Search results for ""Author Tzvetan Todorov""

The celebrated scholar Tzvetan Todorov offers a study examining the complex relationship between "ethics" and "history". Exploring such questions as "How does one measure and experience freedom in the depths of society?" and "How does one practise and measure equality among different societies?", Todorov confronts topics ranging from the conquest of America and 19th-century colonialism, to democracy and conflicts of the "self" versus the "other". As he probes the effects of intercultural relationships and the difficulties inherent to the representation of the other, Todorov describes his own experience as a Bulgarian living in France. He also studies a variety of travel narratives from those of Columbus to Amerigo Vespucci to Lamartine, and he analyzes with great clarity the writings of the "ideologues" of both colonialism and anticolonialism. Offering an urgent call to contemporary intellectuals to re-examine their role in society and to integrate values into their work, "The Morals of History" explores the relationship between facts and values, truth and fiction, interpretation and articulation. Addressed to a broad audience, it should intrigue readers interested in contemporary discussions regarding the outcome of democracy and the future of late capitalism, the persistence of a logic of conquest and ethnocentrism, and the signs which point to emerging fascisms.

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Available in English for the first time, Imperfect Garden is both an approachable intellectual history and a bracing treatise on how we should understand and experience our lives. In it, one of France's most prominent intellectuals explores the foundations, limits, and possibilities of humanist thinking. Through his critical but sympathetic excavation of humanism, Tzvetan Todorov seeks an answer to modernity's fundamental challenge: how to maintain our hard-won liberty without paying too dearly in social ties, common values, and a coherent and responsible sense of self. Todorov reads afresh the works of major humanists--primarily Montaigne, Rousseau, and Constant, but also Descartes, Montesquieu, and Toqueville. Each chapter considers humanism's approach to one major theme of human existence: liberty, social life, love, self, morality, and expression. Discussing humanism in dialogue with other systems, Todorov finds a response to the predicament of modernity that is far more instructive than any offered by conservatism, scientific determinism, existential individualism, or humanism's other contemporary competitors. Humanism suggests that we are members of an intelligent and sociable species who can act according to our will while connecting the well-being of other members with our own. It is through this understanding of free will, Todorov argues, that we can use humanism to rescue universality and reconcile human liberty with solidarity and personal integrity. Placing the history of ideas at the service of a quest for moral and political wisdom, Todorov's compelling and no doubt controversial rethinking of humanist ideas testifies to the enduring capacity of those ideas to meditate on--and, if we are fortunate, cultivate--the imperfect garden in which we live.

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The political history of the twentieth century can be viewed as the history of democracy’s struggle against its external enemies: fascism and communism. This struggle ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet regime. Some people think that democracy now faces new enemies: Islamic fundamentalism, religious extremism and international terrorism and that this is the struggle that will define our times. Todorov disagrees: the biggest threat to democracy today is democracy itself. Its enemies are within: what the ancient Greeks called 'hubris'. Todorov argues that certain democratic values have been distorted and pushed to an extreme that serves the interests of dominant states and powerful individuals. In the name of ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’, the United States and some European countries have embarked on a crusade to enlighten some foreign populations through the use of force. Yet this mission to ‘help’ others has led to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, to large-scale destruction and loss of life and to a moral crisis of growing proportions. The defence of freedom, if unlimited, can lead to the tyranny of individuals. Drawing on recent history as well as his own experience of growing up in a totalitarian regime, Todorov returns to examples borrowed from the Western canon: from a dispute between Augustine and Pelagius to the fierce debates among Enlightenment thinkers to explore the origin of these perversions of democracy. He argues compellingly that the real democratic ideal is to be found in the delicate, ever-changing balance between competing principles, popular sovereignty, freedom and progress. When one of these elements breaks free and turns into an over-riding principle, it becomes dangerous: populism, ultra-liberalism and messianism, the inner enemies of democracy.

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'Almost alone among contemporary critics, Tzvetan Todorov has chosen to apply his prodigious talents to the literature of twentieth-century totalitarianism. His unique gift is his ability to elucidatethe memoirs and writings of some of the century's greatest survivors, not merely discovering their literary qualities, but also finding in their works moral and political lessons, relevant to us all.' -- Anne ApplebaumTzvetan Todorov identifies totalitarianism as the major innovation of the twentieth century and examines the struggle between this system and democracy and its effects on human life and consciousness.Totalitarianism imposed itself because, more than any other political system, it played on people's need for the absolute: it fed their hope to endow life with meaning by taking part in the construction of a paradise on earth. As a result, millions of people lost their lives in the name of a higher good. This unique account explores the history of the past century by analyzing its spectacular political conflicts and by offering moving profiles of individuals who, at great personal cost, resisted the strictures of the communist and Nazi regimes. Hope and Memory reaffirms the legacy of the past as we move into the twenty-first century.'A very rich book, full of interesting - and often highly controversial - conversation as well as moving portraits of striking figures of the century that has just passed. It is addressed to a general public very much engaged in discussing what the twentieth century was all about and where we are going from here.' -- Charles Taylor

