The turning (Kehre)

pp. 53-82

in: Harry Redner, Malign masters - Gentile Heidegger Lukács Wittgenstein, Berlin, Springer, 1997

Abstract

The Turning is the period of transition from totality to totalitarianism. It is a complex process involving many internally differentiated stages. It typically begins with an enthusiastic adhesion to a totalitarian ideology and ends in considerable disappointment and disillusionment, but this does not result in outright rejection. To the contrary, the invariable outcome is the attempt to conceive of an ideal, "philosophical', version of the specific totalitarianism, free of the errors and distortions of the actual regime and the "mistakes' of its leader — a sublimated image of what it might or ought to become. This idealization — which one might consider a kind of "private' totalitarianism — is the background to the secondary masterworks following the Turning.