131214840-Carl-Schmitt

Page ix
A Note On the Text and Translation
This translation is based on the 1926 edition of Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen
Parlamentarismus. This second edition was enlarged by the inclusion of Schmitt's reply to
Richard Thoma's 1925 review as a preface. I have retained the order of parts as Carl Schmitt
set them out in the German text, although the addition of Thoma's "On the Ideology of
Parliamentarism," and most of the notes, the index, and the bibiliography are new.
Carl Schmitt's style is remarkably clear and free of the convolutions that often burden
academic German, but the title already contains a work notoriously difficult to render
adequately in English: geistesgeschichtliche. I have usually translated this and its variants as
"intellectual," or "intellectual-historical" if this is not awkward; but readers should be aware
that the root word, Geist, has complex meanings in the original German, mixing "moral" and
"spiritual" with our "intellectual'' or "mind." Certain other German words and phrases have
been left as terms of art—Rechtsstaat, for example—on the suggestion of someone who long
struggled with the translation of Hegel into English. Carl Schmitt is certainly not as difficult
to translate, but I still found this a sound rule to follow. Throughout this edition all works,
including
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