In 1951, following the Holocaust and Second World War, Hannah Arendt wrote The Origins of Totalitarianism. Arendt’s aim was in part to document and reflect on the atrocities that had occurred. But more importantly, she wanted to expose the elements of the human condition that enabled those atrocities to happen as well as the tools societies can use to fight totalitarian regimes. 
Amir Eshel is a professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature at Stanford University. He is the author of Poetic Thinking Today and Futurity: Contemporary Literature and the Quest for the Past. 
 
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