Carl Schmitt: Politics and Theory, by Paul Edward Gottfried. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1990. 160 pp. $39.95.
The relation between the particular and the general in social organization has long preoccupied political thinkers. Much of their attention in this century has focused on particularistic claims to national self-determination or rights of autonomy for ethnic, racial, and cultural groups. Such claims endanger the real or imagined unity of established sovereign states. Particularisms of a different sort, viz., those masquerading as demands for the realization of allegedly universal values, threaten peaceful international relations. Paul Edward Gottfried, professor of political science at Elizabethtown College, addresses both issues…
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