Carl Schmitt / 1890-1918 / 1919-1933 / 1933-1945 / 1945-1949 / 1949-1978

• Römischer Katholizismus und politische Form. Jakob Hegner, Hellerau, 1923.
• Roman Catholicism and Political Form. G. L. Ulmen, trans. Greenwood Press, 1996.
• Roomalaiskatolilaisuus ja poliittinen muoto.

“No political system can survive even a generation with only naked techniques of holding power. To the political belongs the idea, because there is no politics without authority and no authority without an ethos of belief.”

There is an anti-Roman temper.”

“The essence of the Roman-Catholic complexio oppositorum lies in a specific, formal superiority over the matter of human life such as no other imperium has ever known. 

“Nature is for them not the antithesis of art and enterprise, also not of intellect and feeling or heart; human labor and organic development, nature and reason, are one. Viniculture is the most beautiful symbol of this union.

“The world-view of the modern capitalist is the same as that of the industrial proletarian, as if the one were the twin brother of the other.”

“In modern economy, a completely irrational consumption conforms to a totally rationalized production.”

“No political system can survive even a generation with only naked techniques of holding power. To the political belongs the idea, because there is no politics without authority and no authority without an ethos of belief.”

“The ability to create form, which is essential to aesthetics, has its essence in the ability to create the language of a great rhetoric.”

“But technical thinking is foreign to all social traditions: the machine has no tradition.”

“Historically considered, “privatization” has its origin in religion.”

“To every great politics belongs the “arcanum.””

“Humanity is such an abstract idea that even Catholicism appears comprehensible by comparison.”