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Author: Benjamin Yang
Publisher: 玲子传媒 LINGZI MEDIA
ISBN: 9815099140
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204
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Book Description
One of the most striking phenomena of the 20th century is totalitarianism. In both Europe and Asia different types of totalitarian states and political organisations have emerged fomenting global hatred wars and massacres of civilians. Nearly 200 million people were killed as a result of totalitarian wars and political cleansing of populations. The totalitarian catastrophe of the last century continues to have a profound impact on global politics and economy in the 21st century. For politicians business leaders and civilians around the world it is impossible to ignore the many problems caused by totalitarianism. The technological revolutions cultural expressions and changes in business models that we are experiencing are all closely related to it. This book traces the origins of totalitarianism from ancient literature to events in the last century. About the Author Benjamin Yang was born in China in 1972. A long-time resident in Southeast Asia he has work experience in broadcasting research and teaching at Central South University and Hainan University primarily in philosophy and dramaturgy. He has published more than 20 academic papers and his major publications include The Cat in the Closed Chamber: The Concept of Time and Space and the Collective Subconscious (2013) which discusses how different human communities often have different conceptions of space and time and Drama and the Rise of Great Powers (2017) which points out that the birth of every modern western power has been accompanied by the emergence of an iconic theatre master. This book Towards Agamemnon: Totalitarianism Origins & History is the result of his years of research and study in philosophy history politics and literature of both the Western and Eastern worlds. Author's words: I lived in Phnom Penh Cambodia during the Covid-19 pandemic. It is a beautiful and romantic city in the Far East. But the shadows of death seems to be creating in a hidden cycle of time. The S-21 Concentration Camp where tens of thousands of people under the Khmer Rouge’s totalitarian rule was just a fraction of the two million Cambodians who were killed in the political cleansing of the population. John and I used translation software to exchange views on politics including totalitarianism. The Red Revolution of the last century was like a horrific ideological viral outbreak that killed tens of millions of people during the Bolshevik Revolution the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Khmer Rouge totalitarian rule. The recollections of those horrific periods have indeed diverted our anxiety over Covid-19. My colleague Professor K came to join me in Phnom Penh. For a fortuitous reason he led me to discover a secret. There exists a literary tradition in the history of the West that is 2500 years old a tradition which had produced the world’s most famous plays and films. The literary tradition contains the source of power of the West’s resistance to totalitarianism over the years. The Marxist regime and the Nazi forces created the apocalyptic landscape of the 20th century but they lost out to this tradition in the end. This book provides the link between that tradition and causes of totalitarianism through the ages especially those during the 20th century. This book traces the origins of totalitarianism from ancient literature to events in the last century.
Author: Benjamin Yang
Publisher: 玲子传媒 LINGZI MEDIA
ISBN: 9815099140
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204
Get Book Here
Book Description
One of the most striking phenomena of the 20th century is totalitarianism. In both Europe and Asia different types of totalitarian states and political organisations have emerged fomenting global hatred wars and massacres of civilians. Nearly 200 million people were killed as a result of totalitarian wars and political cleansing of populations. The totalitarian catastrophe of the last century continues to have a profound impact on global politics and economy in the 21st century. For politicians business leaders and civilians around the world it is impossible to ignore the many problems caused by totalitarianism. The technological revolutions cultural expressions and changes in business models that we are experiencing are all closely related to it. This book traces the origins of totalitarianism from ancient literature to events in the last century. About the Author Benjamin Yang was born in China in 1972. A long-time resident in Southeast Asia he has work experience in broadcasting research and teaching at Central South University and Hainan University primarily in philosophy and dramaturgy. He has published more than 20 academic papers and his major publications include The Cat in the Closed Chamber: The Concept of Time and Space and the Collective Subconscious (2013) which discusses how different human communities often have different conceptions of space and time and Drama and the Rise of Great Powers (2017) which points out that the birth of every modern western power has been accompanied by the emergence of an iconic theatre master. This book Towards Agamemnon: Totalitarianism Origins & History is the result of his years of research and study in philosophy history politics and literature of both the Western and Eastern worlds. Author's words: I lived in Phnom Penh Cambodia during the Covid-19 pandemic. It is a beautiful and romantic city in the Far East. But the shadows of death seems to be creating in a hidden cycle of time. The S-21 Concentration Camp where tens of thousands of people under the Khmer Rouge’s totalitarian rule was just a fraction of the two million Cambodians who were killed in the political cleansing of the population. John and I used translation software to exchange views on politics including totalitarianism. The Red Revolution of the last century was like a horrific ideological viral outbreak that killed tens of millions of people during the Bolshevik Revolution the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Khmer Rouge totalitarian rule. The recollections of those horrific periods have indeed diverted our anxiety over Covid-19. My colleague Professor K came to join me in Phnom Penh. For a fortuitous reason he led me to discover a secret. There exists a literary tradition in the history of the West that is 2500 years old a tradition which had produced the world’s most famous plays and films. The literary tradition contains the source of power of the West’s resistance to totalitarianism over the years. The Marxist regime and the Nazi forces created the apocalyptic landscape of the 20th century but they lost out to this tradition in the end. This book provides the link between that tradition and causes of totalitarianism through the ages especially those during the 20th century. This book traces the origins of totalitarianism from ancient literature to events in the last century.
