Abstract

Although the name of Carl Schmitt is hardly mentioned in Hannah Arendt's works, there are good reasons to presume that her theory of political action was meant to be a reply to his defense of the idea of sovereignty. The essay gives an account of Arendt's many marginal annotations to Schmitt's "The Nomos of the Earth", which disclose the core arguments of "The Human Condition", "On Revolution" and the unpublished "Introduction to Politics".