Katerina Josifoska

Hannah Arendt’s first major work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, analyzes the prehistory of totalitarianism in Europe as well as its consequences. Published in 1951, it was widely recognized as one of the crucial introspections in political philosophy. With this work, Arendt initiated a major debate about the birth of totalitarian systems, the decline of the European nation state, and the manifestation of a vicious desire within modern civilization “to rule masses of people who are perfectly obedient”. Since then, the process of reflecting on that vicious desire has never left the sphere of political philosophy.