La peur - Histoire d'une idée politique: Histoire d'une idée politique

by Corey Robin

For many commentators, September 11 inaugurated a new era of fear. But as Corey Robin shows in his unsettling tour of the Western imagination--the first intellectual history of its kind--fear has shaped our politics and culture since time immemorial. From the Garden of Eden to the Gulag Archipelago to today's headlines, Robin traces our growing fascination with political danger and disaster. As our faith in positive political principles recedes, he argues, we turn to fear as the justifying language of public life. We may not know the good, but we do know the bad. So we cling to fear, abandoning the quest for justice, equality, and freedom. But as fear becomes our intimate, we understand it less. In a startling reexamination of fear's greatest modern interpreters--Hobbes, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and Arendt--Robin finds that writers since the eighteenth century have systematically obscured fear's political dimensions, diverting attention from the public and private authorities who sponsor and benefit from it. For fear, Robin insists, is an exemplary instrument of repression--in the public and private sector. Nowhere is this politically repressive fear--and its evasion--more evident than in contemporary America. In his final chapters, Robin accuses our leading scholars and critics of ignoring "Fear, American Style," which, as he shows, is the fruit of our most prized inheritances--the Constitution and the free market. With danger playing an increasing role in our daily lives and justifying a growing number of government policies, Robin's Fear offers a bracing, and necessary, antidote to our contemporary culture of fear.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Philosophy, Political Science, Cultural, Psychology

268 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Corey Robin is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College.

Reviews

[Varad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Corey Robin's "Fear: The History of a Political Idea" is a curious little book. Its title promises something far more comprehensive than what is actually delivered. A partial treatment of what is potentially a vast subject can be defended. What cannot are the bizarre omissions and strange choices of emphasis which plague Robin's analysis of the place of fear in liberal political thought. Robin does offer several interesting insights on this issue, which is his real subject, but they are diluted by an inconsistent application of his theoretical model of fear. Far worse, however, is his surprisingly poor grasp of history, one which, in his treatment of fear in contemporary America, forces him to focus on trivial issues at the expense of far more compelling examples. Ultimately, Robin's is one of those books where you want to agree with the author, but he steadfastly refuses to give you any grounds on which to do so.

Robin defines political fear as "a people's felt apprehension of some harm to their collective well-being." This conviction can arise "within and between societies" (2). There is a crucial distinction here, but it is one Robin does little with. He is instead far more interested in the ways in which the idea of fear has been used by liberal theorists throughout history. He claims that for apologists for liberalism, fear has taken the place of the "summum bonum" or common good around which served as the seed from which other political philosophies' conceptions of the purpose and organization of society grew. Liberals, having nothing which they could be for, filled this void with various visions of a "summum malum." In doing so, liberal thinkers have, he argues, have attempted to remove fear from political life. Not by denying fear's existence, but by treating it as a phenomenon which intrudes into politics and society from without.

In the first half of the book, Robin focuses on four thinkers: Hobbes, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and Arendt, each of whom offered a different vision of fear. While Robin does a creditable job explicatng these visions, he neglects to situate them within the overall pattern of their political thought. The result is that Robin portrays all of them foremost as theorists of fear, a dubious claim in each instance. Clearly all four were concerned with the place of fear in liberal ideology, but there was more to them all than that. This approach finds most success with Hobbes, whom Robin depicts as championing fear on purely rational grounds: only by inculcating fear in every subject would the sovereign be able to prevent them from engaging in the sort of self-destructive behavior that nearly ruined England; and which, should they destroy themselves, would cost them all the things which made life worth living. With the other three he is less successful because he never establishes that fear was a primary object of their thinking.

In the second half the book completely falls apart. Robin's premise is just, namely, that fear is mechanism used to allocate power and resources in American society (179). But his historical analysis of this reality undermines his argument. Robin conveys the impression that fear only came into being with the Cold War, ignoring the fact that fear has been rife in American culture since the time of the Revolution, which was animated by fears of British conspiracies to snuff out American liberty, and was subsequently followed by fears of immigrants (an ongoing concern), abolitionists, the permanence of the Union (the Civil War, hello), communists in the early part of the twentieth century, and so on. Fear is not exceptional, but then nothing innate to the human mind could be so considered. Liberalism has no special purchase, or even a leasehold, on fear. Robin ignores this, and the second half goes down the drain with him.

