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No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Division of the Social Sciences, December 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. Alsoi available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Catholic University of America, 1944. / Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 156-164).

Cette thèse propose une lecture de la création de Camus sous l’angle démocratique et antitotalitaire pour démontrer l’aspect innovant de sa pensée qui est plus que jamais d’actualité. Cent ans après la naissance de l’écrivain prix Nobel de littérature, son œuvre ouvre de nouveaux axes de réflexion à mi-chemin entre la philosophie, la science-politique et la littérature. Après une introduction générale aux concepts de totalitarisme et de démocratie, nous passerons plus spécifiquement à l’étude de l’auteur. Nous esquisserons un portrait de Camus en tant que journaliste engagé dans les batailles de son temps et nous aborderons une analyse comparative entre Camus et les intellectuels ou penseurs qui ont influencé sa pensée démocratique et inspiré sa réflexion sur les totalitarismes. Ensuite, nous focaliserons l’analyse sur certaines œuvres : les essais journalistiques (Actuelles I, II, III) et philosophiques (L’Homme révolté) ; les œuvres de fiction, comme La Peste, ainsi que trois pièces de théâtre Caligula, Les Justes et L’État de siège. En nous basant sur ce choix d’œuvres, nous examineront la technique adoptée par Camus pour transférer dans la fiction le débat démocratique contre les totalitarismes de son époque. Enfin, nous étudierons du point de vue lexicologique les termes de totalitarisme et démocratie, ainsi que tous leurs synonymes entrant dans le champ sémantique du débat antitotalitaire. / This thesis proposes a reading of Camus’ creation from the democratic and antitotalitarian perspective in order to demonstrate the innovative aspect of his thought, which is more actual than ever. One hundred years after the birth of the writer, Nobel Prize for literature, his work opens up new lines of thought halfway between philosophy, science, politics and literature. After a general introduction to the concepts of totalitarianism and democracy, we will proceed to the more specifically study of the author. We sketch a portrait of Camus as a committed journalist in the battles of his time and we will discuss a comparative analysis between Camus and intellectuals and thinkers who influenced his democratic thought and inspired his thinking on totalitarianism. Then, we will focus the analysis on certain works : journalistic (Actuelles I, II, III ) and philosophical essays (The Rebel), fictional works, such as The Plague, and three plays Caligula, The Just Assassins and The State of siege. Based on this selection of works, we will examine the technique adopted by Camus to transfer into the fictional the democratic debate against the totalitarianism of his era. Finally, we will study from a lexicological point of view the terms of totalitarianism and democracy, and all their synonyms within the semantic field of anti-totalitarian debate.

Norman Mailer's seminal works The Naked and the Dead and The Armies of the Night both outline Mailers distaste for oppression. The Naked and the Dead's bleak reprisal of oppressive leadership tactics offers little in the way of a solution to fight this power. However, twenty years later, The Armies of the Night names personal expression of political views as the answer to oppressive force within the American government. Mailer met the hypocrisy of fighting for freedom abroad while oppressing one's own citizens by encouraging personal expression and flaunting the "rules" of the novel. In the end, Mailer surmises that the best way to encourage freedom of thought and action is to educate his fellow citizens to question objectivity.

The diploma thesis Modern Dystopias and Theories of Totalitarianism deals with comparation of this two phenomena. The thesis is based on the concept of Giovanni Sartori. He understands the phenomenon of totalitarianism as ideal ending of the axis totalitarianism- democracy. Extreme points of this axis fulfill the role of unrealizable ideal regimes. In reality we can only move closer to them but modern dystopias may represent these ideal regimes. The diploma thesis is divided into theoretical and practical section. There is the analyse of five books in the theoretical section which deal with the theory of totalitarianism. The analysis contains the work of Sigmund Neumann, Hannah Arendt, Carl J. Friedrich and Zbigniew K. Brzeziński, Giovanni Sartori and Juan J. Linz. Each theory of totalitarianism is supplemented by reflection from other authors. There is the analyse of five dystopias (J. Zamjatin - We, A. Huxley - Brave New World, G. Orwell - Nineteen Eighty-four, M. Atwood - The Handmaid`s Tale, A. Moore, D. Lloyd - V for Vendetta) in the practical section. The analysis contains the storyline of the book, elements of totalitarian regime in the dystopia and inspiration of author for the world of dystopia. There is elaborated final comparation between theories of totalitarianism and modern dystopias...

The jurist Carl Schmitt’s views on the total state and race need further clarification as long as the English language edition of his Concept of the Political presents an apologist commentary. The questions are to which degree Schmitt’s works written during the Weimar Republic are tainted with totalitarian and racist ideas and whether Schmitt gave up fundamental principles during Nationalist Socialism. This thesis examines writings by Schmitt between 1913 and 1940 to reconstruct a coherent anti-individualistic legal viewpoint and its arguments. The first part finds that Schmitt undermines the individual rights of the Weimar Constitution. The second part discusses Schmitt’s role as a theorist of totalitarianism. The third part considers Schmitt’s anti-Semitism as underlying motivation for his political theory and analyzes his racism in light of his anti-individualism. Schmitt frequently argues by invoking necessity of history and by justifying some political action as necessary. These arguments should be rejected.

