Carl Schmitt in the context of "Authoritarian conservative"

Political theology is a term which has been used in discussion of the ways in which theological concepts or ways of thinking relate to politics. The term is often used to denote religious thought about political principled questions. Scholars such as Carl Schmitt who wrote extensively on how to effectively wield political power, used it to denote religious concepts that were secularized and thus became key political concepts. It has often been affiliated with Christianity, but since the 21st century, it has more recently been discussed with relation to other religions.

Hans Joachim Morgenthau (February 17, 1904 – July 19, 1980) was a German-American jurist and political scientist who was one of the major 20th-century figures in the study of international relations. Morgenthau's works belong to the tradition of realism in international relations theory; he is usually considered among the most influential realists of the post-World War II period. Morgenthau made landmark contributions to international relations theory and the study of international law. His Politics Among Nations, first published in 1948, went through five editions during his lifetime and was widely adopted as a textbook in U.S. universities. While Morgenthau emphasized the centrality of power and "the national interest," the subtitle of Politics Among Nations—"the struggle for power and peace"—indicates his concern not only with the struggle for power but also with the ways in which it is limited by ethical and legal norms.

In addition to his books, Morgenthau wrote widely about international politics and U.S. foreign policy for general-circulation publications such as The New Leader, Commentary, Worldview, The New York Review of Books and The New Republic. He knew and corresponded with many of the leading intellectuals and writers of his era, such as Reinhold Niebuhr, George F. Kennan, Carl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt. At one point in the early Cold War, Morgenthau was a consultant to the U.S. Department of State when Kennan headed its Policy Planning Staff, as well as a second time during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations until he was dismissed by Johnson when he began to publicly criticize American policy in Vietnam. For most of his career, however, Morgenthau was esteemed as an academic interpreter of U.S. foreign policy.

Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin (Russian: Александр Гельевич Дугин; born 7 January 1962) is a Russian far-right political philosopher. He is the leading theorist of Russian neo-Eurasianism.

Born into a military intelligence family, Dugin was an anti-communist dissident during the 1980s, and joined the far-right Pamyat organization. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he co-founded the National Bolshevik Party, which espoused National Bolshevism, with Eduard Limonov in 1993 before leaving in 1998. In 1997, Dugin published his most well-known work, Foundations of Geopolitics, in which he called on Russia to rebuild its influence through alliances and conquest in order to challenge a purported rival Atlanticist empire led by the United States. Dugin founded the Eurasia Party in 2002, and continued to develop his ideology in books including The Fourth Political Theory (2009). His views have been characterized as fascist or neo-fascist, although he explicitly rejects fascism along with liberal democracy and Marxism, instead advocating a "conservative revolution" against Enlightenment ideas in Russia. He has drawn on the writings of René Guénon, Julius Evola, Carl Schmitt, and Martin Heidegger.

A state of exception (German: Ausnahmezustand) is a concept introduced in the 1920s by the German philosopher, jurist and later Nazi Party member Carl Schmitt, similar to a state of emergency (martial law) but based in the sovereign's ability to transcend the rule of law in the name of the public order and the survival of a state. Its difference to a state of emergency lies in the two concepts' diverging relationship to the law; while a state of emergency is considered to be mostly declaratory, a state of exception is considered to be more politically significant, as it nullifies the legal validity of certain legal orders by the sovereign decision.

Giorgio Agamben (/əˈɡæmbən/ ə-GAM-bən; Italian: [ˈdʒordʒo aˈɡamben]; born 22 April 1942) is an Italian philosopher whose work spans political theory, ontology, aesthetics, and literature. He is best known for developing the concepts of the state of exception and homo sacer, which explore the relationship between sovereignty, legal authority, and what he calls 'bare life'. His writings draw on sources including Aristotle, Roman law, Christian theology, Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Ludwig Wittgenstein, St. Augustine and Carl Schmitt among others, and engage critically with Michel Foucault’s account of biopolitics and biopower. Agamben’s multi-volume Homo Sacer project has been widely discussed within political philosophy, jurisprudence, anthropology, and the humanities, and he is considered one of the most influential writers in contemporary continental philosophy.

Agamben has held teaching and research positions at institutions including the University of Verona, the University of Macerata, the University of Palermo, and the Università Iuav di Venezia, and he has lectured widely in Europe and North America. His publications include Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1995), State of Exception (2003), The Kingdom and the Glory (2007), and The Use of Bodies (2014), alongside works on language, poetry, and the history of Western metaphysics. His ideas have generated substantial scholarly debate and have influenced fields ranging from political theory to literary studies.