1. Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, trans. Carol Stewart (New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1984); page references in the text are to this edition.

2. Very informative here is the conversation that Canetti conducted with Joachim Schickel, “Gespräch mit Joachim Schickel” in Elias Canetti, Die gespaltene Zukunft: Aufsätze und Gespräche (Munich, Hanser, 1972), pp. 104–131; on Canetti's epistemological model, see especially Christoph Menke, “Die Kunst des Fallens. Canettis Politik der Erkenntnis”in Einladung zur Verwandlung: Essays zu Elias Canettis “Masse und Macht” ed. Michael Kruger (Munich, Hanser, 1995).

3. Thus, for instance, Susan Sontag, “Mind as Passion” in Under the Sign of Saturn (New York, Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1980), pp. 181–204, here p. 199.

4. Exemplary today is Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Civil Wars: From L.A. to Bosnia, trans. Piers Spence and Martin Chalmers (New York, New Press, 1994); in direct connection with Canetti, a comparative image can be found in Wolfgang Sofsky, “Die Meute. Zur Anthropologie der Menschenjagd,” Neue Rundschau 105.4 (1994): 9–21.

5. See, for instance, Elias Canetti, Die gerettete Zunge. Geschichte einer Jugend (Munich, Hanser, 1977), pp. 128 ff.; Die Fackel im Ohr. Lebensgeschichte 1921–1931 (Munich, Hanser, 1943), pp. 53 ff., 79 f., 118 f., 230 ff.

6. From the secondary literature I just want to refer to John Bayley, “Canetti and Power”, in Essays in Honor of Elias Canetti, trans. Michael Hulse (New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1987).

7. Very informative here is Hinrich Fink-Eitel, “Angst und Freiheit. Überlegungen zur philosophischen Anthropologie” in Zur Philosophie der Gefühle, ed. Hinrich Fink-Eitel and Georg Lohmann (Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1993), pp. 57–88; for the problems discussed here, the following is still to be highly recommended: Aspekte der Angst (Starnberger Gespräche 1964) ed. H. von Ditfurth (Munich, Kindler, 1972).

8. In this sense, even Arnold Gehlen, see Moral und Hypermoral. Eine pluralistische Ethik (Frankfurt am Main, Athenäum, 1969); as a necessary supplement, compare, however, Jürgen Habermas, “Arnold Gehlen: Imitated Substantiality” in Philosophical-Political Profiles, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press, 1983), pp. 111–128.

9. Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. Joseph Ward Swain (London, George Allen & Unwin, 1976), pp. 376 ff.; an excellent analysis of this work is provided by Hans Joas, The Creativity of Action, trans. Jeremy Gaines (Cambridge, Polity Press, forthcoming), esp. “Primary Sociality” in chap. 3.

10. Die Fackel im Ohr, pp. 141 ff.

11. Ibid., p. 143.

12. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London, Dent, 1973), p. 35.

13. Cf., for instance, Niklas Luhmann, Macht (Stuttgart, Ferdinand Enke, 1975), chap. IV.

14. Die Fackel im Ohr, pp. 285 f.

15. On what follows, see the essay by Hinrich Fink-Eitel, “Dialektik der Macht”, in Dialektischer Negativismus, ed. Emil Angehrn et al. (Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1992), pp. 35–56, esp. pp. 52–6.

16. Elias Canetti, Die Provinz des Menschen. Aufzeichnungen 1942–1985 (Munich, Hanser, 1993), pp. 19, 59, 65 f.

17. Ibid., p. 59.

18. I refer to Helmut Plessner, “Grenzen der Gemeinschaft. Eine Kritik des sozialen Radikalismus:, in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. V (Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1981), pp. 7–133.

19. See the informative article by Birgit Sandkaulen, “Helmut Plessner: Über die Logik der Öffentlichkeit”, Internationa Zeitschrift für Philosophie, Heft 2 (1994): 255–273.

20. Elias Canetti, “Hitler, nach Speer” in Die gespaltene Zukunft, p. 21.

The Perpetuation of the State of Nature: on the Cognitive Content of Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power

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