Has anyone read anything by Carl Schmitt? I was looking into some of his ideas online, but I haven't found anything full-length yet. In particular, though, I found his idea as 'politics as theocratic' interesting because they seem to parallel my own. Apparently, he was a fascist.

Quotes from Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty

Quote:

* Sovereign is he who decides on the exception. * All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development—in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent God became the omnipotent lawgiver—but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts. The exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology. * All law is "situational law." The sovereign produces and guarantees the situation in its totality. He has the monopoly over this last decision. * To be sure, Protestant theology presents a different, supposedly unpolitical doctrine, conceiving of God as the "wholly other," just as in political liberalism the state and politics are conceived of as the "wholly other." We have come to recognize that the political is the total, and as a result we know that any decision about whether something is unpolitical is always a political decision, irrespective of who decides and what reasons are advanced. This also holds for the question whether a particular theology is a political or an unpolitical theology. * The metaphysical image that a definite epoch forges of the world has the same structure as what the world immediately understands to be appropriate as a form of its political organization. * Liberalism, with its contradictions and compromises, existed for Donoso Cortés only in that short interim period in which it was possible to answer the question “Christ or Barabbas?” with a proposal to adjourn or appoint a commission of investigation. * The essence of liberalism is negotiation, a cautious half measure, in the hope that the definitive dispute, the decisive bloody battle, can be transformed into a parliamentary debate and permit the decision to be suspended forever in an everlasting discussion. * All genuine political theories presuppose man to be evil.

you might enjoy this book "Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Toward a Secular Theocracy‎ by Paul Gottfried

I have just found out that Carl Schmitt was influenced by Stirner, which explains why his views on the nature of politics are so accurate. Though a 'fascist', Schmitt while in prison admitted that Stirner had always held a firm attraction to him. This reinforces my idea that the main reason there are so few Stirnerites despite any coherent refutation of his positions is because most men are afraid of their own ghosts of morality and ideal; too firmly enmeshed in the 'ideal' to see it merely as an idea they flee into the open arms of libertarianism, fascism, communism ('man', 'the state' and 'society').

Libertarianism is itself a reaction against the enlightenment, which is easily seen in Rothbard's denunciation of moral nihilists like Moore, and the whole lot's hatred of 'moral relativists'; they claim to have eliminated all possible conflicts in order to avoid dealing with the conflicts of their lust for the 'ideal' and the reality of ideas.

dammit, so I may have to start reading Stirner at some point after all. I have never read anything from him and just always sort of assumed he was some weird crypto-Marxist/Freudian/Nietzscheian bastard, though I based that impression on pretty much nothing.

If you claim to be an expert or advanced student of a subject, then "not having heard of" one of it's most significant and recent contributors makes you look a little silly, if not dishonest. It certainly casts suspicion upon your claims to be an "expert," as well as whatever claims you thereafter make on the subject.

I never encountered Stirner in my grad studies. Besides, there are hundreds of philosophers, I don't think one can be blamed for making some choices as to who you are going to read or study, even if only in a brief manner

OK, I wasn't exactly saying Stirner was, in fact, that important to modern philosophy, just that if one holds him to actually be that important, then the comment would apply.