Simona Forti, <\/b>Totalitarianism: A Borderline Idea in Political Philosophy<\/i><\/b>. Translated by Simone Ghelli Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2024, viii + 170 pp. ISBN: 9781503637375<\/b><\/p>\n
Reviewed by Antonio Calcagno, King\u2019s University College at Western University<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Simona Forti\u2019s <\/span>Totalitarianism<\/span><\/i> is a timely book, not only because it speaks to the various shifting political events and trends we currently witness around the world today but also because it gives readers a complex narrative in which to frame our understanding of the idea of totalitarianism. The central thesis of the work is two-fold. First, it seeks to demonstrate that totalitarianism has a plethora of various historical meanings as it is taken up and deployed in different practices in varying political regimes, for example, Italian Fascism, National Socialism, and Stalinism. Furthermore, the sense of the term is made more complex within specific fields of study, which have different angles and approaches to the term. For example, how history, philosophy or political science conceive of the idea of totalitarianism varies in each discipline, though, on occasion, there is a confluence of understanding. Second, political philosophy presents an interesting analysis of the concept, ultimately showing that totalitarianism is the manifestation of the workings of power: power, including political power, seeks absolute control: \u201cThe question of totalitarianism should be reconsidered on the basis of a very cumbersome and not unanimously accepted presupposition. Totalitarian regimes have highlighted how not only political power, but power in general\u2014even though not evil per se, as Foucault would put it\u2014always has a totalitarian vocation. Power is a force that constantly, almost naturally, attempts to expand its grasp on everything and everyone\u201d (144\u2013145). The implication is clear: all forms of governing power harbour within themselves the very possibility of constant and absolutist expansion and control, including Liberal or socialist democratic forms. Forti writes: \u201cThe dynamics of power have no point of arrival. They have no aim, but they devour every achievement. The drive for power is thus not only limitless, but it aims at suppressing limits as such. This is why we can maintain the contemporary reflection on totalitarianism ushered in a new, unprecedented way of thinking power\u201d (145). Ultimately, the guiding thread of Forti\u2019s analysis is the important question: what can philosophy uniquely contribute to our understanding of the idea of totalitarianism? She concludes: \u201cPolitical philosophy has made the <\/span>totalitarianism<\/span><\/i> a borderline idea. On the one hand, it represents a limit idea, a sort of <\/span>focus<\/span><\/i> imaginarius<\/span><\/i>, on the basis of which we can detect the flaws and dangers to freedom of our present; on the other hand, it may constitute an obsessive idea that paranoically sees specters of totality, and threats to freedom, everywhere. It is undeniable\u2014as it becomes \u201cextremist,\u201d tracing any event back to an overarching totalizing tendency\u2014that the concept of totalitarianism risks going around in circles, thereby losing its distinctive grasp on reality. But it remains true that thought is nourished by provocations; it remains alive only through challenges. Reflecting on the risks of every possible totalitarianism is perhaps for political philosophy the greatest challenge\u201d (145).<\/span><\/p>\n Forti\u2019s powerful and engaging book is divided into four chapters, each exploring totalitarianism from a different disciplinary angle. Chapter One historically situates the term, reminding readers, as is often the case, that the term was originally used by Italian anti-fascists to describe the actions and ambitions of Mussolini and his regime. As the term circulates within different European nations and regimes, especially in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, it takes on different senses. For example, in Italy we find thinkers like Gramsci who use the term to refer to the totalisation of the state and its goal to control all matters of social and political life. We also see in this chapter how thinkers like Carl Schmitt and Ernst J\u00fcnger use the term to define a totalising either\/or (friend\/enemy) politics. We encounter here discussions of totalitarianism as developed by thinkers like Franz Neumann and Hannah Arendt. Interesting in this chapter, is the section on the French response to the term, for Forti astutely reminds her readers of the insightful critiques of totalitarianism by thinkers like Simone Weil and Emmanuel Mounier. In the case of the latter, for example, the rise of totalitarianism points to the attack on and diminution of spirit (<\/span>espirt<\/span><\/i>) (25\u201326). By the end of the chapter, we have a picture of the diverse aspects of the concept of totalitarianism, including absolute state-control, terror, deception, attack on legal and moral personhood, limits and\/or rejection of human freedom and rights, radical evil, politics, and delusions of grandeur.<\/span><\/p>\n Chapter Two turns to political science to present the key findings of its analyses. The works of political scientists like Carl J. Friedrich, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Raymon Aron and Benjamin Barber are investigated by Forti. She highlights the unique contributions of these scholars to our understanding of the idea of totalitarianism. For example, Friedrich and Brzezinski reply to Arendt\u2019s analyses of totalitarianism by providing a typology of it. Their typology concludes that totalitarianism is marked by: an embraced official ideology rooted in millenarianism and the promised fulfilment of humankind; a single mass party that accepts and promotes the sustaining ideology; monopolistic control of media and communication; almost monopolistic control of instruments of coercion and armed violence; widespread terror; and centralization of the economy (37\u201338). In this chapter, Forti also argues that political science considers important distinctions in the analysis of totalitarianism, for example, the difference between authoritarianism and totalitarianism as well as the diverse forms of totalitarianism, including eastern and western ones. She ends the chapter with a gripping discussion of the work of Jan Pato\u010dka, who lived first-hand the brutality and deadly violence of eastern Stalinist totalitarianism in his native Czechia. Pato\u010dka is identified by Forti as the philosopher who stands as the bridge between the east and the west, he is also the figure who gives voice to the powerless of Prague by developing his idea of \u201cdissident practice\u201d (56). Quoting Pato\u010dka, Forti poignantly notes: \u201cThe call for courage by the powerless of Prague, Budapest, and Warsaw is answered by the \u201cheroic man who does philosophy,\u201d insofar as the latter, stripped of any search for certainty lives only in the interminable search. For one who seeks the truth is \u201cobliged to let grow within himself the disquieting, the irreconcilable, the enigmatic,\u201d everything opposing the \u201corder of the day,\u201d the supine acceptance of what exists in a word, everything that no totalitarianism could accept. \u201cLife in truth,\u201d in the philosophical perspective of dissidence on general, and particularly in Pato\u010dka\u2019s, is not, then, \u201can anti-political morality\u201d (Ash). Rather, it is an \u201cimpolitic\u201d attitude that eschews politics when it coincides with totalitarianism or post-totalitarianism to relaunch the conjugation of ethics and philosophy in a heretical thought that for this very reason can become immediately political\u201d (56).