Peter Baehr, “Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, and the Social Sciences” (Stanford UP, 2010)

New Books in Sociology · May 16, 2011 · 56m

Contemporary research into illiberal governments draws much inspiration from the writings of Hannah Arendt. In her classic The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Arendt claimed that Nazi Germany and Bolshevik Russia were not merely typical authoritarian regimes, but rather were despotisms of a new “totalitarian” sort. Arendt believed “totalitarianism” was entirely unprecedented, and she took the social sciences to task for failing to recognize it as such. Peter Baehr is sympathetic to Arendt’s concern that social scientists too often put new wine in old bottles. In his latest book, Hannah…