Review: Austin Harrington, German Cosmopolitan Thought and the Idea of the West: Voices from Weimar

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 319-324
Author(s):  
Thomas Kemple
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Georg Simmel ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
The West ◽  
Karl Jaspers

Austin Harrington’s monumental investigation into the ‘radical centrists’ of the Weimar Republic is discussed in terms of key themes such as universalism, cosmopolitanism, and the critique of Eurocentrism that still resonate with recent debates. Contrasting the voices of lesser known critical intellectuals from this period such as Karl Jaspers and Kark Mannheim with the political writings of Max Weber and Georg Simmel, as well as with the reactionary positions of Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger, Harrington’s book affords a useful critical perspective on ‘protesting the West’, yesterday and today.

Interlinking the Domestic with the International: Carl Schmitt on Democracy and International Relations

2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPH BURCHARD
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Just War ◽  
State System ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Just War Tradition

Carl Schmitt's Der Nomos der Erde allows us to rethink his interlinked proposals for the organization of the Weimar Republic, namely his theory of ‘democratic dictatorship’ and the ‘concept of the political’. Connecting the domestic homogeneity of an empowered people with the pluralism of the Westphalian state system, Schmitt seeks to humanize war; he objects to the renaissance of the ‘just war’ tradition, which is premised on a discriminating concept of war. Schmitt's objections are valid today, yet their Eurocentric foundations are also partially outdated. We are thus to argue with Schmitt against Schmitt to reflect on possibilities for the humanization of war.

scholarly journals Legitimacy of democracy in the works by Max Weber and Сarl Schmitt

Pravovedenie ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 501-517
Author(s):  
Viktor P. Kirilenko ◽  
◽  
Georgij V. Alekseev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Political Events ◽  
The Relationship

Identification of political regime’s legality and legitimacy by the German lawyer Carl Schmitt seems to be an attempt to solve the problem of unjust laws which is close to the idea of legitimate domination stated by Max Weber. Popularity of the legitimacy paradigm within the framework of political and legal discourse on its way towards the provision of rational government is often associated with an underestimation of democratic charisma’s role in legitimation when it is compared to the legal bureaucratic justification of government. Noting the fact that rationality is the most important and at the same time the least reasoned part of Max Weber’s social theory, we need to assess the potential of the bureaucracy in securing the ideals of the rule of law with an extreme caution. If Carl Schmitt’s position on the relationship between legality and legitimacy changed along with the development of political events of the 20th century, the ideas of Max Weber were modified during the translations of his works from German and gave to legitimacy deep textbook value. Decrease in chances of unjust law’s application requires certain legal culture that allows not only to question any formal prescription of the law and to test it for legitimacy, but also gives an opportunity to assess the legality of any democratic decision before it is implemented. Understanding the legitimacy of democracy depends largely on the ideology that dominates society, and the legal culture of the person that assesses the political regime. It is obvious in the context of political mistakes made during the first half of the twentieth century that the danger of underestimating the threats to the rule of law, originating both from illegitimate authorities and from unlawful political decisions. Historical experience underscores the need for a broad understanding of the rule of law state (Rechtsstaat) in a modern democracy, which simultaneously protects the formal legality and legitimacy of the political regime.

Introduction—from Staatsrechtslehre to Behemoth

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Max Weber ◽  
State Politics ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Franz Neumann

This is a book about how conceptions of the modern state, politics and the political were understood, developed and modified by Max Weber (1864–1920), Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) and Franz Neumann (1900–1954) during the period 1890 to 1945 in Germany. It is an attempt to outline their criticisms and modifications of a broad, peculiarly German tradition of Staatsrechtslehre, or state-legal theorizing. The predominantly legalistic nature of this type of thinking forms both the background to, and the bases of, the understandings of the modern state and politics found in their writings. Yet, all three writers argued that such thinking could not adequately adapt to the problems raised by an era of mass-based politics. Tracing the reasoning behind their movement away from this broad tradition of Staatsrechtslehre therefore provides an overarching context for this work.

