Totalitarianisms and Intellect April 14, 2010

This conference aims at exploring the situation, status and role of intellectuals in European totalitarian regimes, and the relation of these regimes to the intellect and to intellectuals. It also intends to disseminate the research results, contributing thereby to the preservation of the memory of intellectuals suffering under totalitarian regimes, especially for the younger generations. Specific issues addressed include the history of the notion of totalitarianism and of the intelligentsia; the circumstances that led to and the mechanism for the persecution of intellectuals; the theoretical and historical reasons for the defiance or compliance of the intelligentsia; similarities and dissimilarities in Communism, Nazism and fascism in their relation to the intellect and the intelligentsia; the destructive historical, cultural, social and psychological consequences of their obstruction; the reasons for and mechanisms of amnesia and the modes of anamnesis and reinstatement; the anti-totalitarian thought of various emigrant and non-emigrant thinkers in Europe; and current issues related to the phenomenon of totalitarianism and the responsibility of intellectuals today.

Internationally acknowledged experts from various countries across Europe will discuss the central topic in a broad historical and geographical perspective ranging from ancient Greece through modern Europe to totalitarian regimes or totalistic tendencies observable today.

The conference will host sessions with papers given by acknowledged international academics and an international graduate student workshop.

See abstracts

• Language in Exile: The Writings of Imre Kertész


• The Power and Limitations of Totalitarian Ideology: A Few Remarks from A Socio-Psychological Perspective


• The Intellectuals: A Common Swear-Word in Leftist and Rightist Totalitarianisms


• The Treachery of the Intellectuals? Totalitarianism from the Point of View of Political Psychology


• Post-Communism and the Problem of Reconciliation in Hungary


• Intellectuals, Totalitarianism, and Modern Cynicism


• Is Totalitarianism Obsolete?


• Emigrants and the Totalitarianism of the Intellectuals


• The Gorgias in All of Us: Tyranny and the Intellectuals in Plato


• Mania: The Socratic Dilemma of Truth Claims


• The Later Decades of Communist Rule: What It Was and How It Worked


• One-Dimensional Conception of the Person and its Consequences in Soviet-Type Systems


• Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Overcoming Personal, Political and Historical Amnesia Through Literary-Aesthetic Anamnesis


• Die Form ist flüssig, der ‘Sinn’ ist es aber noch mehr… – Nietzsches anti-totalitäres Denken


• The Concept of Totalitarianism in East-Central European Political Thought, With Some Reflections on its Post-Cold War Relevance


• Totalitarianism as a Fabrication of the Intellectuals

Conference information provided by konferenciakalauz.hu

Official Website: http://totalintellect.eu/