No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Towards a Critique of the Category of Totalitarianism A polysemous category Already in 1951, when Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism was first published, the concept of totalitarianism had been debated for decades. And yet, the meaning of the term still lacks a proper definition. Is it possible to find a way through what appears to be a maze? In this article, I shall not examine the examples in which the adjective 'totalitarian', even more than the noun that derives from it, bears a positive connotation. In other words, I shall not concentrate on the positive use of the term 'totalitarian' with reference to the capacity, attributed to a religion or to any ideology or world view, to posit solutions to all of the many problems that arise from a dramatic situation, or even to answer the question of the meaning of life, a question that concerns humans in their totality. In 1958, though rejecting 'legal totalitarianism', that is, totalitarianism imposed by the law, Karl Barth extolled the universalistic impulse and the all-encompassing effectiveness of the Christian 'message': 'The free grace of the Gospel, too, is "totalitarian", because it

No abstract

No abstract

Este artigo tem como objetivo mostrar as mistificações que se criaram em torno do liberalismo. Fundamentado em investigações históricas, oferece ferramentas teórico-metodológicas para construir uma contra-história a partir das contradições existentes em políticos e pensadores considerados referências fundamentais para o liberalismo. Desmascara as raízes elitistas dos pressupostos teóricos do liberalismo e a violência que caracterizou as revoluções liberais holandesas, inglesa e americana, estritamente vinculadas ao tráfico dos negros, ao extermínio dos índios e à discriminação racial. Palavras-chave: liberalismo; filosofia; política.

The war against Iraq unleashed in March 2003 spawned an attempt to silence the protest movement by accusing it of anti-Americanism. This essay argues that the theory according to which right-wing anti-Americanism and leftwing anti-Americanism coincide is a myth. A new issue appears now, a paradox that characterizes the United States, where democracy developed within the white community concomitantly with the enslavement of blacks and the deportation of American Indians. In the American ''Herrenvolk democracy,'' a line of demarcation between whites and people of color fosters the development of relations based on equality within the white community. Furthermore, U.S. history is marked by the fundamentalist tendency to transform the Judeo-Christian tradition into a sort of national religion that consecrates the exceptionalism of the American people and the sacred mission with which they are entrusted (''Manifest Destiny''). Europe is unable thoroughly to comprehend the American mixture of religious and moral fervor, on the one hand, and overt pursuit of political, economic, and military world domination, on the other. But it is this mixture, or rather this explosive combination, this peculiar fundamentalism, that constitutes the greatest threat to world peace today.