Starting with a definition of political modernity from the angle of its greatest trial, namely totalitarianism, this study pursues two questions: How to conceptualize community after the experience of totalitarianism? And, what can the Eastern Orthodox intellectual tradition contribute to this debate? In both parts of Europe, totalitarianism raised the same political philosophical challenge: How to conceptualize the relationship between the individual and community in the light of the absolute communization of society and the simultaneous absolute atomization of individuals which totalitarianism had brought about? In contemporary Western political philosophy, the reflection upon this experience has taken three principled directions: the unequivocal embrace and conceptual elaboration of liberalism for which the works of John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas are exemplary, the communitarian critique of liberalism for which the works of Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre are representative, and the postmodern critique which, most clearly expressed in the works of Jean-Luc Nancy, ties the question of community back to the singular human being. In the present study, I add to these three approaches a viewpoint which challenges the limits of all of them. Focusing on the works of Sergej Horužij and Christos Yannaras, I demonstrate how these authors, while accepting the lesson of totalitarianism, seek foundations for their conceptualization of community and human subjectivity in the spiritual and intellectual tradition of Eastern Christianity. My aim is to re-think the political problematic of modernity from the East and beyond liberal, communitarian and postmodern political philosophy in order to extend the interpretative space of political modernity, to sharpen the problematic of community and the human subject after the experience of totalitarianism, and to single out those elements which are especially pertinent for a post-totalitarian philosophy of community: the quality of freedom, the role of practices, and the meaning of tradition.

The success of fascist and communist regimes has long been explained by their ability to turn political ideology into a type of religion. These innovative essays explore the notion that all forms of modern mass-politics, including democracies, need a form of sacralization to function.

This book enters into a detailed discussion with many theorists of totalitarianism, and demands a re-evaluation of approaches that speak of mass manipulation of people and ideological control mechanisms. Žarko Paić shows that totalitarianism cannot be only a political-ideological problem, but rather a problem of the relationship between the technosphere, political power, and the narcissistic culture of the spectacle, which offers postmodern revisionism and forgetfulness of history as opposed to brave civic participation in the public sphere of acting together. He investigates the transformations the political and cultural processes linked to the notion of ‘totalitarianism’ undergo in the contemporary world, and the transformations (and differences) that this notion expresses today in comparison to what was realized by fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism in the 20th century.

The totalitarian systems that arose in the twentieth century presented themselves as secular. Yet, as A. James Gregor argues in this book, they themselves functioned as religions. He presents an intellectual history of the rise of these political religions, tracing a set of ideas that include belief that a certain text contains impeccable truths; notions of infallible, charismatic leadership; and the promise of human redemption through strict obedience, selfless sacrifice, total dedication, and unremitting labor. Gregor provides unique insight into the variants of Marxism, Fascism, and National Socialism that dominated our immediate past. He explores the seeds of totalitarianism as secular faith in the nineteenth-century ideologies of Ludwig Feuerbach, Moses Hess, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Richard Wagner. He follows the growth of those seeds as the twentieth century became host to Leninism and Stalinism, Italian Fascism, and German National Socialism—each a totalitarian institution and a political religion.

We are used to distinguishing the despotic regimes of the 20th century - communism, fascism, National Socialism, Maoism - very precisely according to place and time, origins and influences. But what should we call that which they have in common? On this question, there has been and is still a passionate debate. This book documents the first international conference on this theme, a conference that took place in September of 1994 at the University of Munich. The book shows how new models for understanding political history arose from the experience of modern despotic regimes. Here, the most important concepts - totalitarianism and political religions - are discussed and tested in terms of their usefulness.

The first political theory of post-Communism examines its implications for understanding liberty, rights, transitional justice, property rights, privatization, rule of law, centrally planned public institutions, and the legacies of totalitarian thought in language and discourse. The transition to post-totalitarianism was the spontaneous adjustment of the rights of the late-totalitarian elite to its interest. Post-totalitarian governments faced severe scarcity in the supply of justice. Rough justice punished the perpetrators and compensated their victims. Historical theories of property rights became radical, and consequentialist theories, conservative. Totalitarianism in Europe disintegrated but did not end. The legacies of totalitarianism in higher education met New Public Management, totalitarian central planning under a new label. Totalitarianism divorced language from reality through the use of dialectics that identified opposites and the use of logical fallacies to argue for ideological conclusions. This book illustrates these legacies in the writings of Habermas, Derrida, and Žižek about democracy, personal responsibility, dissidence, and totalitarianism.

