Technology, Law, and Annihilation: Carl Schmitt's Critique of Utopianism

Abstract

By drawing from Schmitt's postwar notebooks, this article reconstructs Schmitt's criticism of utopian political thought as part of his broader critique of technicity. This paper begins with Schmitt's conceptual history of utopianism within the context of two "de-localizations" of space and human nature. It then unearths Schmitt's unique understanding of utopia as the annihilation of space and the negation of law. Schmitt's concern with utopianism is revealed to lie at the center of his postwar thought and thereby offers a new prism through which to interpret his theory of international politics and the law of nations.