Take, for example, his chapter on fear in the workplace. He characterizes labor relations as defined by the autocracy of hierarchy. He adduces plenty of evidence in the form of egregious abuses of workers by their supervisors to claim that workers live in a constant state of fear of losing their jobs, or worse. Yet historically the modern corporation is a paradise compared to the labor relations which prevailed in early modern times. Besides reading for the most part like warmed over union propaganda, Robin compounds his difficulties by discussing the means employers use to thwart unionization without once mentioning the right-to-work laws which prevent unionization in many states, especially those of the South. Such a glaring omission makes it hard to take anything else he says on the matter seriously. There are times, too, it seems Robin has never read a novel in which the hero (or heroine) seeks to escape the insular, closed-minded, repressive surveillance of rural or small town society. There was a time when the anonymity of the big city and its big workplaces was considered a boon to personal autonomy. That promise has not always been fulfilled, but Robin's pretense that it never existed confirms his historical blinders.

By far the greatest flaw in the book is Robin's treatment of McCarthyism, which he treats as the categorical manifestation of what he styles "fear, American style." The flaw can be described by this paradox. If fear is as pervasive in modern American society as he says it is, then McCarthyism cannot be regarded as a particularly revealing episode, and therefore does not deserve especial attention. If, on the other hand, McCarthyism is exceptional, then its very nature vitiates its potential to be generalized. That is, it cannot speak to the broader culture because it is unique. Either way, McCarthyism ruins Robin's argument.

With McCarthyism the structural and substantive defects of Robin's analysis combine. He cannot identify a particular mode of fear in liberal thought, he can only analyze it through its historical manifestations. The problem is that the history he offers is poor. He is surely correct that fear is a powerful source in American politics, and he offers some compelling insights about how liberalism perpetuates that fear. Namely, that in the absence of any positive conception of justice, right, or some other good around which it can coalesce, liberalism requires fear to maintain its moral and intellectual force. That argument deserves to be taken seriously; whether one finds it persuasive or not is another matter. But Robin presents this as a historical account, and there it fails, because he attends to matters that do little to support his argument while overlooking so many that would. This is history as committed by political science: incoherent, inconsistent, and illogical. "Fear: The History of a Political Idea" could be the title of an excellent book. But it won't be until it's the title of a different one.

[Conor Ahern · Rating 3 out of 5]

I began following Corey Robin on Facebook a few years ago, and at some point I made some snarky comment to him. Apparently he is one of these public personalities who engages with his followers, and he really let me have it. At first he just made a snide remark about my comment being Spiro Agnew-esque, and I rolled my eyes and snarked back. We got into a pretty heated back-and-forth, and I don't think it was either of our best sides on display. But, although I still don't love his Facebook comments, I have always admired how prolific and articulate and challenging his articles are. I recommend him to you!

So I decided to look into his two books. I had read some negative reviews of this one, but I wanted to pick it up anyway. It's true that the first part is prettttty dry. There's a lot of very esoteric discussion of Hobbes and Montesquieu that I'm not sure I really absorbed or was what I came to this book for. But toward the end there is some provocative discussion of the workings of American government and pluralism and the negative aspects of things like separation of powers and civic society that I found interesting after a lifetime of having de Tocqueville crammed down my throat.

I'll be reading his more recent book, "The Reactionary Mind," but more for what I've read in his shorter-form writing than this work.

[Nils · Rating 3 out of 5]

A somewhat bizarre book. The first half offers a solid history-of-ideas focused on the political idea of fear in a leading theorist from the 17th century (Hobbes, who was concerned with the use of fear in establishing the modern state), 18th century (Montesquieu, who saw fear as what made political liberalism necessary), 19th century (Tocqueville, who regarded anxiety as the natural condition of egalitarian democracy), and 20th century (Arendt, who theorized the relationship between state and mass under totalitarian conditions not once, but twice). He rightly points out that there are two types of political fear: fear of the government, and fear of the people.

The second half of the book then delves into the use and abuse of political fear in contemporary America, and becomes an almost stream-of-association set of things-that-concern-Corey, like the racism of anti-terrorism, or the need for unions to enforce labor democracy — things only tangentially related to the types of political fear that his theorists in the scholarly part of the book were concerned with. Indeed, by the end, he seems to have forgotten entirely about the intellectual history he began with, and is concerned only with grinding his activist axe.

