25392625 arendt hannah the origins of totalitarianism a reply

8/12/2019 25392625 Arendt Hannah the Origins of Totalitarianism a Reply

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[The Origins of Totalitarianism]: A ReplyAuthor(s): Hannah ArendtSource: The Review of Politics, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Jan., 1953), pp. 76-84Published by: Cambridge University Press for the University of Notre Dame du lac on behalfof Review of PoliticsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1404748

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THE REVIEW OF POLITICSHE REVIEW OF POLITICSaccepted; man is the new lawmaker; and on the tablets wipedclean of the past he will inscribethe new discoveries n moralitywhich Burkehad still consideredimpossible.It sounds like a nihilistic nightmare. And a nightmare it israther than a well consideredtheory. It would be unfair to holdthe author responsibleon the level of critical thought for whatobviouslyis a traumaticshudderingunder the impact of experi-ences that were strongerthan the forces of spiritualand intellec-tual resistance. The book as a whole must not be judged by thetheoreticalderailmentswhich occur mostly in its concluding part.The treatment of the subject matter itself is animated, if not al-ways penetrated, by the age-old knowledgeabout human natureand the life of the spirit which, in the conclusions,the authorwishes to discard and to replace by new discoveries. Let usrather take comfort in the unconsciousirony of the closing sen-tence of the work where the author appeals, for the new spiritof human solidarity,to Acts 16: 28: Do thyselfno harm; for weare all here. Perhaps,when the author progresses rom quotingto hearing these words, her nightmarishfright will end like thatof the jailer to whom they were addressed.

A REPLYBy Hannah Arendt

Much as I appreciate the unusual kindness of the editors ofthe Review of Politics who asked me to answer Prof. EricVoegelin's criticism of my book, I am not quite sure thatI decided wisely when I accepted their offer. I certainlywouldnot, and should not, have accepted if his review were of theusual friendly or unfriendly kind. Such replies, by their verynature, all too easily tempt the author either to review his ownbook or to write a review of the review. In orderto avoid suchtemptations, I have refrained as much as I could, even on thelevel of personalconversation,to take issue with any reviewerofmy book, no matter how much I agreed or disagreedwith him.ProfessorVoegelin's criticism,however, is of a kind that canbe answered in all propriety. He raises certain very generalquestions of method, on one side, and of general philosophical

accepted; man is the new lawmaker; and on the tablets wipedclean of the past he will inscribethe new discoveries n moralitywhich Burkehad still consideredimpossible.It sounds like a nihilistic nightmare. And a nightmare it israther than a well consideredtheory. It would be unfair to holdthe author responsibleon the level of critical thought for whatobviouslyis a traumaticshudderingunder the impact of experi-ences that were strongerthan the forces of spiritualand intellec-tual resistance. The book as a whole must not be judged by thetheoreticalderailmentswhich occur mostly in its concluding part.The treatment of the subject matter itself is animated, if not al-ways penetrated, by the age-old knowledgeabout human natureand the life of the spirit which, in the conclusions,the authorwishes to discard and to replace by new discoveries. Let usrather take comfort in the unconsciousirony of the closing sen-tence of the work where the author appeals, for the new spiritof human solidarity,to Acts 16: 28: Do thyselfno harm; for weare all here. Perhaps,when the author progresses rom quotingto hearing these words, her nightmarishfright will end like thatof the jailer to whom they were addressed.

A REPLYBy Hannah Arendt

Much as I appreciate the unusual kindness of the editors ofthe Review of Politics who asked me to answer Prof. EricVoegelin's criticism of my book, I am not quite sure thatI decided wisely when I accepted their offer. I certainlywouldnot, and should not, have accepted if his review were of theusual friendly or unfriendly kind. Such replies, by their verynature, all too easily tempt the author either to review his ownbook or to write a review of the review. In orderto avoid suchtemptations, I have refrained as much as I could, even on thelevel of personalconversation,to take issue with any reviewerofmy book, no matter how much I agreed or disagreedwith him.ProfessorVoegelin's criticism,however, is of a kind that canbe answered in all propriety. He raises certain very generalquestions of method, on one side, and of general philosophical