Author: Manu Samnotra
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793613028
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 155
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Book Description
Does shame have any role in politics? Far too often, shame is used as a weapon to dominate those who lack social power. For which reason, it is often regarded with skepticism by its many critics. But in an era where lying in order to get ahead in political contests seems to go unpunished by voters, where the sale of life-saving drugs is increased to astronomical proportions in the pursuit of profits, and where daily infractions against the dignity of individuals is both widespread and quickly forgotten, the seeming lack of shame threatens to undermine the shared values on which a democratic world depends. Drawing on the political thought of Hannah Arendt, especially her writings on Jewish and world politics, Worldly Shame constructs a political category of shame that can help us respond to the crises of the present moment. “Worldly shame” can return to us our sense of judgment, can be an inducement to action, and is a panacea for a world torn apart by horrors that diminish humanity. By developing a capacity for “worldly shame,” we can create political spaces that are hospitable to a plurality of voices and viewpoints, and which can thus be a bulwark against the world-destroying trends that engulf our world every day.
Author: Peter Morgan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351562002
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 356
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Book Description
Ismail Kadare has experienced a life of controversy. In his own country and internationally he has been both acclaimed as a writer and condemned as a lackey of the Albanian socialist dictatorship. Coming of age after occupation and war, Kadare (b. 1936) belonged to the first generation of new Albanians. In a land where writers were routinely imprisoned, Kadare produced the most brilliant and subversive works to emerge from socialist Eastern Europe. His work brings to an end the century whose literary beginnings were marked by the terror to which Kafka gave his name. The inaugural award of the International Man-Booker Prize for Literature in 2005 marked an important milestone in the global recognition of Kadare. Ironic, multi-layered and imaginative, Kadare's writing is profoundly opposed to ideology. Through critical analysis of a representative selection of Kadare's works, Peter Morgan explains for a wide audience how Kadare survived and wrote in the repressive Albanian Stalinist environment. Peter Morgan is Professor of European Studies at the University of Western Australia.