[Alexia Koehne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chapter 1

[Ievgen Mochalov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Книга складається з двох частин. Дослідницької - вона перша і вона цінна. Розбір, критика і систематизація джерел політичної думки від Гобса до Арендт в контексті страху як політичної категорії. Рекомендую.
Друга частина є субʼєктивними роздумами щодо страху в американському політичному і чомусь корпоративному вимірі. Є спірною і на мій особистий погляд притягнутою до предмету основного дослідження. Хоча певно я основним називаю те, що мало бути лише прологом за задумом автора.
Менше з тим, важлива книга.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Corey Robin’s Fear: The History of a Political Idea is a deeply insightful exploration of how fear has shaped political life, not just as a reaction to threats but as a deliberate instrument of power. Robin traces the ways fear has been theorized and deployed, drawing from thinkers such as Hobbes, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and Arendt. He argues that political fear is not simply about individual anxiety but about how governments and institutions cultivate and manipulate fear to maintain control.

Written in the wake of 9/11, the book critiques the way fear was embraced by liberal intellectuals as a force that could unify or reinvigorate democratic life. Robin dismantles this idea, showing that fear rarely strengthens democracy. Instead, it erodes civil liberties, discourages dissent, and fosters compliance under the guise of security. His historical analysis is especially compelling, illustrating how fear has functioned across different political systems, from despotism to democratic governance.

What makes the book particularly valuable is its ability to reveal the paradox within liberalism, where fear is often justified as a necessary safeguard, even as it undermines the very freedoms it claims to protect. Robin shows how political leaders have used fear not only to consolidate power but also to shape public behavior and redefine what people consider acceptable in the name of security.

While Robin’s analysis is sharp and illuminating, some of his arguments feel incomplete when applied to contemporary politics. His framework largely examines fear within a liberal democratic order, where it operates as both a constraint and a tool. Yet as political dynamics shift, fear is increasingly used in more overt and unrestrained ways, making some of his conclusions feel rooted in an earlier moment.

Still, Fear remains a crucial read for anyone interested in political philosophy and the mechanics of power. It forces readers to consider not just how fear is used, but whether it is possible to imagine a politics beyond it.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Both an intellectual history and an intervention into current political and theoretical debates. This is very worth reading, at least the first half. What Robin does seems obvious now that I've read it, but I never would have thought of it: he traces the role of "fear" (and, to a lesser extent, "anxiety") in modern political thinkers, notably Hobbes, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Arendt. His point is that the current invocations of fear/terror, as an attempt to unify a putatively disintegrating society in the pursuit of "Enlightenment abroad when we can't have it at home," is as old as modern political society. Since Hobbes, fear has been seen as that which might weld together a polity in the absence of animating ideals (justice, equality). This shows up all the time in contemporary political argument: everyone who defends liberalism by showing us the horror of non-liberal societies (Judith Shklar most obviously, but he also has interesting readings of Philip Gourevitch, Richard Rorty, Arendt, and a whole bevy of more popular commentators) is guilty of some version of this argument. At this point, I would add Paul Berman. This is always rooted in a lack of a positive vision and a distrust in mass society, for right or wrong.

All of that is very interesting, but the second half of the book falls apart: he makes obvious points about McCarthyism, etc. His chapter on how our political institutions (federalism, separation of powers, etc., as recommended by the "liberals of fear" like Montesquieu and Tocqueville) makes our government, in actual fact, a more effective purveyor of fear, is pretty good, though.

[Christopher McQuain · Rating 4 out of 5]

****1/2

[Sharad Pandian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Complicated, uneven, and probably the most important book I've read in a long time.

The book can be thought of as made up of three sections. In the first, we're given a tour of the treatment of political fear by several major political thinkers (with particular emphasis on Hobbes, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and Arendt). The second is a close look at McCarthyism and how, contrary to what is usually assumed, the very liberal institutions meant to protect freedom can be used with startling success at creating an atmosphere of anxiety. And in the last section, it is argued that the particular way fear has been thought of (as directed towards an apolitical threat) has kept us from examining closely more mundane, but just as important, sources of fear such as the now comprehensively monitored workplace where people can be fired and ostracised on whim (especially now that Unions have been decimated).

As the description above indicates, it's not a book with a simple thesis. But it's a challenging argument, and if the thesis from the third section is right, it should have major consequences for how we should be thinking about politics and justice.

