socrates or heidegger? hannah arendt`s reflections on philosophy and politics

Socrates orHeidegger?Hannah Arendt'sReflections onPhilosophy

rOlltlCS / BY MARGARET CANOVAN

JTJLANNAH ARENDT liked to say that thinking is an endlessprocess that produces no settled results: "like Penelope's web,it undoes every morning what it has finished the nightbefore."' In general, this description of intellectual life doesnot fit Arendt herself very well, since her refiections manifestlydid produce results in the shape of a complex network ofconcepts and distinctions which she developed and constantlyreused. There is, however, one train of thought runningthroughout her mature work that really does have the shifting,unstable character that the metaphor of Penelope's websuggests, and through which we can perhaps eavesdrop on thatnever-ending internal dialogue of the thinker with herself thatArendt took to be the essence of philosophy. The subject ofthis debate, and one of Arendt's major preoccupations, was therelation between thought and action, philosophy and politics.

The sources of her concern with this topic lay in her ownexperiences following Hitler's rise to power. Formerly abrilliant philosophy student with little interest in politics, she

' H. Arendt, The Life ofthe Mind (New York: Harcoun Brace Jovanovich, 1978), vol.I, Thinking, p. 88.

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was catapulted into concern with public affairs by the shock ofNazism, and turned her energies fo^ a time to practicalactivities as a member of the Jewish community,^ and later toreflections upon the momentous advent of totalitarian domi-nation. Only by way of political philosophy did she eventuallyfind her way back to philosophy proper.'Evidence that this wasindeed a homecoming can be found in a remark to an oldfriend after she had been invited to give the Gifford Lecturesthat became The Life of the Mind. She tol|d Hans Jonas that shefelt she had done her bit in politics, and from now on wasgoing to stick to philosophy.^ In the 'last year of her life,indeed, she went so far as to declare publicly that for all herpraise of the public realm she herself was not a political animal,and that her early decision to study philosophy had "impliedalready, even though I may not have known it, a non-commitment to the public." For, as she a'dded, "Philosophy is asolitary business."* i

A Taste for Tyranny

If Arendt's own life as philosopher arid citizen suggested acertain tension between thought and action, another personalexperience forced on her attention the^ possibility of a muchstarker opposition between them. In 19,33, when Arendt andher fellow Jews were exiles or in danger, Martin Heidegger,her former teacher and lover and ! the man who hadrepresented for her the summit of philosophical thinking,allied himself publicly with the Nazis. His infatuation was briefbut shattering. As Arendt afterward remarked of the period,

t

^ E. Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (London: Yale UniversityPress, 1982), pp. 117, 138-139, 143-144, 148. !

^ H. Jonas, "Acting, Knowing, Thinking: Gleanings from Hannah Arendt'sPhilosophical Work," Social Research 44 (1977): 27. '

* Unpublished speech on receiving the Sonning PrizI, 1975, Arendt MSS, Box 70,pp. 7-8. I

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"the problem . . . was not what our enemies might be doing,but what our friends were doing.''^ The experience broughthome to her the unpalatable fact that Heidegger was not theonly great philosopher to have had a taste for tyranny.Exceedingly few distinguished thinkers had ever sympathizedwith the kind of republican political action she now valued sohighly, and Plato, the founder of Western political philosophy,had been even more hostile to democracy than Heidegger.Could it be, Arendt came to ask herself, that there is someincompatibility between philosophy and politics built into thenature of each activity?

It is in the writings of Arendt's last twenty-five years that thispreoccupation comes to the surface. Before then, her way ofaccounting for Heidegger's Nazism, and solving the problemof philosophy versus politics as far as he was concerned, seemsto have been to devalue his philosophy toward the level of hispolitics. In an essay on German "Existenz Philosophy"published in the Partisan Review in 1946^ she gave a hostile andslighting account of Heidegger, comparing his philosophyunfavorably with that of Karl Jaspers, her other teacher, whohad always opposed Nazism. Although the article does notexplicitly discuss political philosophy, there are obviouspolitical overtones in Arendt's claim that Heidegger's philoso-phy is characterized by "egoism," in contrast to the stress uponcommunication and openness toward others in Jaspers'sthought. Furthermore, Arendt suggests that the latter was notonly more humane but also more philosophically advancedthan Heidegger's. Apparently Jaspers, who had behaved somuch better politically, was also the better philosopher, so thatphilosophy and politics seemed to be in harmony.

