Carl Schmitt's Land and Sea

"World history is a history of the battle of sea powers against land powers and of land powers against sea powers." So declares Carl Schmitt in Land and Sea, originally published in 1942. Eighty years later, humanity has extended our reach into outer space and cyberspace, and Schmitt's division of the world into telluric and thalassic cultures seems charmingly archaic. Yet the division he describes remains stunningly relevant. It cuts across Left / Right lines to offer a shifted perspective on questions with which we are still grappling, from England's relationship to Europe, to the role of capitalism in the conquest of the Americas, to the political ramifications of novel communications technologies. In two seminar sessions, we shall read Land and Sea and discuss its many implications for contemporary political questions.

This reading group will be led by Courtney Hodrick. Dinner will be served at both sessions.

We will use this edition of Land and Sea. Copies will be available upon request.

Oct. 24th 530-730pm: sections 1-11 (pp. 1-54)

Oct. 31st 530-730pm: sections 12-20 (pp. 55-94).

Speaker

Courtney Hodrick is a PhD Candidate in German Studies at Stanford University. Her research focuses on 20th century German and German-Jewish thought, with an emphasis on the concept of modernity as crisis, and she is writing a dissertation on the concept of hope in the works of Hannah Arendt. Her first academic publication is forthcoming from Telos. She holds a BA in Humanities (Intellectual History) from Yale.

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This event has been made possible by a generous grant from the Apgar Foundation.