[Gruia · Rating 2 out of 5]

O carte din două părți. Prima parte comentează și critică lucrări fundamentale ale științei politice - interesant mai degrabă pentru cercetători și specialiști decât pentru cititorul amator, care ar vrea să acceadă rapid o vedere de ansamblu. Destul de des te lovești de referiri la teorii obscure pentru un neavizat și de concepte insuficient definite (cum ar fi anxietatea socială). Nu știi dacă sunt lacune ale tale, scăpări ale autorului sau erori de traducere.

Partea a doua încearcă să aducă conceptul de frică în concret, cu exemple din istoria recentă a SUA. Robin se chinue să construiască un text echilibrat, dar la sfârșit rămâne o bucată mâțâită de deplângere a condiției clasei muncitoare și de regret pentru dezumflarea liberalismului contemporan.

Ediția română scoasă de Ed.Vremea este o traducere fără ștaif, cu denaturări de sens - contained devine conținut în loc de îngrădit, cu barbarul „ca și”, cu acuzative lipsă care creează confuzii de moment și împiedică citirea cursivă și cu scăpări amuzante (novo ordo sectorum, în loc de seclorum).

[Foppe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book consists of two parts. In the first, Robin traces the intellectual history of fear and terror, and the role these concepts play and have played in political thought, culminating in a very interesting discussion of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil . In the second, he talks about the role fear plays in American politics and civil society, paying special attention to the problem of ‘civil society repression.’ I found it a very interesting book, among other reasons because it explained to me why I find Michael Walzer and Richard Rorty’s arguments about recognition/relativism/politics/morality so lacking.

Robin starts out by drawing an analogy between the story of Genesis 2, and 9/11. He points out that prior to eating the apple Adam and Eve had basically been ‘coasting’ while enjoying eternal life, and that it was only after being told that they would suffer hardship and die that they experienced their first emotion – fear. Reactionaries, he argues, view 9/11 in the same way: as the moment that punctured the happy-go-lucky mood that was so characteristic of (the) 1990s (reporting, in any case; a lot was going on already on the 'hollowing-out-the-middle-class'-front, but since this was only reported on as "the unavoidable consequence of globalization", with reporters themselves – and here we should focus especially those who breathe in east coast elite air, as they are the ones who produce all the feckless/narcissistic blather that is otherwise known as "the national conversation" – were doing just fine, while socio-economic reporting was way too political), and that put fear back into American hearts, forcing everyone to acknowledge that life truly is "nasty, brutish and short". As Robin points out, even though the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon were certainly terrible, there is nothing natural or necessary about the political and societal consequences of the attacks, and the fear and confusion they caused. So just as McCarthy used fear of a “communist conspiracy” to cow leftists into submission and push back against the New Deal, so the Bush administration and political commentators generally used the fear of a “repeat” to start two wars, the building of an enormous surveillance apparatus, and to generally distract from the further hollowing-out of the middle class. The takeaway points, here, are that "national threats" are generally identified by people with agendas, and that the more nebulous a threat is – a communist conspiracy, terrorists lurking on every corner, “being turned into Sweden” – the easier it is for the people running the country (and its security apparatus) to justify their actions as “necessary”. Because if you control the executive and legislative branches, you have the institutional means to keep alive – via constant and invasive TSA checks, alert level changes, the repeated training and “folding” of terrorist groups, and whatever other institutional means you can come up with – fears of terrorists lurking everywhere. Building on Quentin Skinner’s work, Robin argues that Hobbes was the first to argue that choosing national threats, and using the institutional capacities of the state (and the media) in order to make the dangers posed by “threats” real and visible, were justifiable, and things that should be done consciously.