We cannot tell how far this position satisfied Arendt at thetime. All that is certain is that within a few years of thepubhcation of the essay on "Existenz Philosophy" she came to

Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, p. 108.H. Arendt, "What Is Existenz Philosophy?" Partisan Review 8 (Winter 1946): 13.

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see things very differently. Her bitterness against Heideggerdid not survive reunion with him duringi her visit to Europe in1949-50.^ Avidly reading his later writings, she once more sawhim as the transcendent philosophical genius of the time,^ andwas consequently faced once more witH the problem of howsuch profundity in philosophy coul(i coexist with suchstupidity or perversity in politics.

For the rest of her life Arendt reflected upon the relationbetween philosophy and politics^ and, rtiore broadly, betweenthought and action, and her refiections led her in two differentdirections. They led her in the first place toward what sheherself and many of her readers would consider one of hermajor discoveries in political philosophy,!but they also directedher toward a train of thought that was less obviously fruitful,though fascinating. It is with this second,'ultimately unresolvedtrain of thought that this paper will be cliiefiy concerned. First,though, let us take note that it was Arendt's sensitivity to theuneasy relations between philosophy and politics that led herto the claim, familiar to readers of The ^Human Condition andBetween Past and Future, that most of the "great tradition" ofWestern political philosophy from Plato onward had given asystematically misleading impression !of the nature andpotentialities of politics. For whereas philosophy in general

' Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, p. 246.^ Cf. H. Arendt, "Martin Heidegger at Eighty," in M. Murray, ed., Heidegger and

Modem Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), pp. 293-303.^ Two quite different lecture courses on this topic survive among Arendt's

manuscripts: "Philosophy and Politics: The Problem of Action and Thought after theFrench Revolution," 1954, Arendt MSS, Box 69, and "Pliilosophy and Politics: What IsPolitical Philosophy?" 1969, Box 40. See also letter froni Arendt to Gertrud and KarlJaspers, 25/12/1950, in Hannah Arendt-Karl Jaspers: Briefwechsel 1926-1969, ed. L.Kohler and H. Saner (Munchen: Piper, 1985), p. 196; letter from Arendt to KennethThompson, Rockefeller Foundation, March 1969, Arendt MSS, Box 20, p. 013824.The relation between politics and the life of the mind is the subject of a book by LeahBradshaw, Acting and Thinking: The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt (Toronto:University of Toronto Press, 1989). Bradshaw's claim (pp. 7, 68, 100) is that there is a"dramatic reversal" in Arendt's thought on these matters, a "radical break" betweenher earlier "political" works and her later preoccupation with the life of the mind. Myargument in the present paper, based on study of Arendt's manuscripts (to whichBradshaw does not refer), is quite different.


arose, according to Arendt, from "wonder" at the phenomenaof the world,' political philosophy was always the "stepchild"of philosophy," never popular with its grudging parent. Eversince the condemnation of Socrates by the Athenian demo-crats, which provoked Plato to dream of making the city safefor philosophers by giving them power, political philosophyhas been based less on the authentically political experience ofacting among others than on the experience of the philoso-pher, who thinks in solitude and then has to cope with anuncomprehending world when he emerges from his reflec-tions. Political philosophy, in other words, has looked atpolitics from the philosopher's point of view, not from that ofthe political actor.

