Carl Schmitt, the chameleon

Abstract

This comment focuses on part III of the book, ‘Carl Schmitt’s 21st Century’, by William Scheuerman. It raises two points. The first point concerns the author’s continuity thesis. According to Scheuerman, Schmitt’s ideas ‘exhibit more continuity than widely asserted’. This has consequences both for how we should read Schmitt and for how we should approach authors who use his concepts (such as in the US counterterrorism debate Scheuerman discusses in chapter 10). This comment wants to question this view and instead wants to propose what might be called a chameleon thesis. Schmitt’s thinking contains repeated shifts that are not accidental (1). This may also have implications for how we view attempts to use Schmitt in contemporary thought (2).