|
|
What people are saying about The Ominous Parallels
| A Great Achievement |
The Ominous Parallels offers a truly revolutionary idea in the field of the
philosophy of history. The book is clear, tight, disciplined, beautifully
structured, and brilliantly reasoned. Its style is clear and hard as crystal —
and
as sparkling. If you like my works, you will like this book. As to my personal reaction, I can express it best by paraphrasing
a line from Atlas Shrugged: "It's so wonderful to see a great, new, crucial
achievement which is not mine!"
|
|
Ayn Rand
New York, November 1980 |
| Extraordinarily perceptive thesis |
Dr. Peikoff has produced an extraordinarily perceptive thesis. His insights into
the parallel philosophical tracks of pre-Nazi Germany and contemporary America
are frightening. Everyone concerned with the collectivist trend in today's world
should read this book. |
|
Alan Greenspan,
Chairman of the Federal Reserve
|
Fascinating
|
| A fascinating book that clearly demonstrates the
enormous power of ideas — for good or evil. |
|
Martin Anderson,
Assistant to the President
Reagan for Policy Development |
| Nazi Germany: Evil ideas produce evil results |
 This book answers the plaguing question: How could it happen? How
could ordinary people, seemingly decent Germans, turn into goose-stepping,
Sieg-Heil-ing robots, eager to obey any orders, even to administer the
"final solution" — the Holocaust?
This book answers those questions, and makes the rise of the Nazis finally
intelligible. The cause, Dr. Peikoff demonstrates, lies in certain philosophic
ideas — the anti-reason, anti-self, anti-freedom ideas that were already deeply
imbued in German culture long before Hitler's rise. If one were to compile a
list of the most fanatically anti-reason philosophers since the Renaissance,
almost every top figure — Kant, Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer, Heidegger — would turn
out to be German.
This is not to say that German culture produced evil philosophers. Just the
reverse: Germany's evil philosophers produced an evil culture. Men act on their
ideas, and ideas originate somewhere. Fundamental ideas, ideas about morality,
knowledge, reality, are originated by philosophers. The vast majority of people
simply absorb gradually the ideas available to them in their culture. Thus, most
people get their life-shaping ideas, indirectly, from the philosophers of their
culture (with a time-lag for these ideas to seep down into the educational
establishment, the media, the arts, etc.).
Dr. Peikoff's answer to "How could it have happened?" is: "The
land of poets and philosophers was brought down by its poets and
philosophers." This book is an impassioned call to jettison the philosophy
of obedience, the philosophy of unreason and self-sacrifice, in all its versions
lest we follow the German path to destruction. In regard to the U.S., Dr.
Peikoff emphasizes the gulf between the pro-reason Aristotelian spirit of the
people and the Kantian-Pragmatist philosophy of our intellectuals. This conflict
is the source of the frequently noted anti-Americanism of American
intellectuals. He points out that anti-Germanism was NOT a feature of the Weimar
Republic (the period in which Hitler rose to power). There, the intellectuals
and the people were united philosophically, and the intellectuals (e.g.,
Heidegger) lined up solidly in support of "Fatherland" and
"Volk."
This is a fascinating, gripping book, exhaustively researched, but presented
with a masterful prose style, not pedantic "scholarship." It will
change forever the way you think about ideas and history. |
|
Harry Binswanger
New York City, March 11, 2000
|
| The Cause of Nazism in essentials |
What was the cause of Nazism? What made the land of
"poets and philosophers" ripe for a power hungry mediocrity like
Adolf Hitler? With the sparkling clarity that characterizes an Ayn Rand novel,
Dr. Peikoff examines all the conventional explanations and shows that they are
all inadequate. The real cause lies in an intellectual battle: a duel between
the this-worldly, egoistic Aristotle and the other-worldly, altruistic Plato. |
|
Capitalism Magazine.com |
| A formidable contemporary relevance in the history of ideas |
It strikes me as an excellent survey of the causes and nature of
national socialism and fascism. [Peikoff's] contention that the rise of these
movements was not a purely parochial or accidental phenomenon gives [The Ominous
Parallels] a formidable contemporary relevance not possessed by all or even the
best essays in the history of ideas. |
|
Anthony Flew
Department of Philosophy
University of
Reading |
| A formidable contemporary relevance in the history of ideas |
[Peikoff] is the leading exponent of Rand's philosophy of
Objectivism, the man who will carry the torch of individualism over
collectivism, egoism over altruism, selfishness over sacrifice, laissez-faire
capitalism over bastardized mixed economies…[The Ominous Parallels is] a
fascinating weave of German history, philosophic determinism, and Objectivist
polemic. In it, [Peikoff] traces what he sees as a causal relationship between
centuries of certain Western philosophic thought — namely the ideas of Plato,
Kant, and Hegel—and the rise of Nazism in the Weimar Germany of the '20s and
'30s… Philosophy can determine the course of a nation, Peikoff argues. It is
its frame of reference, source of ideas and values, and root of its national
character… It was the homogeneity of unchallenged ideas and philosophy — 'the
worship of unreason,' vague, altruistic calls to duty, the demand for
self-sacrifice and the vaunting of the state above the individual — Peikoff
insists, that really led to the rise of Nazism. |
|
Rogers Worthington
Chicago Tribune |
| Ideas Shape History |
A compelling argument for the importance of ideas shaping history. |
|
Ottawa Citizen |
| Peikoff's view deserves to be confronted by Christian
conservatives |
Peikoff blames Christianity for paving the way [for Hitler].
Christians will disagree, or at least seek to temper and modify Peikoff's
tough verdict, as we do. But we also think that Peikoff's view deserves to be
confronted by honest Christian conservatives. |
|
Conservative Book Club
|
| How ideas rule the practical lives of men |
It is a wide-scale synthesis of the history of certain philosophical
ideas, and their cultural manifestations, in both the Old World and the New.
Among the fields traversed are the arts (from music to architecture), science,
religion, political and economic history, education, psychology, [and] even cult
fads, in both Germany and America. Nobody can come away from this work without a
better grasp of how ideas rule the practical lives of men, and without a deep
re-examination of his own basic convictions. |
|
The Freeman |
| A comprehensive theory of history |
[Peikoff] approaches his subject with the premise that he must
analyze not simply how Hitler came into power in the 1930s, but how
totalitarianism prevails in any country, at any time. That is, he is
deciphering, not the history of Germany, but history … The primary theme of The
Ominous Parallels is the challenging proposition that philosophy matters. It
argues that philosophy is the most practical, and most deadly, of weapons for
aspiring dictators … To offer a radical, comprehensive theory of history without
blurring the theory to cover all the facts or shoehorning the facts to fit the
entire theory, is a supreme achievement.
|
|
The Intellectual Activist |
|
|
