New Review of Carl Schmitt’s The Tyranny of Values and Other Texts

Writing at Infrapolitical Deconstruction, Gerardo Muñoz reviews the new English translation of Carl Schmitt’s The Tyranny of Values and Other Texts, now available from Telos Press Publishing. Order your copy in our online store, and save 20% on the list price by using the coupon code BOOKS20 during the checkout process.

An excerpt:

As David Pan correctly observes in the Preface, the Schmitt that we encounter here is one that is confronting the transformations of political enmity in light of a gloomy and dangerous takeover of a global civil war. In fact, one could most definitely argue that the Schmitt thinking within the Cold War epochality is one that is painstakingly searching for a “Katechon,” that restraining force inherited from Christian theology in order to give form to the ruination of modern legal and political order. The global civil war, cloaked under a sense of acknowledged Humanism, now aimed at the destruction of the enemy social’s order and form of life. This thematizes the existential dilemma of a jurist who was consciousness of the dark shadow floating over the efficacy of Western jurisprudence. In other words, the post-war Schmitt is one marked by a profound Hamletian condition in the face of the technical neutralization of every effective political theology. This condition puts Schmitt on the defensive, rather than on the offensive, as his later replies to Erik Peterson, Hans Blumenberg, or Jacob Taubes render visible.

Read the full review here.