A la recherche de la modernité démocratique occidentale au Proche-Orient

2021 ◽  
pp. 201-229
Author(s):  
Carole Skaff
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Development ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
Current Context ◽  
Political Economic

In the current context, political scenarios are diversifying. The events of the past few years have shown the influence of the West on some Middle Eastern countries as regards democratization. This situation, with all its politico-economic complexities, prompted one to wonder about one of the important paradigms of democracy: freedom. It seems that the practice of democracy has contradictory actions and characters. Currently, wars and especially those in the East are waged in the name of democracy, whose dissemination is carried out by formidable actors (army, militia, small seditious groups, etc.) and highly contestable methods (weapons, coercion, manipulation...). The distinction between friends and enemies turns out to be difficult (Carl Schmitt). This destabilizes the national situation and people’s feeling of security because imposing democracy by force is an undemocratic act, which hinders the political order and is only a mediation of domination (Max Weber). The East is probably not predisposed to follow western democratic modernity, to develop another ideology, to assert itself in a new state of mind (see Tocqueville) and to make a peremptory political choice. To democratize the East requires education, a profound and “revolutionary” evolution in the mentality, a process of radical change which must be based on a political, economic and intellectual development by the principles of freedom, of “equalization of conditions” (equal rights and consideration, see Tocqueville). These principles are essential for a true integration of the East into the Western community. And one wonders if one can evoke a “limited democracy” (see Rosanvallon) or a democracy that only concerns Western countries and leaders. Democratization may not be universalizable, particularly in some countries of the Middle East.

Karl Jaspers

2018 ◽  
pp. 95-103
Author(s):  
Matthias Bormuth
Keyword(s):  
Max Weber ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Intellectual Biography ◽  
Georg Simmel ◽  
Karl Jaspers ◽  
General Psychopathology ◽  
Wilhelm Dilthey ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Self Reflection

This chapter discusses the psychopathological ideas of Karl Jaspers, one of the founding fathers of phenomenological thinking. Jaspers always admired researchers who used the means of natural sciences in psychiatry, but he relied more on the psychology of understanding conceptualized and exercised in the humanities (“Geisteswissenschaften”) by Wilhelm Dilthey, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel. The chapter first provides an overview of Jaspers’s intellectual biography as a psychiatrist before analyzing his methodological horizons of understanding psychology. It then examines what philosophical considerations motivated Jaspers to draw the “limits of understanding” closer and stricter in the last edition of his book General Psychopathology, first published in 1913. It suggests that these limits can be determined as an existential application of Immanuel Kant’s idea and antinomy of freedom. The chapter concludes with an assessment of Jaspers’s claim that existence-philosophical self-reflection constitutes a necessary supplement to psychotherapy.

scholarly journals Social Order and Political Theology in the Game of Thrones: What Makes the Cult Series Interesting for Theoretical Sociology

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-159
Author(s):  
Oleg Kil'dyushov
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Religious Fundamentalism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Fantasy Novels ◽  
Game Of Thrones

The paper is a review of a number of writings in the humanities and in social science devoted to George Martin’s series of epic fantasy novels A Song of Ice and Fire, and the television-serial drama Game of Thrones. At the beginning, we analyze the researchers’ most heuristically-fruitful intellectual reactions to Game of Thrones, that is, specific products such as texts that may be of interest to social theory. The main part of the article considers the institutional and discursive order of George Martin’s saga through the research lens of the classics of modern social theory, such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, and Max Weber. The paper then briefly touches upon the religious situation in Westeros, whose system of values and norms is paradoxically characterized by both post-secularism and a surge of religious fundamentalism. As a next step, it analyzes the political theology in the Game of Thrones, which is considered within the perspective of a transcendental legitimization of politics as proposed by Carl Schmitt. In conclusion, the paper considers Westeros’ cognitive landscape which consists of various competing epistemic sets (maesters, septons, white walkers, etc.), and structurally reproduces the situation in the societies of late modernity.

Merkel's Germany and the European Union: Between Emergency and the Rule of Rules

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Auer
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Eurozone Crisis ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
The Eu

AbstractThe European Union is caught between technocracy and the politics of the exception, eroding in the process the very political sphere that makes democracy work. Partly a cause of this erosion and partly an effect, the EU retreats into the ‘rule of rules’ when faced with what are, in fact, profoundly political problems. Whether it be in response to the eurozone crisis, EU–Russia–Ukraine relations or the influx of refugees, the EU's policies led to conflicts over geopolitics, sovereignty and redistribution. Its apolitical responses were as ubiquitous as they were inadequate. They reflect Germany's preference for consensual politics, which is paradoxically enforced by Angela Merkel's dictum about there being ‘no alternative’. In order to think of alternatives to the Europe that exists, we need to revive ‘the political’, theorized by the likes of Carl Schmitt, Max Weber and Hannah Arendt at times when democracy was under duress.

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