This list of books are ONLY the books that have been ranked on the lists that are aggregated on this site. This is not a comprehensive list of all books by this author.

1. 1. The Concept Of The Political

   

   This seminal work delves into the essence of politics, positing that the fundamental distinction in political life is the friend-enemy dichotomy. It argues that politics is inherently about the existential struggle between groups, where the potential for conflict is ever-present. The text challenges liberal democratic ideals by emphasizing the primacy of sovereign power and decision-making in maintaining order and stability. Through a critical examination of political theory, it underscores the importance of recognizing the inherent antagonisms that shape political identities and actions.

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2. 2. Ex Captivitate Salus

   Erfahrungen der Zeit 1945/47

   

   Composed during postwar captivity, this brief, aphoristic work intertwines personal reflection with political theology to meditate on defeat, guilt, and the search for inner freedom; it interrogates the tension between legality and legitimacy, the state of exception and enmity, and critiques victors’ justice, ultimately portraying imprisonment as a paradoxical site of spiritual clarity and the possibility of redemption.

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3. 3. Political Theology

   Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty

   

   A provocative treatise arguing that modern state concepts are secularized theological ideas, it defines sovereignty as the power to decide on the exception and shows how emergencies reveal the foundations of law. Through critiques of liberal normativism and parliamentary proceduralism, and via engagement with counterrevolutionary thinkers, it claims that personal authority and decisive judgment underpin political legitimacy, exposing the theological residues structuring modern sovereignty.

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4. 4. Die Geistesgeschichtliche Lage Des Heutigen Parlamentarismus.

   

   A sharp critique arguing that modern parliamentary institutions have become largely performative—forums of rhetorical debate and public spectacle rather than bodies that make decisive political choices. It claims that mass democracy, party competition and media-driven publicity have transformed representation into quantitative aggregation and empty procedure, eroding the preconditions for meaningful parliamentary decision-making and opening the way for extra-parliamentary, plebiscitary, or concentrated forms of authority.

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5. 5. Der Begriff Des Politischen. Text Von 1932 Mit Einem Vorwort Und Drei Corollarien

   Text von 1932 mit einem Vorwort und drei Corollarien

   

   This short, polemical treatise argues that the political is an autonomous sphere defined by the existential distinction between friend and enemy, irreducible to moral, economic, or aesthetic categories; it critiques liberal pluralism and parliamentary compromise for obscuring the reality of collective conflict and emphasizes the decisive, sovereign capacity to recognize and act upon political enmity. The text defends the primacy of collective identity and conflict in shaping states and decisions, explores the implications of this friend–enemy logic for questions of sovereignty, exception, and the character of political order, and offers corollaries that extend its decisionist critique of liberal norms.

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6. 6. The Nomos Of The Earth

   in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum

   

   A dense legal‑philosophical investigation of how global order is produced through concrete acts of appropriation, boundary‑making, and the division of land and sea, arguing that international law and sovereignty are rooted less in abstract moral principles than in the spatial practices of land‑taking, colonization, and maritime domination; it traces the historical transformation of European discovery, colonization, and the Westphalian settlement into a spatialized ‘law of peoples,’ critiques liberal universalism by foregrounding decisionist sovereignty and power, and reframes modern international law as an expression and instrument of geopolitical ordering rather than a neutral normative system.