William Rasch is professor of Germanic studies at Indiana University. He has published extensively on the German intellectual tradition—philosophy, social theory, and political theory—concentrating on the work of Niklas Luhmann, Carl Schmitt, and aspects of German Idealism. He is author of Sovereignty and Its Discontents: On the Primacy of Conflict and the Structure of the Political (2004) and Niklas Luhmann’s Modernity: The Paradoxes of Differentiation (2000), as well as editor of several volumes.