“... In​ the late 1920s, the political philosopher and jurist Carl Schmitt, subsequently to join the Nazi Party, developed a theory of democracy that aimed to improve on the liberal version. In place of elections, representatives and parliaments, all talk and gutless indecision, Schmitt appealed to the one kind of expression that people can make for themselves: acclamation ...”

“... to hear. For example, although most of the evidence suggests that Mozart’s marriage to Constanze Weber was ‘modern’ in its level of what we might anachronistically call emotional equality, Mozart, when describing his future bride to Leopold, painted a distinctly old-fashioned picture, quite possibly intended as a soothing re-creation of his mother’s ...”

“... some of his essential companions – notably the art director Jack Fisk and the editor Billy Weber. Bleasdale is especially good on Malick’s early life and the details of it that have appeared in his movies. But he is an observant enough member of Malick’s church to know that wonder can be compromised or limited by the facts.Terrence Malick was born ...”

“... eternal or universal standpoint. Third, there is a question about legitimacy, derived from Max Weber, but which has also bulked large in Skinner’s analyses of historical texts. What forms of legitimation are available to political actors? Because such actors have to address themselves, on the whole, to the beliefs current among other actors, these forms ...”

“... threats to human autonomy in capitalist rationalisation and bureaucratisation. ‘Each man,’ Weber warned, ‘becomes a little cog in the machine,’ pathetically obsessed with becoming ‘a bigger cog’. Karel Čapek invented the word ‘robot’, deriving it from the Czech word for forced labour, to evoke the growing superfluity of man in the regime ...”

“... of it – a large pail of the mental world of end-of-the-century Western politics. It is alongside Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss and Friedrich von Hayek that Michael Oakeshott is most appropriately seen. The relations between these four figures await documentation from future biographers. But whatever the circumstantial contacts or conflicts – some more visible ...”

“... Bosch or, later, collected his paintings.In Bosch and Bruegel Koerner drew on the writings of Carl Schmitt, the Nazi jurist who theorised the state of exception (whereby a sovereign leader suspends the rule of law) and reduced politics to a fundamental opposition between friend and foe. Art in a State of Siege elaborates on this dangerous thought, with ...”

“... point is that so did Freud). Thus she can devote eight pages to the story of wealthy Carl Liebman (relying somewhat on Borch-Jacobsen’s Les Patients de Freud), the schizophrenic fetishist who was treated by Freud over the course of five years and ended his days claiming to be his father’s penis, whereas ‘Dora’ gets just a few garbled ...”

“... came to power, Putin lacked any trace of it. But possession of the presidency has altered him. For Weber, who had the Hebrew prophets in mind, charisma was by definition extra-institutional – it was a kind of magic that could only be personal. He could not foresee postmodern conditions, in which the spectacle is a higher power, capable of dissolving the ...”