What's this notion called the sublime? What does it mean to have a sublime response to something, and why has interest in the sublime waxed and waned? According to Iain Boyd Whyte, the sublime can be discussed in connection with natural phenomena, artistic production, and even political ideology and propaganda.

Was the German-Jewish thinker, literary critic and essayist Walter Benjamin primarily a metaphysical or mystical thinker, or were his writings grounded in a radical political sensibility? Esther Leslie articulates many of Benjamin's ideas on the relationship between politics and art and on the growth of mass industrial society.

Is fascism on the rise in the US, or is it already here? Do we answer that question by comparing the US under Bush to Hitler's Germany or Mussolini's Italy? In the journal Socialism and Democracy, Jonathan Scott contends that an understanding of white supremacism, and of the way in which white workers have defended capital by collaborating with their employers, is essential.

What drives people to accept, and often embrace, authoritarian figures? Sigmund Freud thought a lot about the human hunger for patriarchs, fascist tyrants, and fundamentalist leaders. In The Death of Sigmund Freud, Mark Edmundson describes Freud's investigations into the human psyche in relation to tyranny, war and religion.