Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss in the Chinese-Speaking World: Reorienting the Politicalexamines
the reception of Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss in China and Taiwan. The legacies of both
Schmitt, the German legal theorist and thinker who joined the Nazi party, and Strauss, the
German-Jewish classicist and political philosopher who became famous after his emigration
to the United States, are highly controversial. Since the 1990s, however, these thinkers have
had a powerful resonance for Chinese scholars. Today, when Chinese intellectuals debate the
Chinese state, the future role of China in the world, the liberal international order, and even
the meaning of Confucian civilization, they often employ Schmittian and Straussian concepts
like the political, friendenemy, state of exception, liberal education, and natural
right. The very possibility of a genuine Chinese political theory is often thought to be tied to
the legacy of these two thinkers.

This volume explores this complex phenomenon with a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary
approach. The twelve essays in this volume are written from a range of perspectives by philosophers,
political theorists, historians, and legal scholars from China, Germany, Taiwan,
and the United States.

Kai Marchal is associate professor in the philosophy department of National Chengchi University.

Carl K. Y. Shaw is research fellow at the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica, and professor in the Department of Political Science, National Taiwan University.

Chapter 1 Three Strategies for Criticizing Liberalism and Their Continued Relevance
Chapter 2 Toward a Radical Critique of Liberalism: Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss in Contemporary Chinese Discourses
Chapter 3 From Carl Schmitt on Mao to Carl Schmitt in China: Unsettled Issues and Unsettling Continuities
Chapter 4 The Tyranny of Values: Reflections on Schmitt and China
Chapter 5 Reading the Temperature Curve: Sinophone Schmitt-Fever in Context and Perspective
Chapter 6 Carl Schmitt Redux: Law and the Political in Contemporary Global Constitutionalism
Chapter 7 Carl Schmitt in Taiwanese Constitutional Law: An Incomplete Reception of Schmitts Constitutional Theory
Chapter 8 Leo Strausss Critique of the Political in a Sinophone Context
Chapter 9 Modernity, Tyranny, and Crisis: Leo Strauss in China
Chapter 10 On Leo Strauss as Negative Philosopher
Chapter 11 Mirror or Prism for Chinese Modernity? A Reading of Leo Strauss
Chapter 12 Toward a Taiwanese Cultural Renaissance: A Straussian Perspective