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THE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISMimplications on the other. Both of course belong together; butwhile I feel that within the necessary limitations of a historicalstudy and political analysis I made myself sufficiently clear oncertain general perplexities which have come to light through thefull development of totalitarianism, I also know that I failed toexplain the particular method which I came to use, and toaccount for a rather unusual approach-not to the differenthistorical and political issues where account or justification wouldonly distract-to the whole field of political and historicalsciences as such. One of the difficulties of the book is that it doesnot belong to any school and hardly uses any of the officiallyrecognized or officially controversial instruments.The problem originally confronting me was simple and baf-fling at the same time: all historiography is necessarily salvationand frequently justification; it is due to man's fear that he mayforget and to his striving for something which is even more thanremembrance. These impulses are already implicit in the mereobservation of chronological order and they are not likely to beovercome through the interference of value-iudgments whichusually interrupt the narrative and make the account appearbiased and unscientific. I think the history of antisemitism is agood example of this kind of history-writing. The reason whythis whole literature is so extraordinarily poor in terms of scholar-ship is that the historians - if they were not conscious antisemiteswhich of course they never were - had to write the history of asubject which they did not want to conserve; they had to writein a destructive way and to write history for purposes of destruc-tion is somehow a contradiction in terms. The way out has beento hold on, so to speak, to the Jews, to make them the subjectof conservation. But this was no solution, for to look at theevents only from the side of the victim resulted in apologetics-which of course is no history at all.

Thus my first problem was how to write historically aboutsomething-totalitarianism-which I did not want to conservebut on the contrary felt engaged to destroy. My way of solvingthis problem has given rise to the reproach that the book waslacking in unity. What I did -and what I might have doneanyway because of my previous training and the way of mythinking-was to discover the chief elements of totalitarianism

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THE REVIEW OF POLITICSand to analyze them in historical terms, tracing these elementsback in history as far as I deemed proper and necessary. Thatis, I did not write a historyof totalitarianismbut an analysisinterms of history; I did not write a historyof antisemitismor ofimperialism, but analyzed the element of Jew-hatred and theelement of expansion insofar as these elements were still clearlyvisible and played a decisiverole in the totalitarianphenomenonitself. The book, therefore,does not reallydeal with the originsof totaritarianism - as its title unfortunately claims - but givesa historicalaccount of the elements which crystallized nto totali-tarianism,this account is followedby an analysisof the elementalstructure of totalitarian movements and domination itself. Theelementary structure of totalitarianism s the hidden structureofthe book while its more apparent unity is provided by certainfundamental concepts which run like red threads through thewhole.The same problem of method can be approachedfrom an-other side and then presentsitself as a problemof style. Thishas been praisedas passionateand criticized as sentimental. Bothjudgments seem to me a little beside the point. I parted quiteconsciouslywith the traditionof sine ira et studio of whose great-ness I was fully aware, and to me this was a methodologicalne-cessitycloselyconnectedwith my particularsubjectmatter.Let us suppose to take one among many possible examples-that the historian is confronted with excessive poverty in asocietyof great wealth, such-as the povertyof the Britishworkingclasses during the early stages of the industrial revolution. Thenatural human reaction to such conditionsis one of anger andindignation because these conditions are against the dignity ofman. If I describe these conditions without permittingmy indig.nation to interfere,I have lifted this particular phenomenonoutof its context in human society and have thereby robbed it ofpart of its nature, deprived it of one of its important inherentqualities. For to arouse indignation is one of the qualities ofexcessivepoverty insofar as poverty occursamong human beings.I thereforecan not agree with ProfessorVoegelin that the mor-ally abhorrent and the emotionally existing will overshadowthe essential, because I believe them to form an integral part ofit. This has nothing to do with sentimentalityor moralizing,