<\/span><\/p>\n Chapter Three focusses squarely on philosophy and its novel contributions to the concept of totalitarianism. Forti identifies nihilism and the dialectic of reason as two defining qualities of totalitarianism. Nihilism, as discussed by thinkers like Ernst Fraenkel, Leo Strauss, Martin Heidegger, Eric Voegelin, and Ernst J\u00fcnger, and Oswald Spengler, makes National Socialism possible, so Forti claims: \u201cTherefore, Strauss\u2019s critique addresses both mentalities: those conveyed by rationalistic historicism and those that paved the way for national socialism. These are the two faces of the same soul, whose nihilistic impulse has come to deny reason, truth, and philosophy to dissolve them in the historical becoming. \u201cThe lack of resistance to nihilism seems to be due ultimately to the depreciation and the contempt of reason, which is one and unchangeable, it is not\u201d (Strauss). By replacing Truth and Reason with the truths and reason constantly changing in History, historicism and nihilism have opened the door to totalitarianism.\u201d (64) In addition to nihilism, Forti also reminds philosophy of its own complicity in helping to build and fortify the concept of totalitarianism with the sustained and deliberate quest of western philosophy to seek in and through reason absolute and total understanding (and control) of all that is. The efforts of critical theorists like Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno as well as the work of philosophers like Hannah Arendt, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Lyotard, Michel Foucault and Jean-Luc Nancy worked tirelessly to remind philosophy of its totalitarian rationalistic urges and the need to recognise its own critical limits. The chapter ends with a discussion of the work of Gunther Anders, who introduces a further insight, for reason and nihilism are now assisted through our own psychic compulsions in and with technology. Anders develops the idea of a compulsion to achieve any and all forms of technology, resulting in a Promethean logic of eventual human obsolescence. The discussion of compulsion by Anders, which coincides with the increasingly totalitarian technologies of control and extermination, must be viewed as part of the idea of totalitarianism.<\/span><\/p>\n The concluding chapter of Forti\u2019s powerful book concentrates on the contemporary challenges posed by the ever growing and changing digital sphere. Forti takes up classical philosophical positions by thinkers like Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard, but she also mines the work on surveillance capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff. Mediatisation not only refers to the matter of totalitarian control of all media in order to propagate and reproduce ideological frameworks, but it also refers to a new sphere of consciousness or psyche that can be controlled both at the conscious and unconscious levels. Forti highlights that new mediatisation strategies and technology can perform quicker and with greater totalizing force the work of what Foucault calls the interiorisation or internalisation of a dominant or oppressive power. Forti notes: \u201cThrown into a sort of constant alternation of images and information, incapable of understanding which ones relate facts and which ones are covering and filtering them, a truly powerful leap\u2014probably impossible and utopian\u2014would be needed to regain what we have been deprived of again: the experience of a factual world that resists mediatization\u201d (140).<\/span><\/p>\n Forti\u2019s book concludes, as mentioned earlier, with an observation about the very nature of power itself and its totalitarian structure, which means that anything touched by power faces the risk of totalization. Augustine of Hippo and Sigmund Freud identified a similar but distinct mechanism in their discussion of libido. In their case, it was not so much totalization that is sought by the libido, but a desire to achieve, hold, possess, or kill something or someone. This libidinal desire repeats over and over again, and it constantly seeks new objects upon which to fulfill itself. The desires of the libido need not be total, but temporary, specific and isolated. Often sadistic satisfaction and pleasure are the drives that propel the libido. As I reflect on Forti\u2019s thoughtful and rich analysis of the idea, I wonder what the addition of the incessant repetition compulsion of libido, which seem to work in short and timed spurts of desire, can add to the discussion. Furthermore, from an existentialist view, what do we do with personal responsibility, for each of us, in our situated freedom, is responsible for and must respond to the totalitarian drives within ourselves, for we all have some basic forms of power, as well as those that affect or are thrust upon us? Here, the words and sage counsel of Pato\u010dka ring most poignantly true. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Simona Forti, Totalitarianism: A Borderline Idea in Political Philosophy. Translated by Simone Ghelli Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2024, viii + 170 pp. ISBN: 9781503637375 Reviewed by Antonio Calcagno, King\u2019s University College at Western University Simona Forti\u2019s Totalitarianism is a timely book, not only because it speaks to the various shifting political events and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[295,319],"class_list":["post-13607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-social-and-political-philosophy","tag-totalitarianism","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-04 14:37:39","action":"Draft","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13607"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13609,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13607\/revisions\/13609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}