Dear Colleague,

One of Richard Koenigsberg's central themes is the idea of  the nation as a real body politic possessing an immune system that seeks to reject or eliminate cells identified as "alien" or "foreign" or "not self." Koenigsberg's idea is presented and developed by Simona Forti ("one of the most interesting Italian philosophers today") in her book New Demons: Rethinking Power and Evil Today. 

The passage below from Chapter Four of Forti's book-- "Thanatopolitics and absolute victims"-- crystallizes one of Dr. Koenigsberg's most important theories.

Best regards,

Mary Helen

PS: Below the abstract you will find information on Professor Forti, a description of her book New Demons and details on how to purchase it, as well as a Link to a video of her presentation at a conference on "Nietzsche and Arendt."

PPS: We will soon be inviting other readers of the Library of Social Science Newsletter to provide their own reflections and commentaries on Koenigsberg's ideas.

Abstract: "According to Richard Koenigsberg, Hitler and his men expected Germany to conform to the law of the immune system, and it did so. In the same way any other organism singled out and recognized cells foreign to it and automatically destroyed them, so did the German body politic. At the heart of the National Socialist ideology, there apparently lay the conviction that the German nation, as a real political body, was suffering from a disease caused by a potentially deadly infection—triggered by infectious agents that, to start with, were identifiable with the Jewish microorganism.

"Fascinated by the power of these corporeal fantasies, Hitler and his followers conceived their mission as a sequence of therapeutic phases. After an accurate, but ruthless, diagnosis of the disease, they had to act according to the most rigorous, scientific logic of cause and effect, without shirking the weight of their responsibility for the treatment. At various points in his speeches and writings, the Fuhrer used the idea of Germany as a real organic body. Dazzled by the power of the metaphor, he continually returned to the relationship between cell and body: it was an inextricable bond that charged every cell with the responsibility for the health of the whole."