Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Modern Politics
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Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198867517
Number of Pages: 176
Published: 18/01/2021
Width: 16.3 cm
Height: 1.5 cm
Recent political events around the world have raised the spectre of an impending collapse of democratic institutions. Contemporary concerns about the decline of liberal democracy are reminicent to the tumult of the 1930s and 1940s in Europe. Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived in Germany during the rise of National Socialism, and each reflected on what the rise of totalitarianism meant for the aspirations of modern politics. Engaging the realities of
totalitarian terror, they avoided despairing rejections of modern society. Beginning with Barth in the wake of the First World War, following Bonhoeffer through the 1930s and 1940s in Nazi Germany, and concluding with Barth's post-war reflections in the 1950s, this study explores how these figures reflected on
modern society during this turbulent time and how their work is relevant to the current crisis of modern democracy.