The Demon in Democracy, Ryszard Legutko
The Demon in Democracy, Ryszard Legutko
List: $16.99 | Sale: $11.89
Club: $8.49

The Demon in Democracy
Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies

Author: Ryszard Legutko, John O'Sullivan, Teresa Adelson

Narrator: Liam Gerrard

Unabridged: 9 hr 6 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/22/2017

Synopsis

Ryszard Legutko lived and suffered under communism for decades—and he fought with the Polish ant-communist movement to abolish it. Having lived for two decades under a liberal democracy, however, he has discovered that these two political systems have a lot more in common than one might think. They both stem from the same historical roots in early modernity, and accept similar presuppositions about history, society, religion, politics, culture, and human nature.

In The Demon in Democracy, Legutko explores the shared objectives between these two political systems, and explains how liberal democracy has over time lurched towards the same goals as communism, albeit without Soviet-style brutality.

Both systems, says Legutko, reduce human nature to that of the common man, who is led to believe himself liberated from the obligations of the past. Both the communist man and the liberal democratic man refuse to admit that there exists anything of value outside the political systems to which they pledged their loyalty. And both systems refuse to undertake any critical examination of their ideological prejudices.

About Ryszard Legutko

Ryszard Legutko is a professor of philosophy at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, specializing in ancient philosophy and political theory. His most recent book is on the philosophy of Socrates. He has served as education minister, secretary of state in the chancellery of the late president Lech Kaczynski, and deputy speaker of the Senate, and is active in the anti-communist movement in Poland. He is currently a member of the European Parliament, deputy chairman of the Parliamentary Group of European Conservatives and Reformists, and a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Murtaza on July 01, 2018

Any thinking person who reads the news should at least be interested in the phenomenon of Reaction, which is lately showing some signs of life as the liberal order continues to falter. The argument of this book, which, notably, is written a Polish intellectual, is that liberal democracy shares in co......more

Goodreads review by Douglas on October 24, 2018

This is a superb book. There are a few places here and there where I think he misses some American and some Protestant nuances, but in the main this is a must read.......more

Goodreads review by Chris on September 11, 2016

The temptation with this book is to go full Macaulay and write a ten thousand, fifteen thousand, twenty thousand word review that tells you much more about me and how clever I am than about the book. This temptation I will try to avoid. At least a bit. If you are reading this review I expect you are......more

Goodreads review by Alex on November 01, 2016

Ryszard Legutko's "The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies" is a brilliant book, written by an astute Polish politician and thinker who lived under both communism and liberal-democracy. Legutko analyzes liberal-democracy's affects on our understanding of history, utopia, p......more

Goodreads review by David on April 11, 2017

This book is one of the most up-to-date and nuanced critiques of modern democratic liberalism in its current stage of hardened dogmatism that I have come across. The book is helpful especially in illuminating the similarities and affinities and history between democratic liberalism and communism, an......more

Add to Cart
Add to Wish List