Author: Zbigniew Janowski
Publisher: St. Augustine's Press
ISBN: 9781587313233
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 250
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Book Description
What is the man who cannot be known apart from his socio-political environment? As Zbigniew Janowski asserts, one does not ask who this man is, for he does not even know himself. This man is suppressed and separated, and not by Fascism or Communism. In present-day America this has been accomplished by democracy. "Only someone shortsighted, or someone who values equality more than freedom, would deny that today's citizens enjoy little or no freedom, particularly freedom of speech, and even less the ability to express openly or publicly the opinions that are not in conformity with what the majority considers acceptable at a given moment. It may sound paradoxical to contemporary ears, but a fight against totalitarianism must also mean a fight against the expansion of democracy." Janowski all at once brazen and out of bounds states what he calls the obvious and unthinkable truth: In the United States, we are already living in a totalitarian reality. The American citizen, the Homo Americanus, is an ideological being who is no longer good or bad, reasonable or irrational, proper or improper except when measured against the objectives of the dominating egalitarian mentality that American democracy has successfully incubated. American democracy has done what other despotic regimes have likewise achieved--namely, taken hold of the individual and forced him to renounce (or forget) his greatness, pursuit of virtue and his orientation toward history and Tradition. Homo Americanus, Janowski argues, has no mind or soul and he cannot tolerate diversity and indeed he now censors himself. Democracy is not benign, and we should fear its principles come by and applied ad hoc. It is deeply troublesome that in the way democracy moves today it gives critics no real insight into any trajectory of reason behind its motion, which is erratic and unmappable. The Homo Americanus is an ideological entity whose thought and even morality are forbidden from universal abstraction. Janowski mounts the offensive against what the American holds most sacred, and he does so in order to save him. After exposing the danger and the damage done, Janowski makes another startling proposal. It is a "diseased collective mind" that is the source of this ideology, the liberal anti-perspective that presses man into the image of the Homo Americanus, and its grip can only be broken through the recovery of instinct. Homo Americanus cannot be free again until he is himself again. That is, until the shadow that belongs only to him is restored, and he is thereby no longer alienated from others. Despite the condemnation Janowski seems to be levying on the citizen of the United States, he betrays a great hope and confidence that the means to shake ourselves awake from the bad dream are nevertheless in hand. Janowski's work is the next title in St. Augustine's Press Dissident American Thought Today Series. It occupies a controversial overlapping terrain between the philosophical descriptions of liberalism as a tradition, psychology and the fundamentally influential critiques of democracy offered by Thucydides, Jefferson, Franklin, Tocqueville, Mill, Burke and more. More anecdotal than analytical, Janowski offers the contemporary proof that the reader is right to be scandalized by democracy and his or her own likeness of the Homo Americanus. Once upon a time it was the despicable Homo Sovieticus fruit of tyranny, but now we fear democratic society too might fall and all its citizens never be found again.
Author: Ismail Kadare
Publisher: Skyhorse
ISBN: 1628722339
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 153
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Book Description
Psychologically incisive and impeccably crafted, Agamemnon’s Daughter tells the crushing story of passion shattered by a heartless regime. Once again, Kadare denounces with rare force the machinery of oppression, drawing us back to the ancient roots of Western civilization and tyranny. This collection also showcases two masterful stories: “The Blinding Order,” a parable about the uses of terror in the Ottoman Empire, and “The Great Wall,” a chilling duet between a Chinese official and a soldier in the invading army of the great conqueror, Tamerlane.
Author: Peter Gratton
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438437862
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
Following up on the fables and stories surrounding political sovereignty—once theological, now often nationalist—Peter Gratton's The State of Sovereignty takes aim at the central concepts surrounding the post-9/11 political environment. Against those content to conceptualize what has been called the "sovereign exception," Gratton argues that sovereignty underwent profound changes during modernity, changes tracked by Rousseau, Arendt, Foucault, Agamben, and Derrida. Each of these thinkers investigated the "fictions" and "illusions" of claims to sovereign omnipotence, while outlining what would become the preeminent problems of racism, nationalism, and biopower. Gratton illustrates the principal claims that tie these philosophers together and, more importantly, what lessons they offer, perhaps in spite of themselves, for those thinking about the future of politics. His innovative readings will open new ground for new and longtime readers of these philosophers alike, while confronting how their critiques of sovereignty reshape our conceptions of identity, freedom, and selfhood. The result not only fills a long-standing need for an up-to-date analysis of the concept of sovereignty but is also a tour de force engaging readers in the most important political and philosophical questions today.