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THE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISMalthough, of course, either can become a pitfall for the author.If I moralized or became sentimental,I simply did not do wellwhat I was supposed to do, namely to describe the totalitarianphenomenonas occurring,not on the moon, but in the midst ofhuman society. To describethe concentrationcamps sine ira isnot to be objective, but to condone them; and such condoningcannot be changed by a condemnation which the author mayfeel duty bound to add but which remains unrelatedto the de-scriptionitself. When I used the image of Hell, I did not meanthis allegoricallybut literally: it seems rather obvious that menwho have lost their faith in Paradise,will not be able to establishit on earth; but it is not so certain that those who have lost theirbelief in Hell as a place of the hereaftermay not be willing andable to establishon earth exact imitations of what people used tobelieve about Hell. In this sense I think that a descriptionof thecamps as hell on earth is more objective, that is, more ade-quate to their essence than statements of a purely sociologicalorpsychologicalnature.The problem of style is a problem of adequacy and of re-sponse. If I write in the same objective manner about theElizabethanage and the twentieth century, it may well be thatmy dealing with both periods is inadequate because I have re-nounced the human faculty to respondto either. Thus the ques-tion of style is bound up with the problem of understandingwhich has plagued the historicalsciences almost from their be-ginnings. I do not wish to go into this matter here, but I mayadd that I am convinced that understanding s closelyrelated tothat faculty of imagination which Kant called Einbildungskraftand which has nothing in common with fictional ability. TheSpiritual Exercises are exercisesof imaginationand they may bemore relevant to method in the historicalsciences than academictraining realizes.

Reflections of this kind, originallycaused by the special na-ture of my subject, and the personal experiencewhich is neces-sarily involved in an historical investigationthat employs imag-ination consciouslyas an importanttool of cognition, resulted ina critical approach toward almost all interpretationof contem-porary history. I hinted at this in two short paragraphsof thePreface where I warned the readeragainst the conceptsof Prog-

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THE REVIEW OF POLITICSress and of Doom as two sides of the same medal as well asagainst any attempt at deducing the unprecedented from prece-dents. These two approaches are closely interconnected. Thereason why Professor Voegelin can speak of the putrefaction ofWestern civilization and the earthwide expansion of Westernfoulness is that he treats phenomenal differences -which tome as differences of factuality are all-important-as minor out-growths of some essential sameness of a doctrinal nature. Nu-merous affinities between totalitarianism and some other trendsin Occidental political or intellectual history have been describedwith this result, in my opinion: they all failed to point out thedistinct quality of what was actually happening. The phenom-enal differences, far from obscuring some essential sameness,are those phenomena which make totalitarianism totalitarian,which distinguish this one form of government and movementfrom all others and therefore can alone help us in finding itsessence. What is unprecedented in totalitarianism is not primar-ily its ideological content, but the event of totalitarian dominationitself. This can be seen clearly if we have to admit that thedeeds of its considered policies have exploded our traditionalcategories of political thought (totalitarian domination is unlikeall forms of tyranny and despotism we know of) and the stand-ards of our moral judgment (totalitarian crimes are very inade-quately described as murder and totalitarian criminals canhardly be punished as murderers ).Mr. Voegelin seems to think that totalitarianism is only theother side of liberalism, positivism and pragmatism. But whetherone agrees with liberalism or not (and I may say here that I amrather certain that I am neither a liberal nor a positivist nor apragmatist), the point is that liberals are clearly not totalitarians.This, of course, does not exclude the fact that liberal or posi-tivistic elements also lend themselves to totalitarian thinking; butsuch affinities would only mean that one has to draw evensharper distinctions because of the fact that liberals are nottotalitarians.

I hope that I do not belabor this point unduly. It is impor-tant to me because I think that what separates my approachfrom Professor Voegelin's is that I proceed from facts and eventsinstead of intellectual affinities and influences. This is perhaps a

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THE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISMbit difficult to perceive because I am of course much concernedwith philosophical implications and changes in spiritual self-interpretation. But this certainly does not mean that I describeda gradual revelation of the essence of totalitarianismfrom itsinchoate forms in the eighteenthcenturyto the fully developed,because this essence, in my opinion, did not exist before it hadnot come into being. I thereforetalk only of elements, whicheventually crystallize into totalitarianism, some of which aretraceable to the eighteenth century, some perhaps even fartherback, (although I would doubt Voegelin's own theory that therise of immanentist sectarianism since the late Middle Ageseventually ended in totalitarianism). Under no circumstanceswould I call any of them totalitarian.For similar reasonsand for the sake of distinguishingbetweenideas and actual events in history, I cannot agree with Mr.Voegelin's remark that the spiritual disease is the decisive fea-ture that distinguishesmodem masses from those of earlier cen-turies. To me, modern masses are disintegrated by the factthat they are masses n a strict sense of the word. They aredistinguished from the multitudes of former centuries in thatthey do not have common interests to bind them together norany kind of common consent which, accordingto Cicero, con-stitutes inter-est,that which is between men, ranging all the wayfrom material to spiritual and other matters. This betweencan be a common ground and it can be a common purpose; italways fulfills the double function of binding men together andseparatingthem in an articulateway. The lack of common in-terest so characteristicof modern massesis thereforeonly anothersign of their homelessnessand rootlessness.But it alone accountsfor the curious fact that these modem massesare formed by theatomization of society, that the mass-menwho lack all communalrelationshipsneverthelessoffer the best possible material formovementsin which peoples are so closely pressedtogether thatthey seem to have become One. The loss of interestsis identicalwith the loss of self, and modem masses are distinguished nmy view by their self-lessness, hat is their lack of selfish in-terests.I know that problemsof this sort can be avoided if one inter-prets totalitarian movements as a new--and perverted--reli-

