The category of totalitarism since the Eighties has been brought back to the center of political science literature (and not only). This has happened after a period of widespread hostility toward the category itself, during which it has been discussed (especially by historians) its analytical worth and its ideological contamination, beside its revisionist vocation. The review shows, making reference to some books that offer an assessment of this development, how in recent years relevant philosophical interpretations of the totalitarian phenomenon set the direction of historiographic and sociological research: on the one side, linking together Arendt’s and Foucault’s approaches, on the other, reintroducing the key of political religions, developed in the Thirties, to remain reductively linked to Eric Voegelin’s works.