Concepts of totalitarianism have undergone an academic revival in recent years, particularly since the breakdown of communist systems in Europe in 1989-91: the totalitarian paradigm, so it seems to many scholars today, had been discarded prematurely in the heat of the Cold War. The demise of communism as a social system is, however, not only an important cause of the recurring attractiveness of the totalitarian paradigm, but provides at the same time new evidence and, correspondingly, new problems of explanation for all approaches in communist studies and totalitarianism theory in particular. This book contains articles by philosophers, social scientists and historians who reassess the validity of the totalitarian approach in the light of the recent historical developments in Eastern Europe. A first group of authors focus on the analytical usefulness and explanatory power of classic concepts of totalitarianism after having observed the failed reforms of the Gorbachev-era and the collapse of Europe's communist systems in 1989-91. In these contributions the totalitarian paradigm is contrasted with other approaches with respect to cognitive power as well as normative implications. In the second group of contributions the focus is on the reassessment of methodological and theoretical problems of the classic concepts of totalitarianism. The authors attempt to reinterpret the classic concepts so as to meet the objections which have been put forward against those concepts during the last decades. The study thereby traces some of the intellectual roots of the totalitarian paradigm that precede the outbreak of the Cold War, such as the work of Sigmund Neumann and Franz Borkenau. It also focuses on the most famous authors in the field: Hannah Arendt and Carl Joachim Friedrich. In addition it discusses theorists of totalitarianism like Juan Linz, whose contributions to totalitarianism theory have too often been overlooked.

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject Sociology - Politics, Majorities, Minorities, grade: A- (82), University of British Columbia (Dept. of Sociology), course: Seminar 'Political Sociology', language: English, abstract: Since its coinage in the 1920’s the term ‘totalitarianism’ has adopted various connotations and has lead to highly controversial discussions in a multitude of scientific texts. Created by the opposition of Italian fascism, it is soon taken up by Mussolini himself. After the end of the Second World War, Hannah Arendt and Carl J. Friedrich write two standard works, that classify both Nazism and Stalinism as totalitarian regimes. In the following cold war period the term develops into an ideological catchword of the Right, which culminates in the equation of the crimes of Communism with the Holocaust in the ‘Historikerstreit’ in 1986. Recently, after the collapse of soviet Communism, the term is rediscovered as a useful tool to classify and compare political systems. In the following pages, I will therefore discuss the general concept of totalitarianism and the socio-historic causes for the rise of totalitarian regimes in the 20th century with the help of the classic theories of Hannah Arendt, Carl J. Friedrich and Karl D. Bracher. Further on I will deal with some of the criticism that the theory of totalitarianism was confronted with and show the benefit of the concept for scientific discourse. In view of the flood of theories and criticism, it is not possible for me, to comment on the debate on totalitarianism as a whole. Instead I will concentrate on some of the crucial arguments of the debate, being aware that certain aspects will be left out in my discussion.

In the first volume of Essays in Ecumenical Theology Ivana Noble depicts differences between what she calls a sectarian outlook and one which engages in the search for common roots, dialogical relationships and shared mission in a world that has largely become post-Christian, but often also post-secular. Drawing on both Western and Orthodox scholarship, and expressing her own positions, Noble sketches what ecumenical theology is, how it is linked to spirituality, the methods it uses, how it developed during the twentieth century, and the challenges it faces. Specific studies deal with controversial interpretations of Jan Hus, Catholic Modernism, the problematic heritage of the totalitarian regimes, and responses to the current humanitarian crisis.

This study traces the Romanian communist regime’s attempts to extinguish private property in housing. The author analyzes the homeowners’ resistance through law, the subsequent remaking of private property, and the hybrid legal culture of property in early communist Romania.

The collection of essays in Secret Agents and the Memory of Everyday Collaboration in Communist Eastern Europe addresses institutions that develop the concept of collaboration, and examines the function, social representation and history of secret police archives and institutes of national memory that create these histories of collaboration. The essays provide a comparative account of collaboration/participation across differing categories of collaborators and different social milieux throughout East-Central Europe. They also demonstrate how secret police files can be used to produce more subtle social and cultural histories of the socialist dictatorships. By interrogating the ways in which post-socialist cultures produce the idea of, and knowledge about, “collaborators,” the contributing authors provide a nuanced historical conception of “collaboration,” expanding the concept toward broader frameworks of cooperation and political participation to facilitate a better understanding of Eastern European communist regimes.

This volume is designed to bridge a gap in the current theoretical debate about the nature, scope and relevance of postmodern perspectives in the humanist and social sciences in Eastern and Western Europe. It comprises some fifteen essays by leading historians, literary theorists and social scientists from Western and Eastern Europe and America. It has a threefold aim: firstly, to illuminate the distinctiveness of current Western and Eastern European theorizing about history and society; secondly, to reveal points of tension and disagreement, and, finally, to open up a space for a meeting of seemingly incompatible worlds

Contents: Leon KOJ: Methodology and values. - Leon KOJ: Science as system. - Adam GROBLER: Explanation and epistemic virtue. - Piotr GIZA: Intelligent computer systems and theory comparison. - Henryk OGRYZKO-WIEWIEROWSKI: Methods of social choice of scientific theories. - Kazimierz JODKOWSKI: Is the causal theory of reference a remedy for ontological incommensurability? - Wolfgang BALZER: On approximative reduction. - C. ULISES MOULINES: Is there genuinely scientific progress? - Adam JONKISZ: On relative progress in science."

This volume compares the western ideas of knowledge with the African. It aims at creating a mirror through which the western knowledge culture can look at itself through an unusual and interesting angle. The culture of Sub-Saharan Africa is the substance from which we, in this book, have tried to construe an epistemological mirror.

Jan Salamucha was born on the 10th of June 1903 in Warsaw and murdered on the 11th of August 1944 in Warsaw during the Warsaw Uprising very early on in his scholarly career. He is the most original representative of the branch of the Lvov-Warsaw School known as the Cracow Circle. The Circle was a grouping of scholars who were interested in reconstructing scholasticism and Christian philosophy in general by means of mathematical logic. As Jan Lukasiewicz’s successor in the area of logic and Konstanty Michalski’s student in the area of the history of medieval thought, Salamucha had an excellent preparation for this task. His main achievements include a masterful logical analysis of the proof ex motu for the existence of God, a modern interpretation of analogical notions and a comprehensive approach to the problem of essence. He also contributed several historical studies: he examined Aristotle’s theory of deduction (and found contradictions in it), he reconstructed William Ockham’s propositional logic and established the authenticity of his treatise on insolubilia, and he identified the historical sources of the antinomies in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. He did not shy away from popularizing philosophy, and in that work he was able to elucidate rather than oversimplify the complexities of philosophy.