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THE REVIEW OF POLITICSgion, a substitute for the lost creed of traditional beliefs. Fromthis, it would follow that some need for religion is a cause ofthe rise of totalitarianism. I feel unable to follow even the veryqualified form in which Professor Voegelin uses the concept of asecular religion. There is no substitute for God in the totalitarianideologies - Hitler's use of the Almighty was a concession towhat he himself believed to be a superstition. More than that,the metaphysical place for God has remained empty. The intro-duction of these semi-theological arguments in the discussion oftotalitarianism, on the other side, is only too likely to further thewide-spread and strictly blasphemous modem ideas about aGod who is good for you -for your mental or other health,for the integration of your personality and God knows what-that is ideas which make of God a function of man or society.This functionalization seems to me in many respects the last andperhaps the most dangerous stage of atheism.

By this, I do not mean to say that Professor Voegelin couldever become guilty of such functionalization. Nor do I denythat there is some connection between atheism and totalitarian-ism. But this connection seems to me purely negative and notat all peculiar to the rise of totalitarianism. It is true that aChristian cannot become a follower of either Hitler or Stalin;and it is true that morality as such is in jeopardy whenever thefaith in God who gave the Ten Commandments is no longersecure. But this is at most a condition sine qua non, nothingwhich could positively explain whatever happened afterward.Those who conclude from the frightening events of our times thatwe have got to go back to religion and faith for political reasonsseem to me to show just as much lack of faith in God as theiropponents.Mr. Voegelin deplores, as I do, the insufficiency of theoreticalinstruments in the political sciences (and with what to me ap-peared as inconsistency accuses me a few pages later of not hav-ing availed myself more readily of them). Apart from thepresent trends of psychologism and sociologism about which Ithink Mr. Voegelin and I are in agreement, my chief quarrelwith the present state of the historical and political sciences istheir growing incapacity for making distinctions. Terms likenationalism, imperialism, totalitarianism, etc. are used indiscrim-

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THE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISMinately for all kinds of politicalphenomena (usually just as high-brow words for aggression) and none of them is any longerunderstoodwith its particularhistoricalbackground. The resultis a generalization n which the words themselves lose all mean-ing. Imperialismdoes not mean a thing if it is used indiscrim-inately for Assyrianand Roman and British and Bolshevik his-tory; nationalism is discussed n times and countries which neverexperiencedthe nation state; totalitarianism s discoveredin allkinds of tyranniesor forms of collective communities,etc. Thiskind of confusion where everything distinct disappears andeverythingthat is new and shocking is (not explained but) ex-plained away either through drawing some analogiesor reducingit to a previouslyknown chain of causes and influences-seemsto me to be the hallmark of the modern historicaland politicalsciences.In conclusion,I may be permittedto clarify my statementthatin our moder predicament human nature as such is at stake,a statementwhich provokedMr. Voegelin'ssharpestcriticism be-cause he sees in the very idea of changingthe nature of manor of anything and in the very fact that I took this claim oftotalitarianismat all seriously a symptom of the intellectualbreakdownof Westerncivilization. The problemof the relation-ship between essence and existence in Occidental thought seemsto me to be a bit more complicatedand controversial han Mr.Voegelin's statement on nature, (identifying a thing as athing and therefore incapable of change by definition) implies,but this I can hardly discusshere. It may be enough to say that,terminologicaldifferencesapart, I hardly proposedmore changeof nature than Mr. Voegelin himself in his book on The NewScience of Politics; discussingthe Platonic-Aristotelianheory ofsoul, he states: one might almost say that before the discoveryof psyche man had no soul. (p. 67) In Mr. Voegelin's terms,I could have said that after the discoveriesof totalitariandom-ination and its experimentswe have reason to fear that manmay lose his soul.In other words, the successof totalitarianisms identicalwitha much more radical liquidation of freedom as a political andas a human reality than anythingwe have ever witnessedbefore.Under these conditions,it will be hardly consolingto cling to an

