After The Genealogy of Politics, a comprehensive work dedicated to the ideas and oeuvre of Carl Schmitt, Carlo Galli again deals with this author, focusing his attention on selected features of his intellectual universe: Schmitts fundamental views concerning the state, the wide array of meanings that the idea of political theology assumes over the lengthy development of his work, the dialogue that he entertained with the ideas of other political thinkers such as Machiavelli and Spinoza, the lasting validity of his paradigms in promoting comprehension of the global age. This text offers an in-depth analysis that expertly throws light on one of the most controversial characters of the 20th century philosophical landscape, continually hovering between deconstruction and construction, tradition and insensitivity, predictability and intuitive genius, ideology and doctrine, and yet always making the most of the deeper structures of modernity.

Carlo Galli teaches History of Political Doctrines at the University of Bologna and is editor-in-chief of the journal Filosofia politica.