Carl Schmitt and the Limits of the Modern Liberal State

Abstract

This paper looks at Schmitt and his critique of liberalism in terms of
the question of how the constitutional structure of the modern state can
lead to certain contradictions and problems that arise out of the radicalism
of the liberal doctrine advanced by the neo-Kantian legal tradition that
dominated in Germany in the early twentieth century. I argue that according
to Schmitt a return to Hobbes, as well as other modern political thinkers such
as Machiavelli and Bodin, was the only means to correct this radicalisation of
liberalism to allow for the survival of politics.