In this fascinating volume, Gabriella Slomp investigates the connection between Concept of the Political (1932) where Schmitt introduced the famous friend/enemy principle and Theory of the Partisan (1963). Slomp argues that for Schmitt the partisan is an embodiment of the friend/enemy principle. The partisan is an umbrella concept that includes the member of the revolutionary total party of the Thirties, the resistance partisan of the Second World War, and the national and global terrorist. Although the phenomenon of the partisan precipitated the crisis of the state in the twentieth century, Schmitt saw one type of partisan as 'the man of exception' that can save the political. Slomp analyses many of Schmitt's most outrageous remarks such as the claim that 'civil war is the archetype of just war'. She also brings to light the constant engagement by Schmitt with two discourses: the self-interpretation of society and the existing canon of past political theory, notably Thomas Hobbes.