Versluis Arthur. The New Inquisitions: Heretic-Hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. — 208 p. — ISBN10: 0195306376; ISBN13: 978-0195306378.
The only book of its kind, The New Inquisitions is an exhilarating investigation into the intellectual origins of totalitarianism. Arthur Versluis unveils the connections between heretic hunting in early and medieval Christianity, and the emergence of totalitarianism in the twentieth century. He shows how secular political thinkers in the nineteenth century inaugurated a tradition of defending the Inquisition, and how Inquisition-style heretic-hunting later manifested across the spectrum of twentieth-century totalitarianism. An exceptionally wide-ranging work, The New Inquisitions begins with early Christianity, and traces heretic-hunting as a phenomenon through the middle ages and right into the twentieth century, showing how the same inquisitional modes of thought recur both on the political Left and on the political Right.Introduction: Heresy.
The Archetypal Inquisition.
Joseph de Maistre and the Inquisition.
Juan Donoso Corte´s and the “Sickness” of the Liberal State.
Georges Sorel and Charles Maurras: The Emergence of the Secular State Corporatism.
Carl Schmitt, the Inquisition, and Totalitarianism.
Communism and the Heresy of Religion.
Eric Voegelin, Anti-Gnosticism, and the Totalitarian Emphasis on Order.
Norman Cohn and the Pursuit of Heretics.
Theodor Adorno and the “Occult”.
Another Long, Strange Trip.
High Weirdness in the American Hinterlands.
The American State of Exception.
Berdyaev’s Insight.
Conclusion: Disorder as Order.Selected Bibliography.