The uses of Hobbes: Carl Schmitt

Abstract

The author centers his work on the German jurist Carl Schmitt and his polemical interpretation about the destiny of Leviathan, which is understood both as a political symbol and a political doctrine. The author establishes that Schmitt pushed aside certain moral-oriented readings that present Hobbes in the modern conception of the State both an a perverse defender of absolutism and also as ultimate representative of political and formal iusnuturalism. Anyway, Schmitt displays Hobbes as a basically political thinker who lays out the autonomy of decisions while observing the problem of sovereign power.