... Adam Sitze’s introduction reviews Anglophone scholarship on Carl Schmitt and clarifies Carlo Galli’s contribution to that scholarship: Galli performs an “immanent critique” of Schmitt’s oeuvre that is until now lacking in English. Sitze then shows how Galli’s systematic reconstruction...

... Chapter 1 is a systematic analysis of Schmitt’s writings on the State. Galli’s reading reconstructs the internal logic of Schmitt’s theories of the State (clarifying concepts of liberalism, democracy, and constitutional theory along the way) while also externally contextualizing those theories...

... The central aim of chapter 3 is to distinguish Schmitt’s genealogy of the political from Machiavelli’s conceptualization of the origin of the modern State. By reconstructing Schmitt’s various positions on Machiavelli, Galli shows that Machiavelli is neither influential for the development...

... Chapter 4 takes up the question of Schmitt’s relation with Leo Strauss in a highly original manner. Whereas other authors analyze the relations between Schmitt and Strauss on historical and even biographical grounds, Galli compares them on a strictly immanent and theoretical basis...

... Focusing on Schmitt’s writings on international law, chapter 5 poses the question of whether Schmitt’s analyses of the partisan and of the Cold War are sufficient for grasping the dynamics of an emergent “global age” constituted primarily by “terrorism” and its suppression. After a detailed...

... Chapter 2 does for Schmitt’s writings on political theology what chapter 1 did for his writings on the State. As in chapter 1, Galli’s reading reconstructs the internal logic of Schmitt’s theories of political theology (clarifying concepts of secularization, decisionism, and sovereignty along...