Ricerc@Sapienza

Society is now facing challenges for which the traditional management toolbox is increasingly inadequate. Well-grounded theoretical frameworks, such as systems thinking and cybernetics, offer general level interpretation schemes and models that are capable of supporting understanding of complex phenomena and are not impacted by the passage of time. This book serves the knowledge society to address the complexity of decision making and problem solving in the 21st century with contributions from systems and cybernetics.

"Gesetz und Urteil" is a seminal text by the young Carl Schmitt concerning the definition of legal praxis, which contains an initial formulation of his notion of decision. The present essay analyzes this basic thesis as it is expounded in the book by the great German jurist and philosopher. The close affinity between the activity of the judge and the rising concept of "the political" is also pointed out as being the idea upon which Schmitt would later develop his famous doctrine of sovereignty.

This article traces a developmental trajectory in Schmitt’s conception of law that brings out
alternative conceptualizations of the exception. “Transcendence”, “immanence” and
“integration” signify three different models to represent the relation between what I call
“nomic force” (the particular phenomenon of bringing order) and “materiality” (the matter-offactness
of a particular entity or phenomenon). I contend that while Political Theology feeds off a
transcendent model, where a sovereign decider makes materiality speakable, The Concept of the

This article offers an unconventional interpretation of Carl Schmitt’s conception of the political. It first identifies two alternative readings – an
‘exceptionalist’ and a ‘concretist’ one – to make the claim that in the late 1920s he laid the foundations for a theory of politics that overcame the
flaws of his theory of exception. It then explains why the concretist reading provides an insightful key to Schmitt’s take on the relationship