The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt

The writings of Carl Schmitt form what is arguably the most disconcerting, original, and yet still unfamiliar body of twentieth-century political thought. In the English-speaking world, he is terra incognita, a name associated with Nazism, the author of a largely untranslated oeuvre forming no recognizable system, coming to us from a disturbing place and time in the form of fragments.

The Enemy is a comprehensive reconstruction and analysis of all of Schmitt’s major works—his books, articles...