One of the great intellectuals of our time.
Stanley Hoffmann, Harvard University
This is a voice to be listened to attentively, for our sharedplanetary home's and all its residents' sake.
Zygmunt Bauman, University of Leeds
Now, of all times, there is a need for cool heads, such asTodorov, who approaches the limits of free speech with admirabledexterity.
The New York Review of Books
A coherent, relevant work in which intelligence and sincerehumanism do battle D a world away from the slippery moralizingof intellectual fence-sitters.
Le Nouvel Observateur
Todorov's work is that of a sage, a man who has read thegreat texts, who has lived through two political regimes, and whodares to express an idea that may seem at odds with his ferventdefence of freedom and democracy: freedom for its own sake, freedomthat forgets its duties and responsibilities, is self-destructive. What he writes is never ordinary, but always tolerant and lifeaffirming.
L'Echo
The Inner Enemies of Democracy
von Tzvetan TodorovTodorov argues that certain democratic values have beendistorted and pushed to an extreme that serves the interests ofdominant states and powerful individuals. In the name of'democracy' and 'human rights', the UnitedStates and some European countries have embarked on a crusade toenlighten some foreign populations through the use of force. Yetthis mission to 'help' others has led to Abu Ghraib andGuantanamo, to large-scale destruction and loss of life and to amoral crisis of growing proportions. The defence of freedom, ifunlimited, can lead to the tyranny of individuals.
Drawing on recent history as well as his own experience ofgrowing up in a totalitarian regime, Todorov returns to examplesborrowed from the Western canon: from a dispute between Augustineand Pelagius to the fierce debates among Enlightenmentthinkers to explore the origin of these perversions ofdemocracy. He argues compellingly that the real democratic ideal isto be found in the delicate, ever-changing balance betweencompeting principles, popular sovereignty, freedom and progress. When one of these elements breaks free and turns into anover-riding principle, it becomes dangerous: populism, ultra-liberalism and messianism, the inner enemies ofdemocracy.
