The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt collects thirty original chapters on the diverse oeuvre of one of the most controversial thinkers of the twentieth century. Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) was a German theorist whose anti-liberalism continues to inspire scholars and practitioners on both the Left and the Right. Despite Schmitt's rabid anti-semitism and partisan legal practice in Nazi Germany, the appeal of his trenchant critiques of, among other things, aestheticism, representative democracy, and international law as well as of his theoretical justifications of dictatorship and rule by exception is undiminished.

Uniquely located at the intersection of law, the social sciences, and the humanities, this volume brings together sophisticated yet accessible interpretations of Schmitt's sprawling thought and complicated biography. The contributors hail from diverse disciplines, including art, law, literature, philosophy, political science, and history. In addition to opening up exciting new avenues of research, The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt provides the intellectual foundations for an improved understanding of the political, legal, and cultural thought of this most infamous of German theorists. A substantial introduction places the trinity of Schmitt's thought in a broad context.

Jens Meierhenrich is Associate Professor of International Relations at London School of Economics.

Oliver Simons is Department Chair and Professor of Germanic Languages at Columbia University.

List of Contributors
A Chronology of Carl Schmitt's Life
A List of Carl Schmitt's Writings

Part I-Introduction
1 "A Fanatic of Order in an Epoch of Confusing Turmoil": The Political, Legal, and Cultural Thought of Carl Schmitt
Jens Meierhenrich and Oliver Simons

Part II-the lives of Carl Schmitt
2 "Catholic Layman of German Nationality and Citizenship"? Carl Schmitt and the Religiosity of Life
Reinhard Mehring

3 The "True Enemy": Antisemitism in Carl Schmitt's Life and Thought
Raphael Gross

4 Schmitt's Diaries
Joseph W. Bendersky

5 Carl Schmitt in Plettenberg
Christian Linder

Part III-the political thought of Carl schmitt
6 Fearing the Disorder of Things: The Development of Carl Schmitt's Institutional Theory, 1919-1938
Jens Meierhenrich

7 Carl Schmitt's Political Theory of Dictatorship
Duncan Kelly

8 The Political Theology of Carl Schmitt
Miguel Vatter

9 Teaching in Vain: Carl Schmitt, Thomas Hobbes, and the Theory of the Sovereign State
John P. McCormick

10 Concepts of the Political in Twentieth-Century European Thought
Samuel Moyn

11 Carl Schmitt's Defense of Democracy
William Rasch

12 Same/Other versus Friend/Enemy: Levinas contra Schmitt
Aryeh Botwinick

13 Carl Schmitt's Concepts of War: A Categorical Failure
Benno Teschke

14 Carl Schmitt's Concept of History
Matthias Lievens

15 What's "Left" in Schmitt? From Aversion to Appropriation in Contemporary Political Theory
Matthew G. Specter

Part IV-the legal thought of Carl Schmitt
16 A Jurist Confronting Himself: Carl Schmitt's Jurisprudential Thought
Giorgio Agamben

17 Carl Schmitt and the Weimar Constitution
Ulrich K. Preuss

18 The Concept of the Rule-of-Law State in Carl Schmitt's Verfassungslehre
David Dyzenhaus

19 Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt: Growing Discord, Culminating in the "Guardian" Controversy of 1931
Stanley L. Paulson

20 States of Emergency
William E. Scheuerman

21 Politonomy
Martin Loughlin

22 Carl Schmitt and International Law
Martti Koskenniemi

23 Demystifying Schmitt
Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule

Part V-the Cultural Thought of Carl Schmitt
24 Carl Schmitt and Modernity
Friedrich Balke

25 Is "the Political" a Romantic Concept? Novalis's Faith and Love or The King and Queen with Reference to Carl Schmitt
Rüdiger Campe

26 Walter Benjamin's Esteem for Carl Schmitt
Horst Bredekamp

27 Legitimacy of the Modern Age? Hans Blumenberg and Carl Schmitt
Alexander Schmitz

28 Tragedy as Exception in Carl Schmitt's Hamlet or Hecuba
David Pan

29 At the Limits of Rhetoric: Authority, Commonplace, and the Role of Literature in Carl Schmitt
Johannes Türk

30 Carl Schmitt's Spatial Rhetoric
Oliver Simons

Bibliography
Index