Political Science 410/510: Arendt and Schmitt

Fall 2008

Professor Leonard Feldman

Department of Political Science

University of Oregon

Draft: Syllabus Subject to Change

Note: Admission to seminar is by permission of instructor. Please send an email to lfeldman@uoregon.edu

This advanced political theory seminar focuses on the work of two controversial and original political theorists of the 20^th century: Carl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt. On the one hand, two thinkers could not possibly be more opposed. Schmitt was a leading Nazi jurist and apologist for fascism. Arendt was one of fascism’s victims and a path-breaking analyst of totalitarian domination. On the other hand, the body of work of each resists easy classification. Both are preoccupied with the relationship between politics and violence. And, indeed, they share a common impulse, to protect “the political” (differently understood) from its degradation.

Requirements:

1. Regular Class Participation (20 percent)

2. Six 2 page response papers (30 percent)

3. Final research paper OR take-home final exam (50 percent)

Books available for purchase at the University of Oregon Bookstore:

1. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem

2. Arendt, The Human Condition

3. Arendt, Crises of the Republic

4. Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political

5. Schmitt, Constitutional Theory

6. Schmitt, Theory of the Partisan

Other readings will be made available on blackboard.

Schedule of Classes and Readings

I. ARENDT

Week One: Seminar Introduction, and the trial of Adolph Eichmann

Film in class: “The Specialist (Adolph Eichmann)”

Week Two: Hannah Arendt and the Holocaust

Eichmann in Jerusalem

Week Three: Rightlessness and Refugee Status

*Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism chpt. 9: “The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man”

*Arendt, “The Jew as Pariah: A Hidden Tradition”

Week Four: Arendt’s Understanding of the political and the non-political

The Human Condition, selections

Week Five: Arendt on Constitutions, Violence and Civil Disobedience

Crises of the Republic

*Keith Breen, “Violence and Power: A Critique of Hannah Arendt on the Political”

II. SCHMITT

Week Six: Schmitt’s Understanding of the political and the non-political

The Concept of the Political

Leo Strauss, “Notes on Carl Schmitt” in Concept of the Political

Week Seven: Schmitt on Constitutions

Constitutional Theory, selections

Week Eight:

Constitutional Theory, continued

*Raphael Gross, Carl Schmitt and the Jews, chpt. 1

Week Nine: Political Violence

The Theory of the Partisan

Week Ten: Comparisons and conclusion

*William Scheuerman, “Revolutions and Constitutions: Hannah Arendt’s Challenge to Carl Schmitt” and other readings TBA.