Carl Schmitt

Carl Schmitt lived from July 11, 1888 to April 7, 1985 and was a German jurist and political philosopher, an authoritarian conservative noted as a critic of parliamentary democracy, liberalism, and cosmopolitanism. In 1933 he joined the Nazi Party and used his legal and political theories to provide ideological justification for the regime, holding positions on Nazi councils including the Prussian State Council and the Academy for German Law and serving as president of the National Socialist Association of Legal Professionals, though by 1936 he had lost favor among senior Nazi officials and was removed from most of his official party positions. Schmitt and his work remain controversial for their association with Nazism, and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has described him as an acute observer of the weaknesses of liberal constitutionalism whose preferred cure proved far worse than the disease. His ideas remain highly influential, with scholars arguing he has shaped modern governance in China and Russia as well as strands of modern American conservatism.