Author: David Richards
Publisher: Ethics International Press
ISBN: 1804411280
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 366
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Book Description
This book offers both a philosophical and psychological theory of an aspect of human love, first noted by Plato and used by Freud in developing psychoanalysis (transference love), namely, lovers as mirrors for one another, enabling them thus better to see and understand themselves and others. Shakespeare’s art makes the same appeal—theater as a communal mirror—expressing the artist holding a loving mirror for his culture at a point of transitional crisis between a shame and guilt culture. The book shows how Shakespeare’s plays offer better insights into the behavior of violent men than Freud’s, based on close empirical study of violent criminals; develops a theory of violence rooted in the moral emotions of shame and guilt; and a cultural psychology of the transition from shame to guilt cultures. The work argues that violence is, contra Freud, not an ineliminable instinct in the nature of things, requiring autocracy, but arises from patriarchally inflicted cultural injuries to the love of equals that undermine democracy, and that only a therapy based on love can address such injuries, replacing retributive with restorative justice, and populist fascist autocracy with constitutional democracy. Love, thus understood, underlies a range of disparate phenomena: the appeal of Shakespeare’s theater as a communal art; the role of love in psychoanalysis; in Augustine’s conception of love in religion (disfigured by his patriarchal assumptions); in Kant’s anti-utilitarian ethics of dignity; in a naturalistic ethics that roots ethics in facts of human psychology; the role of law in democratic cultures as a mirror and critique of such cultures; and the basis of an egalitarian theory of universal human rights (inspired by Kant and developed, more recently, by John Rawls). In all these domains, uncritically accepted forms of culture (the initiation of men and women into patriarchy) traumatize the love of equals, and thus disfigure and distort our personal and political lives.
Author: K. S. Burns
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 144388121X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 145
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Book Description
While the role of women in western society has changed since the time of the great classical eras of Greece and Rome, the heroines of ancient myth remain just as potent to modern audiences as they were for their original creators. Regardless of genre or medium, these women of antiquity retain their power to reinforce, challenge, or outright shatter popular beliefs about the attributes, limitations, and social roles of women. This collection of eight essays examines the legacy of the heroines of antiquity in a variety of contexts, from the page to the stage to the screen, in order to understand why Helen of Troy, the Amazons, and their fellow ladies of myth have remained such vital figures today, and how they have evolved to retain and increase their stature. The contributors to this volume adopt an array of perspectives in order to do justice to the rich legacy of mythic women. These authors hail from three different continents and specialize in multiple disciplines, including Classical Studies, English, and Gender Studies. These diverse approaches make this book applicable to scholars with a wide variety of skills and interests, and ensure the topic a multifaceted treatment in the tradition of the humanities.
Author: John Boardman
Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks
ISBN: 9780192854360
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 476
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Book Description
The Romans succeeded in less than fifty-three years in subjecting almost the whole inhabited world of their rule. This book tells the story of the rise of Rome from its origins as a cluster of villages to the foundation of the Roman Empire by Augustus and its consolidation in the first two centuries AD. It also discusses some aspects of the later Empire and its influence on western civilizations, not least through the adoption of Christianity. Chapters dealing with social and political history are interspersed with chapters on literature, philosophy, and the arts: the conquests of Rome; Roman Emperors; Plautus, Terence, Virgil and Roman literature; Roman historians such as Tacitus and Livy; Stoicism and Scepticism; and Roman art and architecture are among the topics dealt with. The historical framework of the book is reinforced by maps and chronological charts; there are bibliographies and a full index; and the book is profusely and aptly illustrated with colour and black-and-white illustrations.
Author: Susan Griffin
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504012194
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 279
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Book Description
A masterwork of feminist ideology, brilliantly exposing pornography as the antithesis of free expression and the enemy of liberty In this powerful and devastating critique, poet, philosopher, and feminist Susan Griffin exposes the inherent psychological horrors of pornography. Griffin argues that, rather than encouraging expression, pornographic images and the philosophies that support them actually stifle freedoms through the dehumanization, subjugation, and degradation of female subjects. The pornographic mindset, Griffin contends, is akin to racism in that it causes dangerous schisms in society and promotes sexual regression, fear, and hatred. This violent rift in Western culture is explored by examining the lives of six notable individuals across two centuries: Franz Marc, the Marquis de Sade, Kate Chopin, Lawrence Singleton, Anne Frank, and Marilyn Monroe. The result is an extraordinary new approach to evaluating sexual health and the parameters of erotic imagination. Griffin reveals pornography as “not a love of the life of the body, but a fear of bodily knowledge, and a desire to silence Eros.”
