Abstract

The author reviews Carlo Galli's book, 'Genealogia della politica. Carl Schmitt e la crisi del pensiero politico moderno'. He takes especially into account the relation between Schmitt's thought and the modern concept of 'mediation', and chiefly Hegelian mediation, which is central to understand the underlying thread of Schmitt's thought: the notion of the origin of politics, which Schmitt construes through the concept of the 'political'. The author also discusses the Schmitt-Kelsen debate on parlamentarianism and the 'Guardian of the Constitution', concluding that the full and complete 'genealogical' reconstruction of Schmitt's thought proposed by the author enables the reader to advance alternative interpretations too, different from Galli's one.