According to Arendt, this has had a number of unfortunateresults. In the first place, politics has been downgraded andhas lost its dignity. The immortality for which Greek citizensstrove could not compete with the eternity to which philosophygave access, and which cast all aspects of the vita activa intosuch disrepute that action became confused with otheractivities. Politics has as a result been misunderstood ever sinceeither as a form of work, the fabrication of objects, or as labor,the business of keeping ourselves alive. From the philosopher'spoint of view, politics could in any case be only a means to anend, not something good in itself. It was therefore easilymisinterpreted as a form of fabrication, best directed by a rulerwho understands the end to be achieved. The notion of asingle ruler rather than a plurality of actors was naturallycongenial to philosophers who were looking for a single truthto override plural opinions. Politically, the great disadvantageof this point of view was that it implied a loss of understandingof human plurality, the fact that (as Arendt never tired ofrepeating), "men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the

' H. Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p.302.

" Arendt, "Philosophy and Politics," 1954, Arendt MSS, Box 69, p. 023358.

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world."'2 But philosophers were not much concerned withfreedom of action. Possessing the truth, they sought not topersuade the masses but to compel theni, either by threateningthem with divine punishment or by usihg deductive reasoning.Meanwhile, they gave the coup de grace to an authenticunderstanding of politics by capturing the crucial notion offreedom, which they reinterpreted to mean a private orinternal condition rather than freedom 'to move and act in thepublic world.'3 ,

Thought and Action

Arendt's account of the way in which traditional Westernunderstandings of politics have been distorted by philosophicalpreoccupations is of course highly conti-oversial, but it can bebriefly summarized here not only because it is well known butalso because it is not something that Arendt changed her mindabout. Once her reflections on the relations between philoso-phy and politics had directed her attenltion to it, she did notsignificantly alter her position. But those reflections led heralso to a series of questions that were less easily answered, andon which she continued to meditate fc)r the rest of her life,trying out different answers without finding definite solutions.How deep does the tension between philosophy and politicsgo? Has it been essentially an unforttinate accident, whicharose out of the specific events of Socrates' death and was

'^ Arendt, Human Condition, p. 7. '" Arendt, Human Condition, pp. 12-17, 85, 185, 195, ^22-230, 234-237; H. Arendt,

Between Past and Future: Six Exercises in Political Thought (London: Faber & Faber, 1961),pp. 107-116, 145, 157. See also B. Parekh, Hannah Arendt and the Search for a NewPolitical Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1981), chs. 1+2. According to Arendt, theconquest of politics by philosophy had been so complete that even those notablyMarxwho had made a conscious effort to escape these traditional distortions hadfailed. Only in the crisis of the mid-twentieth century,, when the tradition had beenshattered by nihilism in philosophy and totalitarianism in politics, had it becomepossible to look afresh at the central features of political action.

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perpetuated by historical contingencies, but which we can putbehind us now that the tradition is broken? Or does it godeeper than that? Do thought and action possess inherentcharacteristics that make tensions between philosophy andpolitics inevitable? Is philosophy a search for absolute truthand iron consistency that gives the philosopher a naturalsympathy with coercion and tyranny? Or is the thinking inwhich the philosopher engages an activity that is as free andunproductive of results as action itself? Is philosophicalthinking an inherently solitary, antipluralist activity that ispossible only in withdrawal from the world, as the examples ofPlato and Heidegger suggest? Or, on the contrary (as we mightconclude from looking at Socrates or Jaspers), does philosophyat its best actually need contact with others in a public world,and imply the recognition of plurality and communication withothers? And supposing that philosophical thinking doesinvolve a withdrawal from the world, must this standing backdestroy common sense and disqualify the philosopher forpolitics, or might it actually guard him against thoughtless eviland free his capacity for political judgment?

During the last twenty-five years of Arendt's life reflec-tions upon this knot of questions appear continually inher published and unpublished writings, but it is possibleto identify two overlapping phases of her thought: one inthe early 1950s, perhaps not unconnected with her re-union with Heidegger; the other, later phase linked with thetrial of Eichmann and the controversy that followed her bookabout it.