"The Dangers of Technological Totalitarianism and Surveillance Capitalism: Inside the Algorithm" is a book that explores the dangers and challenges facing contemporary society in a world increasingly dominated by technology and characterized by massive data collection. In this book, the author addresses two distinct but interconnected dangers arising from the same technological tools. The first danger is the resurgence of extreme totalitarian regimes, in which technological tools are used to monitor and control the population in ways previously unimaginable. The author points out that these abuses can occur in various countries and warns of the potential for totalitarianism to become the norm in some nations. The second danger addressed is surveillance capitalism, an economic and social system based on the collection and exploitation of personal data. The author examines in detail the cycle of surveillance capitalism, from massive data collection to monetization, highlighting the risks of privacy, manipulation and social compliance that arise in this context. The book also explores the social and ethical consequences of surveillance capitalism, raising questions about corporate and government responsibility for controlling and transparently the algorithms that shape our lives. Throughout the chapters, the author presents case studies and concrete examples to illustrate the dangers and impacts of these phenomena. In addition, strategies of resistance and preservation of privacy are discussed, aimed at providing readers with a broader understanding of the meaning of human life in a world where increasingly important decisions are made by external algorithms. "The Dangers of Technological Totalitarianism and Surveillance Capitalism" is essential work for those seeking to understand the challenges and dilemmas of today's technological world. The book serves as a warning about the importance of reflecting on the importance of freedom, privacy, and human action in an age dominated by algorithms and surveillance systems.

French philosophy since World War II has been preoccupied with the issue of difference. Specifically, it has wanted to promote or to leave room for ways of living and of being that differ from those usually seen in contemporary Western society. Given the experience of the Holocaust, the motivation for such a preoccupation is not difficult to see. For some thinkers, especially Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, and Gilles Deleuze, this preoccupation has led to a mode of philosophizing that privileges difference as a philosophical category. Nancy privileges difference as a mode of conceiving community, Derrida as a mode of conceiving linguistic meaning, Levinas as a mode of conceiving ethics, and Deleuze as a mode of conceiving ontology. Reconsidering Difference has a twofold task, the primary one critical and the secondary one reconstructive. The critical task is to show that these various privilegings are philosophical failures. They wind up, for reasons unique to each position, endorsing positions that are either incoherent or implausible. Todd May considers the incoherencies of each position and offers an alternative approach. His reconstructive task, which he calls "contingent holism," takes the phenomena under investigation—community, language, ethics, and ontology—and sketches a way of reconceiving them that preserves the motivations of the rejected positions without falling into the problems that beset them.

With fascism on the march in Europe and a second World War looming, a group of Britain's leading intellectuals – including T.S. Eliot, Karl Mannheim, John Middleton Murry, J. H. Oldham and Michael Polanyi – gathered together to explore ways of revitalising a culture that seemed to have lost its way. The group called themselves 'the Moot'. Drawing on previously unpublished archival documents, this is the first in-depth study of the group's work, writings and ideas in the decade of its existence from 1938-1947. Christian Modernism in an Age of Totalitarianism explores the ways in which an important and influential strand of Modernist thought in the interwar years turned back to Christian ideas to offer a blueprint for the revitalisation of European culture. In this way the book challenges conceptions of Modernism as a secular movement and sheds new light on the culture of the late Modernist period.

Applying a rational choice perspective, this book presents a dynamic theory of the evolution of totalitarian regimes and terrorism. By demonstrating that totalitarian regimes rest on ideologies involving supreme values that are assumed to be absolutely true, the author identifies the factors that lead to totalitarian regimes, and those that transform or abolish those regimes with time. The author addresses different ideologies, such as National Socialism, Communism, and religious movements; examines numerous historical cases of totalitarian regimes; and develops a formal, mathematical model of totalitarianism in the book’s closing chapter.