This article traces the semantics of ''life' ' and ''vitality'' in Carl Schmitt up to the 1930s. It shows that Schmitt deploys these vitalist elements against the modern ''spirit of technicity'' in his attempt to combat the lack of substantial ideas in modern politics. However, Schmitt himself cannot escape a fundamental political relativism. There remains an unstable tension at the heart of his thought between the quest for substance and the quest for order. The latter is relativist because it is a quest for order as such, any order. Although Schmitt's semantics of life and vitality is not drawn from a biological register, it adopted a völkisch meaning in 1933. Anti-Semitism becomes a form of life and racial homogeneity fills in for substance. The article concludes that, while there are good reasons for criticizing the modern ''spirit of technicity,'' Schmitt's critical model is fundamentally flawed. have engaged in dialogue with him, drawing on his conceptual equipment while also differing on key points. Since the 1980s, and particularly after his death in 1985, there has been a growing interest in Schmitt in the English-speaking world. 1 An increasing number of his writings have been translated into English, accompanied by a proliferation of books and articles, most of which come not from the conservative but rather from the liberal or, loosely, leftist range of the political spectrum. The reasons for this are as much contested as Schmitt himself was. Nevertheless, we can broadly distinguish two sets of motivations that drive the engagement with Carl Schmitt. One group of authors, mainly in the United States, is concerned about the rise of neoliberal, neoconservative, authoritarian or even fascist