The other thing Hobbes premiered was the thought that morality (especially insofar as guaranteed by the state, but also in the broader sense) could be founded on fear. The next person to make this move does so coming out of the experience of WWII: starting with Judith Shklar, many 20th-century liberals (e.g. Walzer, Rorty) have started from some variation on the argument that since experiences of suffering (physical and psychological) are 'easily recognizable' by anyone regardless of culture, we should just justify our behavior by reference to a perceived duty or desire to stop and prevent it. Robin calls this the ‘liberalism of terror’, and notes that liberals hoped it would provide them with an argument for intervention that was almost impossible to deny, trivialize or ignore the validity of both at home and abroad, thus giving them an answer to conservative accusations of ‘lack of willpower’. He points out that this line of argument became especially popular after the 1980s, and that it was intellectually preceded and accompanied by a stance Robin refers to as the ‘liberalism of anxiety’, which he describes as turning on worries about the consequences of 1960s and ‘70s leftist political activism for civil institutions and social roles. Worried that people would no longer experience sufficient pushback in their formative years, many liberals believed that people should be discouraged from engaging in political activism, and be encouraged to engage instead in civil activity (which tends to not disturb the institutional and political status quo). Meanwhile, any excess political fervor should be channeled towards foreign human rights abuses, while experimentation with democracy should similarly happen abroad. I found this chapter quite interesting, because I’d never quite realized that Rorty’s arguments (and here, think especially of Contingency, Irony, and SolidarityContingency, Irony and Solidarity) that moral claims are legitimated by the subjective experiences of suffering that inspire them, had been so widely shared. The problem with this is obvious: without a yardstick against which to check whether the experience of suffering is reasonable, you may well end up supporting people whose suffering is caused by their no longer being allowed to beat their wives, keep slaves, or to emotionally abuse and fire their employees whenever they feel like it.

A second line of argument worth mentioning here concerns the interaction between fear, social status and economic security. His starting point for this discussion is Arendt’s Eichmann. By way of opener, consider Robin’s observation that the work contains one of our only sustained study of the role played by careerism in sustaining and developing regimes of fear (for an example of what this entails, see Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man).

In the second part of the book, called “Fear, American Style”, Robin elaborates on this by looking at and connecting a number of things and events that he deems especially relevant if we want to understand the role fear plays in American society. Appropriately, he starts this part with an analysis of McCarthyism, in which he looks at the role played by political (especially interesting here are his discussions of how separation of powers, the rule of law, and federalism can be put to work in order to distribute state repression, with the added advantage – from the perspective of repressors – that the distributed model makes organizing a defense against the repression more difficult) and civil institutions. Robin pays a lot of attention to the question which role civil society institutions -- particularly employers, including the media and Hollywood – on the one hand, and (partly legitimate) worries over social/economic security by employees -- worries about being blacklisted if you didn’t cooperate with the congressional investigation, which required you to promise to never associate with other members of the communist party again, to become an active “anti-communist,” and to name all of the other members of the Party that you knew, or risk being thrown in jail after a lengthy trial – on the other. He points out that even though only very few people were actually convicted by HUAC, McCarthyism had an enormous influence both on public and political discourse, primarily because of civil-society cooperation with the congressional committee by employers, who made many demands of their employees, and who frequently “investigated” personnel for communist leanings and/or “activity”, and who were of course entirely free to fire their employees for whatever reason, including for refusing to testify before the HUAC. By doing so, he shows that a lot of the worrying about “state repression”, so commonplace in American discourse, is misplaced, and distracts people from the question what goes on in civil society, because if it hadn’t been for the happy (or unhappy, which had the same chilling effect) cooperation from Corporate America -- including liberal Hollywood -- it would never have been possible for McCarthyism to have the effects that it did.

In all, I found this a very interesting book, one which I will certainly return to a few more times in the near future. I very much encourage you to read it, and to consider doing so before or after reading Robin’s other book, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah PalinThe Reactionary Mind, as it nicely complements this book in talking more about reactionary mindset, whereas I would argue this book is more relevant to understanding the liberal mindset.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Corey Robin is most renowned (and controversial) for his work on conservatism, but his first book largely deals with fear and liberals. Emerging from the post-9/11 gestalt where pro-war/pro-security-state liberalism ala Chris Hitchens was the big new intellectual thing, “Fear” comes to grip with both the history and the contemporary practice of political fear. As it turns out, it’s liberals — Robin specifically focuses on Montesquieu, Alexis de Tocqueville, Hannah Arendt, as well as the less categorizable Thomas Hobbes — rather than reactionaries that have most defined our relationship to fear as a political factor. The… fear factor, if you will.

