Mephistophelean irony in Carl Schmitt's Political Romanticism, The Buribunks and Ex Captivitate Salus

Abstract

The argument for the role of various crises of modernity in the totalitarian violence of the twentieth century is well known. However, at the heart of Carl Schmitt’s own role in this troubling history lies a certain irony that complicates the reading, recognition and reckoning of his fearsome and confronting work. This chapter aims to remedy that omission. Schmitt deliberately used irony to feign distance from his own deeply held attitudes as expressed and implied in both his work and his actions. Paradoxically, nothing so foreshadows the Schmitt’s intellectual fate than his own critique on the one hand, and his embrace of the uses and misuses of irony on the other. Show more