Under the shade of escalating violence and fundamentalism, our epoch's diffused aura of liberalism supposedly tolerates difference, by exorcising the evil phantasms of totalitarianism, in favour of a liberal and humane post-modem order. Consequently, behind contemporary versions of evil, one demonises modem 'fascists', 'totalitarian threats', and 'Hitlers'. As if not obscure enough, fascist evil has been equivocally linked with perversion. Considering this link a tenebrous enigma, my thesis suggests that psychoanalysis can successfully elucidate its problematic and feeble basis, by reappraising previous narratives from a number of different discourses that inscribe the liaison between fascism and perversion in their representational stage. In a first approach, the present study dissects texts as heterogeneous, as film, social theory, political philosophy, and psychoanalysis. This is to show that, despite the divergent speculative angle that each discourse espouses, perversion is a common exegetic thread, intertextually sewing their narratives. The objective of my criticism that goes through psychoanalysis, without, however, exempting it from this criticism, is to reveal that both fascism and perversion implicate the non-symbolisable kernel in politics, which becomes the source of their mystification. My thesis argues that the fascist does not take the same discursive position, as the pervert does, regarding this symbolic gap. The first is interested in domination, drawn from the superiority of his ideology's master signifier, whereas the latter is interested in excavating the emptiness of any master signifier and in constantly provoking prefabricated knowledge, similarly to the hysteric. Apart from the level of discourse, on the ethical level, I disengage the view that sees Sade and the Nazi officer, as emblematic figures of a Kantian ethical gesture. Considering the imaginary hypostasis of their ethical performance, I argue that personal interests, fantasies and desires, determine the austerity of their ethical duty. Yet, the fantasies of Sade and Nazism are incongruent, insomuch as they are organised by antithetical ideals. Finally, I develop a new rhetoric, de-pathologised and de-ideologised, regarding the structure of the so-called pervert, introducing new vocabularies and directions for psychoanalytic research that further distance the pervert, or whom I call the extra-ordinary subject, from fascist politics and, instead, expose his diachronic "fascist" isolation from the social edifice. This reveals the fruitful alternatives that can stem from a 'return to Freud cum Lacan, which supports a flexible on-going reformulation of psychoanalytic knowledge.

Partindo da ideia de que, para Hannah Arendt, Origens do totalitarismo não esgota a questão do totalitarismo, a tese pretende mostrar o primeiro passo dado pela autora no aprofundamento da questão. A argumentação se inicia com a afirmação arendtiana de que os campos de concentração funcionaram como laboratórios onde até mesmo a personalidade e a espontaneidade dos seres humanos foram concebidas como coisas e, portanto, como sujeitas ao conhecimento. Esta constatação colocou o problema do humano no centro do pensamento da autora. Ao confirmar uma antiga suspeita contra a tradição de filosofia política, Arendt se engajou em sua desmontagem servindo-se de certa análise de alguns filósofos pós-hegelianos (sobretudo Marx) e da crítica ao procedimento de differentia specifica para a determinação da essência do ser humano. Em um passo seguinte, lançou-se à formulação de uma nova maneira de pensar o humano e, para evitar o recurso a essências, apoiou-se sobre as diferentes temporalidades das atividades humanas. O resultado deste movimento é A condição humana, livro em que a vita activa é apresentada em termos temporais e o conceito de ação é formulado como uma temporalidade aberta ancorada na pluralidade. Isto faz do conceito de ação um entrave teórico ao totalitarismo, uma vez que insere o indeterminado no centro do pensar político tornando impossível o conhecimento do agir. / Since for Hannah Arendt the question of totalitarianism is not completely solved with The Origins of Totalitarianism, I intend to show her first steps toward a deeper level of this question. I start with her claim that concentration camps were comparable to laboratories in which even men\'s personality and spontaneity were conceived as sheer things, thus being subject to knowledge. This observation leads the problem of human to the center of her thought. After confirming a suspicion harbored against the tradition of political philosophy, Arendt binds herself to dismantle the tradition, a task carried out through an analysis of post-hegelian thinkers (specially Marx) and the critique of differentia specifica as a proceeding to determine human beings\' essence. Her following step was the formulation of a new way to think about human and, in order to avoid the use of essences, she leans on the different temporalities of human activities. The outcome of this movement is The Human Condition, a book in which vita activa is described in temporal terms and the concept of action structured on an open temporality based on plurality. The concept of action became a theoretical blockade against totalitarianism as it places the indeterminate in the center of political thinking thus making it impossible to know a priori human action.