Pre-Modernity, Totalitarianism and the Non-Banality of Evil

The book offers a comparative historical analysis of totalitarianism, exploring why Spain succumbed to it during the Inquisition while France did not, and why Germany turned totalitarian in the previous century, unlike Sweden. The author extends the concept of totalitarianism into the pre-modern era, challenging Hannah Arendt's idea of the banality of evil. He proposes a new framework to explain the conditions under which states become totalitarian and the mechanisms that lead individuals to commit acts of evil.