Hobbes stood at an inflection point in the understanding of political fear, Robin argues, as he did so many other concepts. Ancient and medieval political writers understood fear as having a moral/political object. So, too, did Hobbes- the fear of death in the state of nature impelled men to create society, with rules and a sovereign. But he also predicated later writers who would come to place fear outside of the political, as a force on its own that short-circuits political thought and action, an emotion to be indulged in just so much as to fend off the larger fear a given writer projects. So you have Montesquieu with his concept of despotic terror coming, essentially, from the personality of the despot, or Tocqueville with his anxieties stemming from the deracination of the new mass man of the nineteenth century. Both of these types of fear were meant to be feared themselves, and acted against, through the usual liberal prescriptions of intervening institutions, civil society, divided powers, etc. Arendt, for her part, both took this depoliticized fear to its apotheosis — her concept of total terror even went so far as to depoliticize Nazi death camps and Soviet gulags — but she turned against this conception, in Robin’s telling, with “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” where she brings the political (and personal responsibility) back in.

I’ve read all these thinkers but am no expert on any of them. Robin’s accounts seem reasonably illuminating and they hold together well, but I wouldn’t be surprised if experts on any of the four, and more likely the further from the present you get, would have quibbles. Robin makes no secret of his agenda- an intervention in the post-9/11 climate of political fear and discourse over political fear. This comes out more clearly in the second half of the book, “Fear: American Style,” where he discusses mostly McCarthyism and the discourse around 9/11. American domestic political repression has, at least as targeted against those thought of as part of the polity (Native Americans, Filipinos, and others received altogether different treatment), less bloody than other examples from the twentieth century. But this isn’t because liberalism isn’t repressive, Robin argues- but that American liberalism has refined its particular tools to such a pitch that it need not be so sanguine. These tools map neatly, in Robin’s telling, to the things that are supposed to make liberalism immune from repression: division of powers (which enabled things like the congressional committees that hounded supposed subversives during McCarthyism), civil society (with its inclusions and, more to the point, exclusions), the primacy of the free market (and the power this gives employers). Any tool is a weapon, potentially- any tool of power is potentially oppressive. This, along with his rejection of fear as a potential political unifier (a prominent post-9/11 theme), is his great apostrophe to the readership.

All of this is argued passionately and persuasively. One weird thing is that he doesn’t define what he means by “liberalism.” Maybe this is only irksome to someone who’s been following his project for the better part of a decade now. He shows no such hesitation in defining conservatism or reaction- indeed, he’s gone a long way to defining it for a whole generation of critics as the ideology of the defense of power and privilege. His history, like Arno Mayer’s, resembles a constant back and forth between those who would distribute power downward along social hierarchies and those who would distribute it ever more upward- he roundly rejects the (frankly asinine) linguistic argument that conservatives are particularly interested in “conserving.” Where do liberals fit into all this? Robin doesn’t explicitly say. I once suggested on his facebook that liberalism represents the idea of a harmony of interest that either harmonizes or neutralizes the struggle between redistribution of power and retrenchment. He dismissed it out of hand, if memory serves. Fine by me, I’m just some guy with a blog. I’d like to go forward with a schema for including liberalism in Robin’s system, though, as I think Robin’s ideas will be important for political work and our understanding of modern history going forward. ****’

[Lette Hass · Rating 4 out of 5]

para descanso de las "pre":
campañas...
espectáculos...
partidos...

resultados. Ahh, no. aquí no hay "pre".

[Janice]

Very problematic.

[Sami Eerola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great insights on how liberal elites uses fear to control people in democratic societies. The only problem is that the last half of the book concentrates too much on the US.

[Rae Simpson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Minuteman. Skimmed. Didn't make the cut for project for 2025.

[david-baptiste · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not yet read al of this book but is an excellent one and esp; "much needed' as reviewers say, "in our present today situations"--
FEAR-ht elanguage of fear the fear of thought fear of wors fears of difference--fears of the econmy now added onto pof al this--
rathcehting up the fear continually
becuase thereisnothing like Fear to increase the repressivess and aggression of as coeity--agiunstits own citizens and agsintthose of anyhone it can point to and projectits paranoia and "evil aspects" on to
-everyday what is one bombarded with, saturated by, but FEAR--
President Obama the other night introduced a whole new level of the FEAR FACTOR--

for the first time in US history--he has introduced the concept of detaining without charge and for indefinite periods, without trial since no charge has been made--of any the President or his Henchpersons believe is "capable of committing a crime at some point n the future"

