"The Captive Mind"

Paper Summary:

This paper is written in the form of a debate over the book "The Captive Mind" by Czeslaw Milosz. The paper describes the book as exposition of the horrors generated by both the European tyrannies of the left and the right. It goes on to discuss the book from the point of Karl Marx and John Stewart Mill, who view the book from different angles.

Table of Contents:
Czeslaw Milosz (Moderator)
Karl Marx
Czeslaw Milosz
Karl Marx
John Stewart Mill
Karl Marx
John Stewart Mill
Karl Marx
John Stewart Mill
Karl Marx
John Stuart Mill
Czeslaw Milosz
Karl Marx
John Stewart Mill
Karl Marx
Czeslaw Milosz

From the Paper:

"Czeslaw Milosz: I would concur that it makes no difference. The situation of a writer in a so-called people's democracy is frighteningly similar to an oppressed writer under the tyrannies of olden times. Because of the ills spoken of in Marx's The Communist Manifesto that were suffered by the proletariat, the left may have found the terrible destructive potential of a powerful state initially worth bearing, in exchange for a more equitable society. In a society where religion had lost its power, the ideologies of the unity of the scholar, peasant, and proletarian seemed attractive to the alienated, modern individual in his or her quest for meaning, especially a quest for meaning that afflicted all of Europe after the horrors of World War II. But in actual practice, despite the seductions of intellectual satisfaction offered by leftist tyrannies that were not offered by rightist tyrannies, these leftist tyrannies were still that, ideological tyrannies, wolves in sheep's clothing."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Marx, Karl. The Communist Manifesto 1848.7 Mar 2006. h<ttp://eserver.org/marx/1848-communist.manifesto/cm1.txt>
• Mill, John Stewart. "On Liberty." 7 Mar 2006. 1869. <http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/m/mill/john_stuart/m645o/>
• Milosz, Czeslaw. The Captive Mind. New York: Vintage, 1999.

More papers on "The Captive Mind":

• Book Review # 93399 : "Czeslaw Milosz' "The Captive Mind"
• Analytical Essay # 41307 : "The Totalitarian System in Literature"
• Analytical Essay # 141120 : "Remembrance in the Works of Rowlandson and Poe"

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