Fascism is a virulent historical social pathology that presents itself as a political ideology or a component of general ideology. It is historical in a double sense. It is actualized at specific times and places. It is also, a recurring feature of history itself. Crypto-fascism is the manipulation of the ambiguity of language for the purpose of fascistic actualization. Crypto-fascism is often an early “tell” or warning of the presence of more widespread fascism. There have been several powerful and deep (...) studies of fascism and its co-optation of the ambiguity of language. Two of these approaches are of particular importance. In both instances fascism is addressed as a potentiality or susceptibility tied to the human condition per se. The first is Freudian and the second is existential. These approaches both meet the historical criteria noted above. In this essay I follow the work of Erich Fromm and Jean-Paul Sartre to understand the ground of fascism and its crypto variant. Camouflage is the hallmark of crypto-fascism, and it is exactly this that Fromm’s analysis and that of Sartre discloses. (shrink)

This book explores this question through an explication of the idea of the One in philosophy. The argument that is advanced is that the idea of One is central to the theistic account of reality.

This dissertation is a definition of Sartre's theory of alienation through an explication of his concept of Intentionality. The analysis begins with Sartre's concept of "nothingness." It explicates this concept first, through a study of Sartre's early article on Intentionality, and then the larger work, Transcendence of the Ego. It then provides a detailed account of Sartre's realism. The three-fold relationship of nothingness, realism and the doctrine of Intentionality comprise the core elements of Sartre's concept of realism. ;The analysis then (...) considers the way Sartre develops the concept of Intentionality as it relates to nothingness and realism in Sartre's major early work, Being and Nothingness. The final part of the dissertation puts forth Sartre's theory of alienation from the perspective of his early works including his early literary works, Nausea and The Flies. The analysis then turns towards the contributions of Sartre's theory of alienation from the perspective of the doctrine of Intentionality. In this later part of the dissertation the focus is on Sartre's study of Anti-Semitism. (shrink)

This work reexamines Sartre's phenomenology from the perspective of contemporary debates in political theory with particular attention to the reemergence of theories of human nature. For Sartre, any construct that stood between the self and its direct encounter with the world was suspect. Sartre's version of direct realism is a strong refutation of the 'new essentialism' that has emerged in recent years as a back-door invocation of theories of human nature. This book provides an account of the major ideas that (...) inform the new essentialism and that serve to further identify it as other than what it claims to be, a scientific grounding of human behavior. Instead, from the perspective of Sartre's realism it is exposed as an abstract ideology. One aspect of this new essentialism has been its encouragement of ideological claims about human essences, historically and culturally derived attributes of individuals that, it is alleged, define individual human existence itself. Thus human freedom is diminished even while essentialist categories such as male aggression become an overlooked underpinning for political ideology. (shrink)