Abstract Slováček

Carl Schmitt and anti- Semitism

Petr Slováček

Abstract: The paper is concerned with one of the most problematic aspects of the political thought of Carl Schmitt. It shows that to evaluate Schmitt’s anti-Semitism, which became prominent in his work after 1933, one needs to take into consideration the German Catholic milieu at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. Th us defined, the anti-Semitism cannot be seen as racially-based. Th e paper also shows that the works created during the period of the Weimar Republic can be regarded as implicitly anti-Semitic, especially in view of the theory of the partisan and the critique of normativism. It is from these viewpoints that Schmitt’s controversial involvement in Nazi Germany can be interpreted.

Keywords: Carl Schmitt, Catholicism, anti-Semitism, the theory of the partisan, friend, enemy, normativism