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This illuminating analysis by one of the world's leading intellectuals addresses fundamental questions about the new world disorder exemplified by the war on terrorism, the Iraq conflict and its aftermath and the current state of transatlantic relations. In eight concise chapters, Todorov discusses the use of force versus diplomacy, the emergence of new powers and the reactions of different players such as the UK, France, Poland and the United Nations, to the imperialist turn in US foreign policy. He argues that a new Europe is capable of reducing its dependence on the United States and assuming more responsibilities in the area of foreign affairs, would be the most effective way of counter-balancing America's current dominance of global politics. Drawing on his vast knowledge of history and philosophy, Todorov has written an insightful and timely book that, without simplyfying the issues, is accessible to all.

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In Symbolism and Interpretation, Tzvetan Todorov examines two aspects of discourse: its production, which has traditionally been the domain of rhetoric, and its reception, which has always been the object of hermeneutics. He analyzes the diverse theories of symbolism and interpretation that have been elaborated over the centuries and considers their contribution to a general theory of verbal symbolism, discussing a wide range of thinkers, from the Sanskrit philosophers and Aristotle to the German Romantics and contemporary semioticians. Todorov begins by examining general ideas of linguistic symbolism and the interpretive process. He then turns to a detailed consideration of two of the most influential and pervasive interpretative strategies in Western thought: the patristic exegesis of Augustine and Aquinas, and the philological exegesis foreshadowed in the work of Spinoza, developed by Wolf, Ast, Boeckh, and Lanson, and criticized by Schleiermacher. Todorov clarifies in masterly fashion the intricacies of the many schools of thought and refines the concepts crucial to critical theory today, including the distinctions between language and discourse, direct and indirect meaning, sign and symbol. Ably translated by Catherine Porter, Symbolism and Interpretation provides a coherent and innovative framework that is indispensable to the study of semiotics, its history, and its future.

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This illuminating analysis by one of the world's leading intellectuals addresses fundamental questions about the new world disorder exemplified by the war on terrorism, the Iraq conflict and its aftermath and the current state of transatlantic relations. In eight concise chapters, Todorov discusses the use of force versus diplomacy, the emergence of new powers and the reactions of different players such as the UK, France, Poland and the United Nations, to the imperialist turn in US foreign policy. He argues that a new Europe is capable of reducing its dependence on the United States and assuming more responsibilities in the area of foreign affairs, would be the most effective way of counter-balancing America's current dominance of global politics. Drawing on his vast knowledge of history and philosophy, Todorov has written an insightful and timely book that, without simplyfying the issues, is accessible to all.

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One of the most terrible legacies of our century is the concentration camp. Countless men and women have passed through camps in Nazi Germany, Communist China, and the Soviet bloc countries. In Voices from the Gulag, Tzvetan Todorov singles out the experience of one country where the concentration camps were particularly brutal and emblematic of the horrors of totalitarianism—communist Bulgaria. The voices we hear in this book are mostly from Lovech, a rock quarry in Bulgaria that became the final destination for several thousand men and women during its years of operation from 1959 to 1962. The inmates, though drawn from various social, professional, and economic backgrounds, shared a common fate: they were torn from their homes by secret police, brutally beaten, charged with fictitious crimes, and shipped to Lovech. Once there, they were forced to endure backbreaking labor, inadequate clothing, shelter, and food, systematic beatings, and institutionalized torture.We also hear from guards, commandants, and bureaucrats whose lives were bound together with the inmates in an absurd drama. Regardless of their grade and duties, all agree that those responsible for these "excesses" were above or below them, yet never they themselves. Accountability is thereby diffused through the many strata of the state apparatus, providing legal defenses and "clear" consciences. Yet, as the concluding section of interviews—with the children and wives of the victims—reminds us, accountability is a moral and historical imperative.The testimonies in Voices from the Gulag were written specifically for this volume or have been published in the Bulgarian press or on Bulgarian television. Todorov compiled them for this book and has written an introductory essay—a lucid and troubling analysis of totalitarianism and the role that terror and the concentration camp play in such a world. He reflects upon his own experience living in Bulgaria during the years when Lovech was in operation. It is through that experience that Todorov has sought to understand the totalitarian horrors of our century.Although Lovech and the other camps of Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe have been closed down, concentration camps still exist in the countries whose communist regimes remain in power—Vietnam, China, North Korea, and Cuba. The voices in this book remind us that we are never completely safe from the threat of totalitarianism, a threat that we all must face. As Todorov writes, "I cannot say that these stories do not concern me."

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