Vanguards, Sacralisation of Politics, and Totalitarianism: Category-based Epistemology and Political Religion
This article overviews the current debate on ‘political religion’ as it relates to totalitarian regimes. Beginning by contrasting Emilio Gentile's ‘sacralisation of politics' thesis with Richard Shorten's critiques of ‘political religion’ as a concept, this article discusses the speci...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
2014
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| In: |
Politics, religion & ideology
Year: 2014, Volume: 15, Issue: 4, Pages: 521-540 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article overviews the current debate on ‘political religion’ as it relates to totalitarian regimes. Beginning by contrasting Emilio Gentile's ‘sacralisation of politics' thesis with Richard Shorten's critiques of ‘political religion’ as a concept, this article discusses the specific role of vanguard party organisation in the ‘sacralising’ of political systems. Founded upon ‘category-based epistemology’ - where a special, ‘universal’ part of mass society has unique access to truth - and maintained by vanguard organisations populated by professional revolutionaries, totalitarian movements/regimes create practices and self-conceptualisation analogous to religion. This article also addresses the (dis)similarities between religion and political religion, providing some boundaries in which the ‘political religion’ concept is useful. |
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| ISSN: | 2156-7697 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Politics, religion & ideology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/21567689.2014.957686 |