Nonsemestral course "Post-Totalitarianism" Aviezer Tucker

Nonsemestral course "Post-Totalitarianism" will be organized from November 16 to December 17, 2009. Classes will be on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 19:00 to 20:30, in CEVRO Institut, Jungmannova 17, Praha 1.

The twentieth century was the century of totalitarianism. The twenty first century is, and will continue to be, the century of post-totalitarianism. This course examines the common legacies of post-totalitarian societies. Totalitarian legacies are the lasting changes that totalitarianism imprints on different societies, despite their different long term historical legacies and the immediate socio-economic circumstances of their exit from Communism. After totalitarianism, some of the radical revolutionary transformation of society is irreversible. The extermination, enslavement, imprisonment, terror, expropriation, suppression of talent, exclusion from education, and the isolation of society from the outside world, live on through their effects. The societies that emerge out of totalitarianism, whether in Germany, Russia or Poland, are scarred by totalitarianism for generations. This course sets to understand and explain these lingering legacies of totalitarianism.

1. Totalitarianism vs. Authoritarianism and their effects
2. Theories of “transition”
3. Was there a revolution in 1989?
4. The legacies of totalitarianism
5. Rights, Liberties, Justice
6. Rule of Law
7. Lustration and other sanctions
8. Restitution and Privatization
9. Property Rights and Privatization
10. Post-Communist comparisons and lessons

Aviezer Tucker is currently a visiting professor at CEVRO Institute in Prague. He has held research fellowships at the Australian National University, New York University, Columbia University and the Central European University. He has taught at Queen‘s University Belfast, New York University, Long Island University and Trinity College, and he is past president of the Society for Philosophy of History. He works on epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of history and social and political philosophy.

For more info and registration contact Dr. Miloš Brunclík: milos.brunclik@vsci.cz.