Looking up the word, the broad definition is pretty much the same as it was discussed in class.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
A German term in a Horkheimer book? No way
Reading through the first chapter in Eclipse of Reason, on page 14, I came across the word: Volksgemeinschaft
Looking up the word, the broad definition is pretty much the same as it was discussed in class.Volksgemeinschaft Volksgemeinschaft ).
Looking up the word, the broad definition is pretty much the same as it was discussed in class.
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Around 7pm when you made this post, the word was used in a discussion in our very own MacKenzies. Perhaps it would have been more interesting if you were there.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I understand what you are saying with "divisions of racial harmony." ?
When the word was originally used by authors such as Fichte in the late 18th c., it simply meant something like a 'national community.' During the 19th/early 20th c. it began to take on more racist undertones, such that the Volksgemeinschaft was the community of true Germans. The Nazis appropriated this and gave it a biological cast by defining race in terms of blood--the true Aryan race needed to defend its nation from inferior 'breeds.'
ReplyDeleteHow else could nationhood be defined? How do we currently define it in the U.S.? And is Horkheimer correct when he claims that liberal democracy inevitably leads to terror?
In response to McCall,
ReplyDeleteNationhood today, or pride in one's nation is now viewed as nationalism, or that is at least how we describe it in the U.S. I suppose it could be dumbed down to patriotism at the very least. And as Horkheimer states in his Eclipse of Reason, that liberal democracies lead to terror and totalitarianism, he is somewhat, abstractly correct.
He relates this of course to the time in history in which he lived through, when the rise of the National Socialist Party came to power in Germany in the 1930's. After WWI, Germany was set up into a Republic form of government where many parties played roles in running the nation. The country was liberal and gave way to the electing into power, by coercion, the Nazi party. So at one moment, there is a peaceful republic, the next, the country is being ruled by fascists.
So yes, liberal democracy can lead to terror by means of being liberal, and being passive. A hostile party can come to power under the passiveness of the national system of democratic liberalism.