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The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol
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By Carl Schmitt, translated by George Schwab and Erna Hilfstein
Foreword and Introduction by George Schwab
Translated by George Schwab and Erna Hilfstein
ISBN: 0-313-30057-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-313-30057-8
160 pages, figures
Greenwood Press
Publication: 9/30/1996
List Price: $110.95 (UK Sterling Price: £65.00)
Availability:
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 5 1/2 X 8 1/4
Subjects:
Series Title: Contributions in Political Science
Series Number: 374
Reviews:
  • Fortunately, the English translation of this work is truthful to the German original and permits the critical reader to understand Schmitt...the way he understood himself.
    —The New York Review of Books
  • Endorsement From Joseph W. Bendersky, Professor of History
    Virginia Commonwealth University:     Schwab's translation of Carl Schmitt's book on Hobbes has finally made available to the English-speaking world one of the most significant works of this controversial thinker. It is essential reading to anyone seeking an understanding of Schmitt's political and legal thought, his intellectual debt to Hobbes, and his relationship to the Nazi state.
Description: Carl Schmitt, the Thomas Hobbes of the 20th century, joined the Nazi party in 1933 and aspired to become the crown jurist and political philosopher of the Third Reich. But, because of his anti-Nazi past, friendships with Jews and Marxists, and contempt for biological racism, Schmitt was severely attacked by the SS in 1936 and warned to stop posing as a National Socialist thinker. Fearful of what this might imply in the rapidly evolving one-party SS state, Schmitt began to distance himself from his National Socialist adventure--even tempered his recently acquired anti-Semitism--and carefully started to reconnect himself in 1937 and 1938 to the pre-1933 Schmitt. Writing in 1938 under the pretext of studying the significance of the symbol of the leviathan in Hobbes's theory of state, Schmitt alluded to the demise of the Third Reich because of its rapid transformation into a totalitarian polity. As Schmitt recognized, in this state, the Hobbesian protection-obedience axiom was being heavily tilted in favor of obedience at the expense of protection. When this occurred, Schmitt observed, "the soul of a people...betakes itself on the 'secret road' that leads inward. Then grows the counterforce of silence and stillness", and "Public power and force may be ever so completely and emphatically recognized and ever so loyally respected, but only as a public and only an external power, it is hollow and already dead from within." Schmitt survived the fall of the Third Reich, and in the postwar years came to be recognized as one of the most significant political philosophers of the century. This is the first translation available of this important work which will be of great value to scholars and students of modern political philosophy, legal theory, and the history of Weimar and Nazi Germany.
Table of Contents:
  • Foreword
  • Introduction
  • Translator's Note
  • Author's Introduction
  • Origin of the Leviathan
  • The Leviathan in Hobbes's Work
  • Leviathan as "mortal god" and Representative
  • The Command Mechanism
  • The Separation of Inner from Outer
  • Weakness of the Constitutional State Machine
  • The Symbol Fails
  • Appendix: The State as Mechanism in Hobbes and Descartes
  • Index
LC Card Number: 96-3642
LCC Class: JC153
Dewey Class: 320
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