Abstract

Through an analysis of part of the German debates on 'total State' and 'authoritarian State' during the Thirties, the author retraces how different intellectual spheres - law, philosophy, political science - faced the crisis of the State. The author points out the existence of a number of answers to this crisis, all centered around different combinations of the inclusion/ exclusion logic in a post-liberal perspective, and generally critic to the modern political rationalism. In the end the author emphasizes that the 'total State' is different from actual totalitarianism.