Whether or not Arendt's earlier phase of refiections on thissubject was connected with Heidegger, it was undoubtedlylinked to Marx, who provided the bridge that led her from herown special brand of philosophical history to something morereadily identifiable as political philosophy. After finishing TheOrigins of Totalitarianism, which had concentrated mainly upon

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Nazism and its antecedents in the "subterranean stream"'^ ofEuropean experience, Arendt embarked upon a companionstudy which was to have traced the "totalitarian elements ofMarxism."'5 UnHke the Nazi version of totahtarianism,Stalinism had a respectable philosophical ancestry reachingback to Marx and beyond, and the study was never completedbecause as soon as Arendt set about relaiting Marx to the greattradition of Western thought'^ a vast and uncharted field ofreflection opened before her, parts of which she explored inThe Human Condition and in Between Past and Future.^"^ Herpublished and unpublished writings from the early 1950sreveal a bewildering number of connected thought-trains, butone of the key points on which they tdnd to converge is thetrial of Socrates and its implications for Western philosophyand politics. In her manuscripts for the time, indeed, it ispossible to find sketches for a kind of niyth of a philosophicalFalla story which she evidently founjd tempting, althoughnot entirely convincing. ,

The story goes like this. In the days of the early Greek polis,before academic philosophy had been invented, the citizens ofAthens lived a life in which thought anjd action were united.This primordial unity was symbolized byi the word logos, whichmeant speech as well as thought. Greek politics was conductedthrough this logos, and the significance of this went beyond thefact that action within the polis was carried on by means ofpersuasion rather than force. It also mednt that in the citizens'endless talk, action disclosed thought, ] while thought itself

I'' H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 3rd ed. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1967),

p. xxxi. I'^ In April 1952 Arendt was awarded a Guggenheim| Fellowship for work on this.

See Correspondence with the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Arendt MSS Box17, p. 012648. j

In 1953 Arendt delivered a course of lectures entitled "Karl Marx and theTradition of Western Thought." Two very different manuscript versions remain, andit is the preliminary draft that is particularly relevant t i the matters discussed here.Arendt MSS, Box 64. '

'^ Application for renewal of Guggenheim Fellowship! Jan. 29, 1953, Arendt MSS,Box 17, p. 012641; Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, p. 279.


informed the actions of the citizens as they persuaded oneanother. 18 Within the public realm that formed between thecitizens, reality could appear and be seen from all sides,'^ whilewithin this kind of politics, based on speech and unitingthought and action, the plurality and freedom of men had fullplay. By contrast, once action and thought were separatedfrom one another, each tended to degenerate into coercionthat denied that plurality and freedom, action by degeneratinginto speechless violence and thought into a kind of single-tracklogical reasoning that was no less hostile to human pluralityand spontaneity.

It was from the Athenian politics of public speech that(according to Arendt) Socrates' version of philosophicalthinking grew. For this was a kind of thinking that was notdivorced from or opposed to politics, but was itself a matter ofmoving among others in the public world and exploring theiropinions. Each person has his own opinion, his doxa, whichrepresents the way the world appears to him, so that there areas many opinions as there are separate persons looking at thecommon world from different points of view. But whereasPlato would later aspire to replace these plural opinions with asingle truth, Socrates had no such intention. All he was tryingto do was to encourage each person to speak his own opinioncoherently. "Maeutics to Socrates was a political activity, a giveand take, fundamentally on a basis of strict equality, whosefruits could not be measured by results, arriving at this or thatgeneral truth."2 Far from aiming to discover an authoritativetruth that would bring discussion to a conclusion, Socratesevidently regarded talking among friends about the world theyhad in common as an activity that was worthwhile in itself:"Socrates seems to have believed that the political function of

'8 Arendt, "Karl Marx and the Tradition," first draft, pp. 11-18; "Philosophy andPolitics," 1954, pp. 023361-366; Arendt, Human Condition, p. 27.

'^ Cf "Einleitung: Der Sinn von Politik," Arendt MSS, Box 60, pp. 010, 13.^"Arendt, "Philosophy and Politics," 1954, p. 023400; Cf "Karl Marx and the

Tradition," first draft, pp. 30-31; also this issue, p. 81.

