Abstract

This essay aims to demonstrate that the concept of the value of the individual, though often overlooked, is central to Carl Schmitt's thought. In "The Value of the State and the Significance of the Individual", published in 1914, the German jurist pursues the idea that the State is a means through which modern-day individuals can rise above their own particularity to find truth in law. This means that the individual constitutes a function of the State and that the State, in turn, constitutes a function of the law. This early essay is key to understanding how the State, especially in Schmitt's later work, has come to represent a contingent modality of the synthesis between the particularity of the individual and the universality of the law.