Pourquoi et comment lire Carl Schmitt?

Abstract

This article reconstitutes the circumstances, the ways, and the consequences of the encounter between its author and Carl Schmitt’s work, around 1980. It explains the reasons that led him to publish, after a first work on Schmitt and Hegel, the 2011 book What Is to Be Done with Carl Schmitt? Current thinking about Law and Politics can nurture from certain elements of reflection that were developed by Schmitt, for instance, in relation to the “political theology”, legitimacy, the “end of the State”, or the unity of the world. But it is important to resist the fascination that can be exerted by that work, and to be fully aware of its limits and aporias, since Schmitt’s support to National Socialism was rather a consequence than a cause of them.