Hannah Arendt the origins of totalitarianism / Jerome Kohn and Thomas Wild, editors.
| Author/creator | Arendt, Hannah author. |
| Other author | Kohn, Jerome, editor. |
| Other author | Wild, Thomas, editor. |
| Format | Book |
| Edition | Expanded edition. |
| Publication | New York : The Library of America, [2025] |
| Copyright Date | ©2025 |
| Description | xii, 879 pages ; 21 cm. |
| Subjects |
| Portion of title | Origins of totalitarianism |
| Series | The Library of America Library of America ; 389. ^A515081 |
| Contents | The origins of totalitarianism -- Pt. 1. Antisemitism -- Antisemitism as an outrage to common sense -- The Jews, the nation-state, and the birth of Antisemitism -- The Jew and society -- The Dreyfus Affair -- Pt. 2. Imperialism -- The political emancipation of the Bourgeoisie -- Race-thinking before racism -- Race and bureaucracy -- Continental Imperialism: The Pan-movements -- The decline of the nation-state and the end of the rights of man -- Pt. 3. Totalitarianism -- A classless society -- The Totalitarian Movement -- Totalitarianism in power -- Ideology and terror: A novel form of government -- Appendix: Concluding remarks -- Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution. |
| Abstract | "A relatively unknown German-Jewish émigré addressed the terrifying new mode of political organization underlying the twin horrors of Stalinism and Nazism. Herself a refugee from Nazi persecution, Hannah Arendt sought, from her exile in New York City, to answer the unfathomable questions raised by the Soviet gulag and the Holocaust: How could there be such barbarism in the midst of civilization? How had governments exerted such absolute control over citizens, terrorizing them and enlisting them to commit atrocities on their behalf? Arendt’s historical and cultural analyses extend to a thorough examination of nineteenth-century antisemitism in Europe, including a trenchant account of the Dreyfus Affair in France and brilliant insights into imperialism, racism, and their role in totalitarianism’s rise in the 1920s and 1930s. Arendt contends that totalitarianism, as a political system, is now embedded in contemporary life and is, as she would later remark, “the central event of our world.” Her clear-eyed warning that totalitarianism is not merely a historical episode but is rather a permanent feature of modernity and beyond—a danger never to be fully eradicated, and a continual temptation for anti-democratic demagogues—makes Arendt, a half-century after her death, a preeminent thinker and political philosopher for the twenty-first century."-- Amazon.com. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 699-735) and index. |
| ISBN | 9781598538069 |
| ISBN | 1598538063 |