kann ich in der Diskussion kurz auf Unterschiede eingehen, die es bei der Schülergeneration zu Schmitt gibt). Ziel meines in erster Linie ideengeschichtlich angelegten Vortrages ist es zu zeigen, dass der Diagnose vom Weltbürgerkrieg eine Theorie der Moderne und ihrer konstitutiven Krisenhaftigkeit zugrundeliegt.

La burocrazia sconcerta non perché semplicemente aliena, bensì in quanto "aumenta" la realtà con cui interagiamo. A livello percettivo facciamo un salto di quantità e di qualità rispetto al mondo che ci circonda: la classe di oggetti che ci offre l'apparato amministrativo dilata il nostro orizzonte di esperienza, ponendoci a contatto con entità che non dovrebbero esistere. Ed è così che un certificato può far sì che noi - presenti in carne ed ossa davanti a un funzionario - non esistiamo; o che i morti, anziché starsene in pace, abbiano ancora dei doveri di cui render conto, perpetuandosi nell'aldiquà, al nostro fianco, come affaccendatissime esistenze protocollari. Questa situazione paradossale è stata colta con maestria da Franz Kafka attraverso acute analisi sociologiche travestite da enigmi letterari. Ma, per comprendere appieno il suo pensiero, occorre contestualizzarlo nell'ambito di un'articolata discussione su norma, violenza, apparato militare e stato d'eccezione. Ambito in cui teologia e diritto ammiccano l'un l'altra vicendevolmente e, in una spaesante promiscuità, s'intersecano e si confondono.

Seit Menschengedenken faszinieren Himmel und Sterne den Erdenbewohner. Bis zu der kopernikanischen Wende war die Erde die Heimat der Menschen und der Himmel die Heimat Gottes (oder Göttern in nicht-monotheistischen religiösen Kontexten). Durch die wissenschaftliche Erforschung des Weltalls erkannte der Mensch langsam, dass der Himmel über seinem Kopf nicht die Heimat von Gottheiten ist, sondern von Planeten, Sonnen, Teilchen und (in der hypothetischen Physik) Strings. Auch der menschliche Traum vom Fliegen, der erst seit Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts seine Realisierung fand, wurde nur innerhalb von Jahrzehnten von der bemannten Raumfahrt eingeholt. Waren seit Jahrtausenden Himmel und Sterne für den Menschen schier unerreichbar, wurden diese schließlich innerhalb von wenigen Jahrhunderten untersucht, erforscht und schließlich technisch bezwungen. Die Utopie vom menschlichen Leben auf fremden Planeten fernab der Erde, scheint in diesem zeitlichen als keineswegs unerreichbar und in allzu weiter Ferne. Auch der Jurist, Staatstheoretiker und politischer Philosoph Carl Schmitt erkannte noch vor dem Start des Sputnik-Satelliten 1957 oder der Mondlandung 1969, die Bedeutung des Weltraums für die Zukunft der Menschheit. Ausdruck fanden seinen Überlegungen im "Gespräch über den Neuen Raum", ein für das Rundfunkprogramm verfasster, fiktiver Trialog, der anschließt an Schmitts Raumtheorien seines bekannten Werkes "Land und Meer". War die Raumfahrt bis zum heutigen Zeitpunkt primär der Ort wissenschaftlicher Betätigung, stellen sich durch technologische Neuerungen und das Drängen privater Akteure ins Weltall neue Fragen. Diese werden stärker als zuvor Fragen sein, die sich im politische Sinne mit dem Raum, der Souveränität und der soziokulturellen Veränderung des Menschen beschäftigen. Carl Schmitt problematisierte diese Fragen bereits vor der Entstehung der menschlichen Raumfahrt, daher sollen seine Gedanken einer zeitgenössischen Analyse werden und in den heutigen Kontext in Verbindung gebracht werden. Daher wird in der vorliegenden Arbeit zunächst ein kurzer Abriss über das "Gespräch über den neuen Raum" gegeben, sowie ein grober Überblick über das Weltraumrecht. Anschließend erfolgt die Analyse der heutigen Raumfahrt und seiner politischen Implikationen aus Schmittianischer Perspektive. Zum Abschluss erfolgt ein Ausblick auf mögliche Entwicklungen der Raumfahrt und ein zusammenfassendes Resümee. 2

Carl Schmitt continues to haunt German political thought and intellectual life. In order to track the legacy of Schmitt, this article will concentrate on his notion of the ‘decision’ and the post-Weimar development of this idea. The ‘decision’ has proved to be a stumbling block in post-war intellectual debates about the political make-up of German society. Turning one’s attention to the importance of decision-making within a democracy always had to go along with a pronounced distance from the authoritarian ‘decisionism’ which Carl Schmitt and other Weimar intellectuals came to represent. Nevertheless, liberal readings of Schmitt have emerged. Critics like Jürgen Habermasm, however, regard any kind of decisionism as elitist or anti-democratic, even if based on a liberal conviction. This article discusses the link between the anti-liberal decisionism during Weimar and its post-war transformation into a liberal decisionism. It also points to the relationship which, despite the polemical nature of the debate, connects Habermas’ idea of discourse with the post-Weimar notion of decision.

was a conservative German legal, constitutional, and political theorist. Schmitt is often considered to be one of the most important critics of liberalism, parliamentary democracy, and liberal cosmopolitanism. But the value and significance of Schmitt's work is subject to controversy, mainly due to his intellectual support for and active involvement with National Socialism.

This article investigates the significance of Kazuko Kuramoto’s Manchurian Legacy: Memoirs of a Japanese Colonist (1999) as a life narrative that foregrounds the biopolitical implications of modern subjectivity in the context of the global system of nation states. Using the theoretical insights of, primarily, Giorgio Agamben, Carl Schmitt, and Georg Simmel, I argue that Kuramoto’s record of her own experience between Manchuria, Japan, and the United States, showcases the fundamental conflict between the nation and the family as the largest and smallest social circles vying for the individual’s allegiance. This discussion will show that the nation-state’s claim is preeminent and that the political is fundamental to the construction of a viable subjectivity in the modern world, leaving complete exclusion as the only alternative.

In recent years, the West has increasingly experienced the sense that the political aspects of its social life have undergone a profound alteration. There is a sense of blockage, of non-responsiveness, a feeling that the political class no longer represents the interests of the broader society. Underlying all of this is a loss of legitimacy. What exactly is legitimacy? How does it function? How is it lost? These are the questions that I address in this paper. While I refer to Max Weber’s remarks on legitimacy, my thesis is my own. My claim is that legitimacy involves temporal identity. It depends upon the ability of both individuals and peoples to identify themselves as the same over time. Legitimacy’s breakdown is the breakdown of this identity.

Paper for Workshop:  Criticism of religion in the early enlightenment and the associated change in the understanding of nature and normativity.

27 February 2020
Frankfurt University

Thomas Hobbes: Critique, Eschatology and the Katechon
Against Agamben's Eschatological readings of Hobbes