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the philosopher is to help establish this kind of common world,built on the understanding of friendship, where no rulership isneeded."2i |

It seems, then, that there was a time when thought andaction, philosophy and politics, were not separated or opposed.Arendt explicitly states that these modern distinctions are not amatter of course, but are the result qf events, above all theresult of Socrates' death.22 For the fate of Socrates not onlydrove Plato into enmity to politics: it also made him doubt histeacher's whole philosophical approach. In the light ofSocrates' trial, the futility of talking to the masses was obvious.Instead of trying to persuade them, Plato opposed to theiropinions the absolute truth which appears only in the solitudeof philosophical thinking, and which inust then be imposedupon others, whether they are coerced by the force of logic orby threats of divine punishment in a life to come.23

The Vice of Solitude

Tragic as this story of philosophy's Fall may appear, itsimplication is that the opposition between thought and actionthat has plagued Western traditions; is not inevitable. IfSocrates had not been condemned; if he had not had a discipleof Plato's genius to react to his death; if the Greek polis had notalready begun a decline that favored the pretensions of thephilosophers; if Christianity had not reinforced the hierarchyof thought and action; in short, if circumstances had beenotherwise, apparently, philosophy and pjolitics need never havebeen divided. If one links together ^ these reflections onSocrates' authentically political philosophy with some of theobservations Arendt later makes aboui: political thinking as

^' Arendt, "Philosophy and Politics," 1954, p. 023403; cf this issue p 84' ' Ibid., p. 023366. ^=^ Arendt, Between Past and Future, pp. 107-116; "Karl Marx and the Tradition"

first draft, pp. 29-30, 33-34; "Philosophy and Politics,'" 1954, pp. 023395-399; cf thisissue, pp. 74-80.


practiced by philosophers like Jaspers and Kant (which we willexamine later), one can produce a plausible interpretation ofher position as straightforwardly anti-Platonist, implying thatphilosophy and politics had been in harmony once and couldbe again, in spite of all the traditional distortions.

Arendt's position is by no means as simple as that, however;in fact, it is not simple at all. It is not so much a position as aninternal dialogue, continually going back and forth betweenalternative standpoints. Even in these early manuscript lectureson "Philosophy and Politics" that describe the Socratic state ofgrace from which Plato and subsequent philosophy fell,Arendt admitted that there were other and more fundamentalreasons for the uneasy relations between philosophy andpolitics. These deeper tensions showed themselves even in thecase of Socrates and in spite of the fact that he was athoroughly political philosopher. For although Socrates did notclaim to be an expert in possession of a special philosophicaltruth, he was different from other citizens in being overwhelm-ingly concerned with truth in the sense of trying to make everyperson he talked with speak his opinion more coherently.Inevitably, this search for truth tended to have a corrosiveeffect on opinions, undermining them without puttinganything in their place.^4 And if a latent conflict betweenloyalty to the polis and loyalty to the truth can be found even inSocrates, in Plato's case the tension was intensified and giventheoretical expression. Arendt suggests that Plato's antipoliticalUtopia represented an attempt to resolve a conflict that wouldhave been present even without the trial of Socrates, namely, aconflict within the philosopher himself between two kinds ofexperience, the life of the citizen and the life of the mind. ForPlato, this became a conflict between the body and the soul,which the soul must win if it is to be free. The soul must ruleover its body as a free citizen rules over his slaves, and thisinternal domination in its turn becomes for Plato the model for

'^^ "Philosophy and Politics," 1954, p. 023408; cf. this issue, pp. 90-91.

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rule over the citizens by philosopher kings. As the analogyreminds us, Arendt was aware of another reason why thetempting picture of thought and acticjn united in the poliscould not be altogether sustained. At several points in theseearly manuscripts she admits that the institution of slave-owning had already opened a gulf between "knowing" and"doing" in practical affairs, and placed the experience ofrulership at the base of Greek politics.^5

