Has anyone written on Schmitt and Kierkegaard? There are subtle references to Kierkegaard throughout Schmitt’s body of work, but especially in Political Theology. In his book on Hobbes, Schmitt speaks of “the sickness unto death” of Hobbes’ mortal god.
About
This is the personal website of Craig McFarlane, a doctoral candidate in the Graduate Programme in Sociology at York University, Toronto and a lecturer in the Department of Law at Carleton University, Ottawa. I also contribute to The Inhumanities.
Theoria
Categories
- Animals (106)
- Barbarians (8)
- Being Critical (7)
- Boneheaded (10)
- CFPs, Conferences, Lectures and Journals (55)
- Commentary (16)
- Dissertation (37)
- Election (7)
- Foucault (16)
- John Locke (3)
- Lanark County (13)
- Mandeville (1)
- Monsters (4)
- Montesquieu (6)
- Music (17)
- Other (105)
- Pets (7)
- Pirates (5)
- Research Notes (91)
- Sociology (25)
- State, Sovereignty & Violence (72)
- Teaching (38)
- Thomas Hobbes (4)
Archives
- February 2012 (1)
- January 2012 (2)
- December 2011 (7)
- November 2011 (5)
- October 2011 (2)
- September 2011 (2)
- August 2011 (2)
- July 2011 (7)
- June 2011 (7)
- May 2011 (3)
- April 2011 (6)
- March 2011 (5)
- February 2011 (6)
- January 2011 (5)
- December 2010 (2)
- November 2010 (5)
- October 2010 (3)
- September 2010 (2)
- August 2010 (4)
- July 2010 (5)
- June 2010 (4)
- May 2010 (1)
- February 2010 (2)
- January 2010 (7)
- December 2009 (5)
- November 2009 (3)
- August 2009 (9)
- July 2009 (7)
- June 2009 (5)
- May 2009 (10)
- April 2009 (5)
- March 2009 (5)
- February 2009 (2)
- January 2009 (3)
- December 2008 (4)
- November 2008 (8)
- October 2008 (4)
- September 2008 (6)
- August 2008 (8)
- July 2008 (10)
- June 2008 (13)
- May 2008 (6)
- April 2008 (5)
- March 2008 (4)
- February 2008 (10)
- January 2008 (6)
- December 2007 (5)
- November 2007 (3)
- October 2007 (3)
- September 2007 (5)
- August 2007 (7)
- July 2007 (1)
- June 2007 (6)
- May 2007 (12)
- April 2007 (9)
- March 2007 (7)
- February 2007 (9)
- January 2007 (18)
- December 2006 (5)
- November 2006 (13)
- October 2006 (19)
- September 2006 (15)
- August 2006 (15)
- July 2006 (7)
- June 2006 (13)
- May 2006 (11)
- April 2006 (7)
- March 2006 (14)
- February 2006 (11)
- January 2006 (25)
- December 2005 (17)
- November 2005 (27)
- October 2005 (6)
- September 2005 (10)
- August 2005 (3)
RSS
6 Comments
I haven’t written on it, but I did spend some time in a reading group last summer working through Fear and Trembling in detail. It was a definite influence for existentialism…
It strikes me that the importance of decision for both thinkers– the negative freedom of the Schmittian political decision, and the great abyss over which the leap of faith in Kierkegaard must cast itself– implies a deep set of shared concerns. I wonder, going further than this question about Schmitt and Kierkegaard, if anyone has written about Schmitt and faith?
There’s a part in Taubes’s book on Paul that deals with Schmitt and Kierkegaard. It is locatable through the index.
In addition to Schmitt acting as a sort of analogous political or juridical theologian to Kierkegaard’s Kantian theological ethicist (in that he describes the sovereign act as something like a teleological suspension of the constitutional), Schmitt’s analysis of pluralism and liberal democracy, particularly in his early works Political Romanticism and The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, mimic Kierkegaard’s critique of the aesthete and the “public” respectively.
In my opinion, this subject needs to be investigated further.
Excellent blog, by the way.
There is a very interesting essay on Schmitt and Kierkegaard written by the Argentine Schmitt scholar Jorge Dotti. This article has not been translated into English yet but it certainly should be. In any case, if anybody is interested I provide the cite info below:
Jorge Dotti. “Menage a trois sobre la decision excepcional: Kierkegaard, Constant and Schmitt” in Deus Mortalis. Cuaderno de Filosofia Politica, Numero 4, 2005.
i have written on Schmitt and Kierkegaard both in my Phd thesis called “Kierkegaard’s Indirect Politics. A Dialogue with Lukacs, Schmitt, Benjamin and Adorno and recently a 40 page article on the Schmitt and Kierkegaard to be pubished later this year in English in a book on Kierkegaard in Copenhagen
Post a Comment