(a few years ago a film starring tom cruise from a philip k dick novel "predicted" this--)

fear of the FUTURE--
re -emptive strikes not only by bombing countries wheter ornot thereis any real evidence of WMDs or anything else being there--
is being translated into preemptive strikes against thoughts--

because the President or some "experts"--
say that"you will commit a crime in five years from now and we have to stop you know because we can read your mind--"

this is an excellent history of the development of fear as a weapon against persons in order to create ever more repression in the name of ever more fear

to be safe,one must give up one's rights to the State, be unquestioning and evince a fanatical faith in what ever one's "leaders' say , or 'the proper authorities"--

this fear saturates things not thought to be 'fearful"--for example the arts and poetry etc in the US have become so fearful for so long they no longer speak u much about anything happening around them--

the retreat is ever deeper into a formalism in which al is safe--
an Orwellian situation in which one needs often to understand words as the opposite of what they purport to "mean" or "say"

"experiments" are not really evinced in the poetry or arts fields despite the oversue of the word--

the real experiments are carried out by the military the propaganda machines, the experiments which daily use persons as there "proving grounds"--

Gaza is described as "an experimental laboratory and showroom for the development and display of new advancements and enhancements in security and surveillance"

Afganistan and Pakistan are now the testing labs for drones of the latest kinds--

the American govt has become evermore an experimental laboratory for the testing of techniques in mind control, fear mongering, completely bullshit double speak and so on--

the point of a these developments is not only to genocide person and steal their lands, their resources, destroy their cultures, but also to establish an ever huger area in which conformity reigns--

the preemptive strike based on the fear of a future thought and action is another way of preparing the conformity of the future in the present

i better get back to the book and though and find out what the other fears other eh!

as an artist friend of mine used to say--"fear of life!! that's it--fear of life--that terrifies people more than the fear of death"

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ironically enough I finished a last night Corey Robin's Fear: The History of a Political Idea (New York: Cambridge, 2004). The book is one of those increasingly rare, well-written and argued geneaologies of an idea, tracing the concept of political fear through Hobbes, Montesquieu, Tocqueville and Hannah Arendt. The book has been sitting on my bookshelf for a couple of years waiting to be read and as I had no other reading from the library I found myself scouring my shelves for something to read. After coming out of the hospital I began collecting books for my next hospital visit so I would have a collection of books to keep my mind occupied. On my last visit, reading turned out to be one of the magic keys that allowed me access to a world outside of myself and outside of the confines of my hospital bed. Written shortly after 9/11 Robin is interested in how political fear repeatedly manifests itself through both political and civic arenas in the twentieth-century, specifically focusing on the McCarthy era and the post 9/11 world. Not only does the book introduce the ideas of these important political theorists and analyze their concepts of political fear but Robin succeeds in placing the idea of political in a broader historical context for understanding the ongoing tension that exists between repression, political fear, power and liberty that have defined twentieth-century America. Robin never shies away from questioning the use of political fear in America not just as an abstract concept but as a process of power that operates along class lines. The work is a refreshing take on how fear is used in a society that privileges its own sense of moral superiority and questions American obsessions with wealth, acquisition, consumption and careerism and how these help to foster climates of political fear.

[Bronwyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fear is a treatise on the place of "fear" in American life. It goes through time looking at different philosopher's conceptions of fear, finally ending with Hannah Arendt's philosophy on the totalitarianism of the 20th century. Corey Robin talks about an incredibly complex topic and helps to clarify its place in time...and how it has morphed (and yet still controls us) in the modern age.
Must, must read.

[Luke Echo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part I, in which Robin develops a comparative analysis of fear in the political theory of Hobbes, Montesquieu, Tocqueville and Hannah Arendt, was really rather insightful. A compelling presentation of the role of fear through the respective authors and what

The turn in Part II, to mostly US (and mostly 20th C) issues had its entertaining moments, but to be honest I skimmed through some of the detail.

[Joe Donohue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Or why you wouldn't want to live a society of heroes.

Cowards worry about mortgages, social standing, and retirement packages -- they plan for future, and that's what holds society together.

A society of heroes cares only about history and will prefer to die than yield to anyone-- and make lousy neighbors.

Think about it.

[Leonard Pierce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robin has written an interesting, thorough and increasingly relevant book on the use of fear and moral panic as a social governor by political actors.

[Ngan Ha · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author raised plenty of excellent points! By combining what I have learnt this year so far and the information in this book, I can relievedly complete my paper!

[Jagati Bagchi · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book transcends all ages and help us to understand why there is a rise and effective control of people in powerover society.

[Katie Zura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed the way I think. I think about this book at least once a week

[Rob Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Locke, Tocqueville and Arend.