However tempted Arendt might have been, therefore, bythe image of an original Socratic harmony between philosoph-ical thought and political action, she acknowledged from thefirst that there may be something in tlie activity of thinkingthat makes philosophers typically unsympathetic to freepolitical action and inclined to favor tyranny. Even before shewrote the manuscript lectures on "Philosbphy and Politics" thatwe have been looking at, she had already reflected upon apossible link between philosophy and totalitarianism. The linkbetween the two is the process of logical deduction, andArendt makes the connection in some manuscript reflectionson totalitarianism which appear to )belong to the samethought-train as her essay on "Ideology and Terror." Thelatter, first published in 1953 but incorporated into the latereditions of The Origins of Totalitarianism, contains reflections onthe logicality of totalitarian ideologies, and the appeal of thisiron consistency to lonely mass-men.26 iri the manuscript, as in"Ideology and Terror," Arendt goes on to distinguish betweenthis forlorn "loneliness" and the condition of "solitude" inwhich "we are never alone but together with ourselves."^^ All

^^ E.g., "Philosophy and Politics," 1954, pp. 023368-369. For another indication thatArendt's views on this matter were far from settled, see an aside in her notes for"Lectures on the History of Political Thought" at the University of California in 1955(Arendt MSS, Box 41, p. 024084), where she says that "ancient philosophy . . . speaksout of the polis-experience" and pays little attention to action because polis-life, unlikeearlier Green experience, did not encourage action. ,

^^ Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, pp. 472-478. i^' Arendt, "On the Nature of Totalitarianism," second MS, Arendt MSS, Box 69, p.

19. ;


the same, she says that because solitude is the necessarycondition for philosophical thinking, "philosophers cannot betrusted with politics."^s Not only does their desire for peace inwhich to think undisturbed give them a bias in favor of stronggovernment; the problem goes deeper than that, for theirwithdrawal into thought leads them to emphasize solitaryexperiences at the expense of those that depend on humanplurality. Since the political phenomenon that most dependson plurality is power, which is generated by many peopleacting together,29 one man on his own must either bepowerless or parasitic upon the concerted power of others, likethe tyrant. One reason for the historic affinity betweenphilosophers and tyrants, however, is that lonely philosophershave discovered "that in the human mind itself is apparentlysomething which can force other people and thereby originatepower,"3o namely, the force of logic. "Logicality, that is merereasoning without regard for facts and experience, is the truevice of solitude."^1

It is important not to oversimplify Arendt's point here, forshe is certainly not equating philosophers with the masssupporters of totalitarianism. The kind of ensnarement to logicthat she is talking about is the "vice of solitude": not itsnecessary accompaniment, but something that is liable tohappen when a man slips from solitude into loneliness.Solitude itself is something that philosophers need not only inorder to be together with themselves, but so that they can be"potentially together with everyone" and ask "the eternalquestions of mankind."^2 The slide from solitude intoloneliness and its tyrannical affinities is, in order words, a kindof occupational hazard of philosophy. Although these manu-

p. 19a.^^ Cf. Arendt, Human Condition, pp. 199-203; H. Arendt, On Violence (London:

Allen Lane, 1970), pp. 41-56.'" Arendt, "Nature of Totalitarianism," p. 22.3' Ibid., p. 17.=2 Ibid., p. 19a.

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script reflections suggest that philosophy has political dangers,they seem to imply that support for tyranny represents adeformation of philosophy rather than its natural conse-quence. Support for this view can be found in the two essayson Karl Jaspers that Arendt published in 1957 and 1958, inwhich, speaking in tones of warm admiifation, she says that, forJaspers, truth emerges only in communication, so that thinking"is a kind of practice between men, not a performance of oneindividual in his self-chosen solitude|."33 Because Jaspers'sthought is so closely linked to the worldl and to other people, itis, Arendt says, "bound to be political."^4

