1.Novalis (1929) Fragmente (Dresden: Wolfgang Jess Verlag), p. 76. I saw these lines written on the wall of a house a few years ago in Weimar, on my way to the Nietzsche-Archiv.Google Scholar

2.It should be noted that both men came to have a strained relationship to the Catholic Church, although buried as a Catholic, Heidegger shifted allegiances throughout his life, while Schmitt, for his part, was excommunicated due to complications regarding his second marriage: as Balakrishnan puts it, Schmitt ‘had married, in a moment of passion, a somewhat disreputable woman’, in G. Balakrishnan (2000) The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt (London & New York: Verso), p. 62. After this first wife eloped, Schmitt remarried without having succeeded in having his marriage annulled by the Church, and was hence excommunicated – a strange experience for an explicitly Catholic thinker. For a review of Heidegger’s complicated relationship with Catholicism and the Catholic Church, see Caputo, J.D. (2006) Heidegger and theology. In: C.B. Guignon, (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 326–344.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3.For example, Ernst Jünger, who exerted a considerable influence on Heidegger’s critique of technology; although the two diverged on many points, they nevertheless respected each other and engaged in a fruitful dialogue over the years; cf. Heidegger, M. (2004) Gesamtausgabe IV. Abteilung: Hinweise und Aufzeichnungen, Band 90: Zu Ernst Jünger (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann).Google Scholar

4.Cf., for example, Schmitt, C. (1991) Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen der Jahre 1947-1951 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot), in which there are several comments on Heidegger (consult the index for Heidegger’s name), and M. Heidegger (2011) Gesamtausgabe IV. Abteilung: Hinweise und Aufzeichnungen, Band 86: Seminare: Hegel-Schelling (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann), pp. 72, 173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5.The literature on both thinkers has become vast – pertaining to the thinking on global space and site/place, one may mention for example, in the case of Heidegger, the works of Jeff Malpas, e.g. the recent (2012) Heidegger and the Thinking of Place: Explorations in the Topology of Being (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press), and in the case of Schmitt, Legg, S. (ed.) (2011) Spatiality, Sovereignty and Carl Schmitt: Geographies of the Nomos (London: Routledge).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6.Heidegger, M. (1976) What is Called Thinking? (New York: Harper & Row), p. 66.Google Scholar

7.Cf. Schmitt, C. (1981) Land und Meer: Eine weltgeschichtliche Betrachtung (Köln: Hohenheim), p. 106 (original quotation in German: ‘Die Welt ist nicht im Raum, sondern der Raum ist in der Welt.’).Google Scholar

8.Schmitt, C. (2003) The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum (New York: Telos Press), p. 283. Although Schmitt is referring, in this quotation, to American power politics in the Western Hemisphere, this development accords with the general spread of this type of spatiality.Google Scholar

9.Cf. Heidegger, M. (1977) The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (New York: Harper & Row), p. 19. The original German term is Ge-stell for ‘Enframing’. Heidegger used other terms, however, before coining Ge-stell, which, it should be noted, brings together meanings associated with German verbs like bestellen, ‘to order’, feststellen, ‘to ascertain’, and aufstellen, ‘to position’, ‘to arrange’, or ‘to establish’. Note that I consistently capitalise Enframing, but not technicity; in so doing, I merely follow the convention of the translators of the texts to which I am referring – in German, there is no difference, since all nouns are capitalised.Google Scholar

10.Cf. Schmitt, C. (2007) The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press), p. 85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11.Heidegger, M. (2012) Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), p. 87.Google Scholar

12.This notion of the ‘bracketing’ of war in Europe is of course somewhat simplified, as Schmitt himself indeed admitted: cf Schmitt, C. (2007) Theory of the Partisan: Intermediate Commentary on the Concept of the Political (New York: Telos Press), p. 9. (footnote).Google Scholar

13.Schmitt, C. (2005) Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press), pp. 20–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14.Schmitt, C. (1996) Roman Catholicism and Political Form (Westport & London: Greenwood Press), p. 13.Google Scholar

15.In the German original, Schmitt uses the terms geweihten Stätten and sakrale Ortung: cf. Schmitt, C. (1988) Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot), p. 14. Given that Schmitt uses the German terms Ordnung and Ortung, it is puzzling that he ties them to the word Stätte, rather than Ort, which would have, in itself, functioned as well in German, and would have fit very nicely with the previously mentioned terms.Google Scholar

16.For the former term see, for example, Heidegger, M. (1976) Gesamtausgabe: II. Abteilung: Veröffentlichte Schriften 1914-1970, Band 9: Wegmarken (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann), p. 354. for the latter, for example, M. Heidegger (1989) Gesamtausgabe: III. Abteilung: Unveröffentliche Abhandlungen, Vorträge – Gedachtes, Band 65: Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann), p. 30.Google Scholar

17.Heidegger, M. (1998) Pathmarks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 269. 271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18.Heidegger, M. (2006) Mindfulness (New York: Continuum), p. 205.Google Scholar

