Introduction
Totalitarian political movements – and the violence leading to mass death that is inherent in them – have emerged in the name of religion and nihilism, in the Global North and in the Global South, in the East and in the West, and from the left and right extremes of the political spectrum. Is there a unifying theory that can explain this phenomenon? The answer lies in philosophy.
Philosophy gives man an integrated view of the world and of his place in it. This, in turn, gives man a sense of what goals or values he ought to pursue. Man can consciously and conscientiously form his worldview by integrating basic presuppositions and their corollaries based on logic, or he can evade this action and default to a worldview formed by subconscious integration of random presuppositions. What he cannot do is escape his need to integrate his concrete experiences into abstract principles upon which to base his actions.
