Hope and Memory

by Todorov, Tzvetan

• ISBN13: 9780691096582
• ISBN10: 0691096589
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-09-29
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Both a political history and a moral critique of the twentieth century, this is a personal and impassioned book from one of Europe's most outstanding intellectuals. Identifying totalitarianism as the major innovation of the twentieth century, Tzvetan Todorov examines the struggle between this system and democracy and its effects on human life and consciousness. Totalitarianism managed to impose itself because, more than any other political system, it played on people's need for the absolute: it fed their hope to endow life with meaning by taking part in the construction of a paradise on earth. As a result, millions of people lost their lives in the name of a higher good. While democracy eventually won the struggle against totalitarianism in much of the world, democracy itself is not immune to the pitfall of do-goodery: moral correctness at home and atomic or "humanitarian" bombs abroad. Todorov explores the history of the past century not only by analyzing its spectacular political conflicts but also by offering moving profiles of several individuals who, at great personal cost, resisted the strictures of the communist and Nazi regimes. Some--Margarete Buber-Neumann, David Rousset, Primo Levi, and Germaine Tillion--were deported to concentration camps. Others--Vasily Grossman and Romain Gary--fought courageously in World War II. All became exemplary witnesses who described with great lucidity and humanity what they had endured. This book preserves the memory of the past as we move into the twenty-first century--arguing eloquently that we must place the past at the service of a just future.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations and Acronyms	vii
Preface to the English Edition	ix
Prologue: The Last Hundred Years	1	(4)
What Went Wrong in the Twentieth Century	5	(69)
Our Liberal Democracies	5	(9)
The Ideal Type of Totalitarianism	14	(5)
Scientism and Humanism	19	(7)
The Birth of Totalitarian Doctrine	26	(6)
War As the Truth of Life	32	(8)
The Two-Edged Knife	40	(34)
The Achievement of Vasily Grossman	48	(26)
Two of a Kind	74	(39)
Peas in a Pod	74	(8)
Apples and Oranges	82	(9)
The Reckoning	91	(22)
The Achievement of Margarete Buber-Neumann	93	(20)
Preserving the Past	113	(46)
The Control of Memory	113	(6)
The Three Stages	119	(10)
Testimony, History, and Commemoration	129	(5)
Moral Judgment	134	(8)
Master Narratives	142	(17)
The Achievement of David Rousset	148	(11)
The Uses of Memory	159	(28)
The Frying Pan and the Fire	159	(5)
Serving Purposes	164	(4)
What Memory Is For	168	(19)
The Achievement of Primo Levi	177	(10)
The Past in the Present	187	(41)
``Moral Correctness''	187	(10)
History and Myth	197	(8)
History and the Law	205	(23)
The Achievement of Romain Gary	213	(15)
The Perils of Democracy	228	(83)
The Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombs	228	(9)
Kosovo: The Political Context	237	(14)
Military Intervention	251	(14)
Humanitarian Action and the Law	265	(9)
The Right to Interfere versus the Obligation to Aid	274	(37)
The Achievement of Germaine Tillion	291	(20)
Epilogue: The Next Hundred Years	311	(8)
Bibliography	319	(8)
Index	327