Totalitarianism

Shore reads the Bolshevik project as Enlightenment perfectibility taken literally: engineer new human beings whose consciousness merges so completely with History that no separate subjectivity remains.

Put simply Shore: the Bolsheviks took literally the Enlightenment belief that people can be perfected. They tried to engineer new humans whose minds merged so fully with History's march that no separate self remained.

What stays metaphysical in Hegel, the "I that is a We," the Soviets tried to realize as literally as they could: any subjectivity diverging from the collective must be purged.

Put simply Shore: Hegel's "I that is a We," the self merged with the community, stays abstract in his philosophy. The Soviets tried to make it literally real: any inner life differing from the collective had to be purged.

Interwar polarization is the backdrop to Sartre's preoccupation with choice: with liberalism collapsed and movements claiming every corner of life, nothing moderate seemed left and nobody could sit it out.

Put simply Shore: the years between the World Wars are the backdrop to Sartre's obsession with choice. Liberal democracy had collapsed, mass movements aimed to control every part of life, no middle ground seemed left, and nobody could stand aside.

Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism starts from an intuition: Nazism and Stalinism, locked in a war to the death, were opposites yet in important respects deeply alike, and historically unprecedented.

In Shore's reading, Origins shares, in some ways, the course's recurring starting point: alienation as modernity's central problem, breeding a vulnerability that is necessary though not sufficient for totalitarianism.

Put simply Shore: in some ways Arendt's book starts where the course keeps starting, with alienation, the sense of not being at home in the modern world. That breeds a weakness totalitarianism needs, though it is not enough on its own.

Totalitarian rule shapes its subjects to serve equally well as executioners or victims, so the line dividing persecutor from persecuted never holds still: under Stalin, any denouncer could be denounced.

Put simply Arendt: totalitarian rule makes people equally fit to be executioners or victims, so the roles never stay fixed. Under Stalin, anyone who denounced a neighbor could be denounced in turn.

Totalitarianism, Arendt writes, found a way of "dominating and terrorizing human beings from within"; once everyone polices everyone else, no distance separates rulers from ruled.

Put simply Arendt: totalitarianism found a way to "dominate and terrorize human beings from within". When everyone watches and reports on everyone else, no gap is left between rulers and ruled.

Arendt holds that the capacity totalitarianism exploited in alienated modern masses belongs to everyone, always; nothing essential to any race or nation decides who has it.

Put simply Arendt: the potential that totalitarianism exploited in uprooted, alienated modern masses is in all of us, always. Nothing about any race or nation decides who has it.

Where Adorno and Horkheimer draw a dialectical spiral from Enlightenment to totalitarianism, Foucault draws a straight line: the drive to know and classify everything leads directly to control and surveillance.

Put simply Foucault draws a straight line from the Enlightenment to control and surveillance: the urge to know and sort everything leads there directly. Adorno and Horkheimer instead trace a winding, back-and-forth path toward totalitarianism.

To Derrida, anything linear, one-directional or Hegelian feels totalitarian, and goes with an illusion: that a transcendental signified, a unifying first principle, exists.

Put simply To Derrida, anything linear or one-directional, anything Hegelian, feels totalitarian. It goes with an illusion: that a single unifying first principle, a stand-in for God, exists.

Deconstruction is politics in the good sense, an antidote to the absolutist truth claims behind Nazism and Stalinism: "the at least necessary condition for identifying and combating the totalitarian risk."

Put simply Derrida: deconstruction is political in a good way. By taking apart claims to absolute truth, like those behind Nazism and Stalinism, it is at least a precondition for spotting and fighting totalitarianism.

Arendt contrasts the pre-modern lie, a rip in reality that an attentive eye could locate where it was stitched, with totalitarian ideology, which remakes reality wholesale and leaves no seam.

Put simply Arendt: an old-fashioned lie was like a tear in reality, sewn back up, and a careful observer could find the seam. Totalitarian ideology rebuilds reality completely, so there is no seam to find.