Reading the two Jaspers essays might leave one witb theimpression that Jaspers, "the only philosopher who has everprotested against solitude,"^^ was to Arendt a model of whatphilosophy should be. Like the 1946 article on "ExistenzPhilosophy," however, these essays need to be read with somecaution, remembering the strong personal motives Arendt hadfor expressing loyalty to her teacher and close friend,particularly in pieces written for celebratory occasions. It maybe more significant that qualifications which are to be found inThe Life of the Mind, written after Jaspers's death, had alreadyoccurred to her twenty years previously when she wrote (butdid not publish) a lecture on "Concern with Politics in RecentEuropean Philosophical Thought."36 For although Arendtacknowledges in this lecture from 1954 that Jaspers's stress oncommunication as a central feature of philosophy harks backto "authentic political experiences," recalling the ancient Greeklogos which was both thought and speech, she neverthelessexpresses some doubts about the political relevance of Jaspers's

' ' H. Arendt, "Karl Jaspers: Citizen of the World?" in Men in Dark Times (London-Cape, 1970), p. 86. I

'' H. Arendt, "Karl Jaspers: A Laudatio," Men in Dark Times, p. 79.'^ Arendt, Men in Dark Times, p. 86. ,'^ Delivered to the American Political Science Association in 1954, Arendt MSS, Box

56. Three successive drafts survive in manuscript. R;eferences below are to whatappears to be the fmal version, except where indicated. Cf. Young-Bruehl, HannahArendt, p. 281.


philosophy of "communication." For communication "has itsroots, not in the public-political sphere, but in the personalencounter of I and Thou, and this relationship of puredialogue is closer to the original experience of the thinkingdialogue in solitude than any other. By the same token, itcontains less specifically political experience than almost anyrelationship in our average everyday lives." '^^ Twenty yearslater, in The Life ofthe Mind, she would state categorically, withspecific reference to Jaspers, that although under exceptionalcircumstances the internal dialogue of thought can beextended to include a friend, it cannot provide a paradigm forpolitics because "it can never reach the We, the true plural ofaction,"^^ Consequently (to return to Arendt's 1954 lecture),Jaspers does not succeed in solving "the problem which hasplagued political philosophy almost throughout its history,"which is that philosophy is concerned with man in the singular,politics with men in the plural,^^

The most remarkable feature of this 1954 manuscript is thesurprising (not to say bizarre) suggestion that the philosopherwho may be able to show us the way out of this difficulty is, ofall people, Martin Heidegger. The Nazi fellow traveler whomwe have seen Arendt dismissing in her 1946 essay on "ExistenzPhilosophy" as the philosopher of "egoism," now appears as aguide to thinking about pluralistic politics. By way ofjustification for this unlikely accolade, Arendt points toHeidegger's concept of the "world" (which did indeed formthe basis on which she built her own very different concept),together with the hints of a recognition of human plurality thatHeidegger gives by speaking of human beings as "the mortals"rather than as "man." Since Arendt herself admits that"Heidegger has never articulated the implications of hisposition,"''o it seems likely that she was reading her own

" Arendt, "Concern with Politics," p. 023258.^^ Arendt, Life ofthe Mind, 2: 200.^^ Arendt, "Concern with Politics," p. 023258.'"' Ibid., p. 023259.

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political philosophy into his writings, ; revealing a patheticeagerness to rescue him from the political company he himselfhad chosen. The fact that all this is clearer in the first draft ofthe paper^i and is cut down to "hints''^? in the final version,suggests a triumph of discretion over inclination, which mayalso explain why the paper remained 'unpublished. Arendtconcluded the paper by drawing up an agenda for a newpolitical philosophy which would reformulate the relationbetween philosophy and politics, drawing not only uponHeidegger's concept of "world" and Jaspers's new view of truthbut upon the French existentialists' new stress on action. Aboveall, though, an authentic political philosc^phy would have to bebased on wonder at the realm of human affairs; and Arendt,perhaps beset with doubts about her own qualifications forundertaking the project just described, remarks that philoso-phers, with their commitment to solitude, "are not particularlywell equipped" for this.^^ ,

To sum up so far, then, we can find in ,these early refiectionsfrom the 1950s two alternative vie|ws of the politicalimplications of philosophy, associated! with two pairs ofopposed philosophers, Plato versus Socrates and Heideggerversus Jaspers. When Arendt is focusing on Plato orHeidegger she is inclined to fear that philosophy is intrinsicallysolitary, antipolitical, and sympathetic to coercion, whereaswhen she concentrates on Socrates or Jasjpers she is tempted tobelieve that true philosophy may be communicative and inharmony with free politics. No sooner] does she formulateeither side of the dilemma, however, than she qualifies it andtries to find some way of mediating betwben the two sides thatwill allow her to avoid having to choose lietween them.

