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Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Total Domination: The Holocaust, Plurality, and Resistance

Author: Michal Aharony

Routledge, London, 2015, pp. 272

Arendt is one of the most eminent political philosophers often cited by theorists of nonviolent resistance, especially in relation to her 1963 book On Revolution, and also a major theorist of totalitarianism. This book contrasts Arendt's concept of total domination under totalitarianism with the testimonies of both well known and lesser known intellectuals and writers who survived the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, as well as those of unknown survivors of the holocaust. Aharony argues that Nazi domination was less total than Arendt posited (in her 1951 book On Totalitarianism), and that morality and individual choice exist even in the most extreme conditions.