19.Cf. Heidegger, M. (1982) Gesamtausgabe: II. Abteilung: Vorlesungen 1923-1944, Band 52: Hölderlins Hymne ‘Andenken’ (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann), p. 64.Google Scholar

20.Heidegger, M. (2002) Identity and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), p. 72.Google Scholar

21.Hobbes, T. (1994) Leviathan: With Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668 (Indianapolis: Hackett), p. 261.Google Scholar

22.Hughes, R. (2005) Introduction. In W. Faulkner The Sound and the Fury (London: Vintage), p. v.Google Scholar

23.For further nuances, cf. Schmitt, C. (1963) Der Begriff des Politischen: Text von 1932 mit einem Vorwort und drei Corollarien (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot), pp. 9–19.Google Scholar

24.Schmitt came to speak of ‘large spaces’ as a possible successor to nation-states. Exactly what characterises a large space, however, remains unclear. Cf. Hooker, W. (2009) Carl Schmitt’s International Thought: Order and Orientation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 126–155, for a succinct discussion of this issue.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25.In the German original, Heidegger contrasts Gewalt or Macht with Herrschaft: cf Heidegger, M. (1997) Gesamtausgabe: III. Abteilung: Unveröffentliche Abhandlungen, Vorträge – Gedachtes, Band 66: Besinnung (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann), p. 16. It should be noted that the German Gewalt has connotations beyond ‘coercive force’ in a narrower sense: it can refer to violence in the sense of brute force (rohe Gewalt) as well as to legislature (gesetzgebende Gewalt) and public authority (öffentliche Gewalt).Google Scholar

26.Heidegger, M. (2009) Basic Writings from Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964) (London & New York: Routledge), p. 435.Google Scholar

27.Heidegger, M. (2002) On Time and Being (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press), p. 9.Google Scholar

28.Cf. Philipse, H. (1998) Heidegger’s Philosophy of Being: a Critical Interpretation (Princeton: Princeton University Press), p. 382.Google Scholar

29.Zimmerman, M. (2001) The ontological decline of the west. In R. Polt and G. Fried (eds) A Companion to Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics (New Haven: Yale University Press), pp. 203–204.Google Scholar

30.Some have stressed an understanding of Ereignis as ‘the ultimate praesuppositum of everything we are and do.’ As a consequence, ‘Whether we reflect on Ereignis or ignore it, whether we embrace it as the ground of our being or flee from it, it is always the presupposed.’ T. Sheehan (2001) Kehre and Ereignis: a prolegomenon to Introduction to Metaphysics. In: R. Polt and G. Fried (eds) A Companion to Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics (New Haven: Yale University Press), p. 13. Cf. also for example S. Crowell and J. Malpas (eds) (2007) Transcendental Heidegger (Stanford: Stanford University Press). In a succinct essay entitled, simply, Ereignis. In: H. Dreyfus and M. Wrathal (eds) (2005) A Companion to Heidegger (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 375–391, R. Polt delineates three different usages throughout Heidegger’s works. Suffice to say that the notion of Ereignis remains enigmatic and there are many different interpretations.Google Scholar

31.Heidegger, M. (2003) Philosophical and Political Writings (New York & London: Continuum), p. 38.Google Scholar

32.As Joas, H. observes in (2012) The axial age debate as religious discourse. In: R. Bellah and H. Joas (eds) The Axial Age and Its Consequences (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), the notion of an ‘Axial Age’ may have resulted from Jaspers confusing a quote by Hegel, to which he indirectly refers, in which Hegel speaks, in German, of ‘Angel’, rather than ‘Achse’.Google Scholar

33.Cf. Jaspers, K. (1949) Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (Zürich: Artermis Verlag).Google Scholar

34.Cf. Eisenstadt’s, S. (1986) Introduction. In: S. Eisenstadt, (ed.) The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations (Albany: State University of New York Press), for a succinct summary.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35.As R. Bellah observes in (2011) Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), p. 576, ‘Mencius, for example, but many Confucians before and after him, bemoaned the sad state of society, the corruption of the rulers, and the oppression of the peasantry, and offered an alternative form of government: rule by moral example, by conformity with the li, the normative order, and not by punishment. The Confucian hope for an ethical ruler who would follow Confucian injunctions did not involve any idea of divine intervention, except a vague notion that Heaven would eventually punish behaviour that was too outrageous, but it was in its own way as utopian as the prophetic hope of ancient Israel.’ Cf. also for example Taylor, C. (2012) What was the axial revolution? In: R. Bellah and H. Joas, (eds) The Axial Age and Its Consequences (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar

36.Cf., for example, Arnason, J., Eisenstadt, S. and Wittrock, B. (eds) (2005) Axial Civilizations and World History (Leiden & Boston: Brill), pp. 11–12; and J. Casanova (2012) Religion, the Axial Age, and secular modernity in Bellah’s theory of religious evolution. In: R. Bellah and H. Joas (eds) The Axial Age and Its Consequences (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37.Heidegger, M. (1991) Nietzsche, Volume IV: Nihilism (New York: HarperCollins), p. 37.Google Scholar