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THE REVIEW OF POLITICSHE REVIEW OF POLITICSunchangeablenature of man and conclude that either man him-self is being destroyedor that freedom does not belong to man'sessentialcapabilities. Historicallywe know of man's nature onlyinsofar as it has existence, and no realm of eternal essenceswillever console us if man loses his essential capabilities.My fear, when I wrote the concluding chapter of my book,was not unlike the fear which Montesquieu already expressedwhen he saw that Westerncivilizationwas no longer guaranteedby laws although its peoples were still ruled by customs whichhe did not deem sufficient to resist an onslaught of despotism.He says in the Preface to L'Espritdes Lois L'homme,cet etredes autres, est egalement capable de connaitre sa propre natureflexible, se pliant dans la societe aux pensees et aux impressionslorsqu'on a lui montre,et d'en perdre jusqu'ausentimentlorsqu'onla lui derobe. (Man, this flexible being, who submits himselfin society to the thoughts and impressionsof his fellow-men, isequally capable of knowing his own nature when it is shown tohim as it is and of losing it to the point where he has no realiza-tion that he is robbed of it.)

CONCLUDING REMARKBy Eric Voegelin

It does not happen often these days that a work in politicalscience has sufficienttheoretical texture to warrant an examina-tion of principles. Since Dr. Arendt'sbook was distinguishedbya high degree of theoretical consciousness, I felt obliged toacknowledgethis quality and to pay it a sincere complimentbycriticizingsome of the formulations. The criticismshad the fur-ther pleasant consequence of stimulating the preceding, moreelaborate explanation of the author's views concerning method.But this should be enough as an aid to the reader of the book.My word in conclusion,requested by the Editors of the Review,will therefore be of the briefest a ceremony rather than anargument.I shall do no more than draw attention to what we agree isthe question at stake, though Dr. Arendt's answer differs frommine. It is the questionof essence in history,the questionof how

unchangeablenature of man and conclude that either man him-self is being destroyedor that freedom does not belong to man'sessentialcapabilities. Historicallywe know of man's nature onlyinsofar as it has existence, and no realm of eternal essenceswillever console us if man loses his essential capabilities.My fear, when I wrote the concluding chapter of my book,was not unlike the fear which Montesquieu already expressedwhen he saw that Westerncivilizationwas no longer guaranteedby laws although its peoples were still ruled by customs whichhe did not deem sufficient to resist an onslaught of despotism.He says in the Preface to L'Espritdes Lois L'homme,cet etredes autres, est egalement capable de connaitre sa propre natureflexible, se pliant dans la societe aux pensees et aux impressionslorsqu'on a lui montre,et d'en perdre jusqu'ausentimentlorsqu'onla lui derobe. (Man, this flexible being, who submits himselfin society to the thoughts and impressionsof his fellow-men, isequally capable of knowing his own nature when it is shown tohim as it is and of losing it to the point where he has no realiza-tion that he is robbed of it.)

CONCLUDING REMARKBy Eric Voegelin

It does not happen often these days that a work in politicalscience has sufficienttheoretical texture to warrant an examina-tion of principles. Since Dr. Arendt'sbook was distinguishedbya high degree of theoretical consciousness, I felt obliged toacknowledgethis quality and to pay it a sincere complimentbycriticizingsome of the formulations. The criticismshad the fur-ther pleasant consequence of stimulating the preceding, moreelaborate explanation of the author's views concerning method.But this should be enough as an aid to the reader of the book.My word in conclusion,requested by the Editors of the Review,will therefore be of the briefest a ceremony rather than anargument.I shall do no more than draw attention to what we agree isthe question at stake, though Dr. Arendt's answer differs frommine. It is the questionof essence in history,the questionof how

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25392625 arendt hannah the origins of totalitarianism a reply

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