Abstract

After an intense debate and harsh discussions, historians and political scientists now conclude that the concept of totalitarianism can perhaps be useful for describing political regimes but certainly not for understanding them. When reviewing the results of that research, with the addition of contributions from the philosophy and anthropology of totalitarianism (Levinas, Marcuse, Polanyi; Weil, Arendt), the concept of totalitarianism appears to be central. Philosophy, which was itself implied in the vision of Hitlerism and Stalinism, actually offers a fundamental contribution when it eludes the totalitarian temptation to search for single causes and bases.