The Origins Of Totalitarianism

Explores the roots of totalitarianism and its culmination in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia.

In this stimulating collection of studies, Dr. Arendt, from the standpoint of a political philosopher, views the crises of the 1960s and early '70s as challenges to the American form of government. The book begins with "Lying in Politics," a penetrating analysis of the Pentagon Papers that deals with the role of image-making and public relations in politics. "Civil Disobedience" examines the various opposition movements from the Freedom Riders to the war resisters and the segregationists. "Thoughts on Politics and Revolution," cast in the form of an interview, contains a commentary to the author's theses in "On Violence." Through the connected essays, Dr. Arendt examines, defines, and clarifies the concerns of the American citizen of the time.--From publisher description.

In the first volume of her landmark philosophical work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, the political theorist traces the rise of antisemitism in Europe. Since it was first published in 1951, The Origins of Totalitarianism has been recognized as the definitive philosophical account of the totalitarian mindset. A probing analysis of Nazism, Stalinism, and the “banality of evil”, it remains one of the most referenced works in studies and discussions of totalitarian movements around the world. In this first volume, Antisemitism, Dr. Hannah Arendt traces the rise of antisemitism to Central and Western European Jewish history during the 19th century. With the appearance of the first political activity by antisemitic parties in the 1870s and 1880s, Arendt states, the machinery that led to the horrors of the Holocaust was set in motion. The Dreyfus Affair, in Arendt’s view, was “a kind of dress rehearsal”—the first modern use of antisemitism as an instrument of public policy and of hysteria as a political weapon. “The most original and profound—therefore the most valuable—political theorist of our times.”—Dwight MacDonald, The New Leader

The great twentieth-century political philosopher examines how Hitler and Stalin gained and maintained power, and the nature of totalitarian states. In the final volume of her classic work The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt focuses on the two genuine forms of the totalitarian state in modern history: the dictatorships of Bolshevism after 1930 and of National Socialism after 1938. Identifying terror as the very essence of this form of government, she discusses the transformation of classes into masses and the use of propaganda in dealing with the nontotalitarian world—and in her brilliant concluding chapter, she analyzes the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination. “The most original and profound—therefore the most valuable—political theoretician of our times.” —Dwight Macdonald, The New Leader

Hannah Arendt first argued the continuities between the age of European imperialism and the age of fascism in Europe in 'The Origins of Totalitarianism'. This text uses Arendt's insights as a starting point for further investigations into the ways in which race, imperialism, slavery and genocide are linked.

In the second volume of The Origins of Totalitarianism, the political theorist traces the decline of European colonialism and the outbreak of WWI. Since it was first published in 1951, The Origins of Totalitarianism has been recognized as the definitive philosophical account of the totalitarian mindset. A probing analysis of Nazism, Stalinism, and the “banality of evil”, it remains one of the most referenced works in studies and discussions of totalitarian movements around the world. In this second volume, Imperialism, Dr. Hannah Arendt examines the cruel epoch of declining European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of the First World War. Through portraits of Disraili, Cecil Rhodes, Gobineau, Proust, and T.E. Lawrence, Arendt illustrates how this era ended with the decline of the nation-state and the disintegration of Europe’s class society. These two events, Arendt argues, generated totalitarianism, which in turn produced the Holocaust. “The most original and profound—therefore the most valuable—political theorist of our times.”—Dwight MacDonald, The New Leader

Sixty years ago, the political theorist Hannah Arendt, an exiled Jew deprived of her German citizenship, observed that before people can enjoy any of the "inalienable" Rights of Man-before there can be any specific rights to education, work, voting, and so on-there must first be such a thing as "the right to have rights". The concept received little attention at the time, but in our age of mass deportations, Muslim bans, refugee crises, and extra-state war, the phrase has become the centre of a crucial and lively debate. Here five leading thinkers from varied disciplines-including history, law, politics, and literary studies-discuss the critical basis of rights and the meaning of radical democratic politics today.

Upon publication of her 'field manual,' The Origins of Totalitarianism, in 1951, Hannah Arendt immediately gained recognition as a major political analyst. Over the next twenty-five years, she wrote ten more books and developed a set of ideas that profoundly influenced the way America and Europe addressed the central questions and dilemmas of World War II. In this concise book, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl introduces her mentor's work to twenty-first-century readers. Arendt's ideas, as much today as in her own lifetime, illuminate those issues that perplex us, such as totalitarianism, terrorism, globalization, war, and 'radical evil.' Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, who was Arendt's doctoral student in the early 1970s and who wrote the definitive biography of her mentor in 1982, now revisits Arendt's major works and seminal ideas. Young-Bruehl considers what Arendt's analysis of the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union can teach us about our own times, and how her revolutionary understanding of political action is connected to forgiveness and making promises for the future. The author also discusses The Life of the Mind, Arendt's unfinished meditation on how to think about thinking. Placed in the context of today's political landscape, Arendt's ideas take on a new immediacy and importance. They require our attention, Young-Bruehl shows, and continue to bring fresh truths to light.