" Arendt, "Concern with Politics," first draft (marked a^s such in what appears to beArendt's handwriting), pp. 12-15.

'*^ Arendt, "Concern with Politics," p. 023259. '' Ibid., p. 023260.


Political Thinking

The problem of reconciling philosophy and politics was notsomething in which Arendt took a merely academic interest,but one that was central to her own enterprise of trying to thinkafresh about politics. Another work of political philosophy whichshe planned but never accomplished, to which The Human Con-dition would have been a prolegomenon, was to have been con-cerned not only with a reexamination of traditional conceptsand a systematic examination of acting in the public realm, butalso with "a discussion of the relation between acting and think-ing or between politics and philosophy."44 And it was this thatwas the Achilles' heel of the enterprise. Clearly, the authenticpolitical philosophy at which she aimed could be feasible only ifthere were no insuperable barriers between politics and philos-ophy: only if philosophical thinking, provided it were of theright kind, could in principle live in harmony with politics. Butwhereas she could find some plausible grounds for thinkingthat this was so, both history and her own experience of phi-losophy provided plenty of reasons for drawing the oppositeconclusion. Arendt never wrote the projected book on politics,but one of the events that diverted her, the trial of Adolf Eich-mann, did give added impetus to her refiections on politics andphilosophy, perhaps leaving her by the end of her life nearer towhat might have been a resolution of the problem. The tworelevant trains of thought to which her refiections on the Eich-mann case contributed, according to Arendt's own testimony,concerned on the one hand the relation of politics to truth, andon the other the relation between thinking and morality.^^ Letus look first at her essay on "Truth and Politics."

''' Proposal for book, "Introduction into Politics," Correspondence with RockefellerFoundation, Arendt MSS, Box 20, p. 013872, probably 1959.

''^ Arendt, "Truth and Politics," New Yorker, Feb. 25, 1967, pp. 49-88, reprinted inthe enlarged edition of Between Past and Future (New York: Viking Press, 1968) with anote on its provenance, p. 227. "Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture,"Social Research 33 (Autumn 1971): 417.

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Since this essay arose out of the, controversy over theEichmann trial, it is not surprising that the political implica-tions of telling the truth about matters of historical fact shouldbe Arendt's prime concern. Nevertheless, she connects thiswith the ancient conflict which she had identified in her earliermanuscript writings between the life of j the citizen, who movesamong plural opinions, and the life of the philosopher, whoseeks in solitude for an unchanging truth.^e These philosoph-ical truth-tellers are not only withdrawn from the world ofpolitical opinions, but are constitutionally hostile to it and tothe freedom that it represents: "Truth carries within itself anelement of coercion, and the frequently tyrannical tendenciesso deplorably obvious among professional truth-tellers may becaused less by a failing of character than by the strain ofhabitually living under a kind of compulsion."^^ In contrast tothis solitary submission to the imperatives of philosophicaltruth, Arendt describes a quite differerit kind of thinking thatis specifically political. This is the deliberation of the citizen,moving about among his fellows in the public world, payingattention to their points of view and achieving an "enlargedmentality" comparable to that which Kant had thoughtnecessary for forming aesthetic judgments. "Political thought isrepresentative. I form an opinion by considering a given issuefrom different viewpoints, by making present to my mind thestandpoints of those who are absent. . . ."^s

Although the Eichmann case evidentjly intensified Arendt'sinterest in such matters, the distinction she makes in this essay,between philosophical thinking which is oriented to truth andpolitical thinking which is concerned raiher with opinions andjudgments, in fact echoes much of what, she had said earlier inan essay on Lessing originally published in 1960. On thatoccasion, pointing out that Lessing positively delighted in the

"^ Arendt, "Truth and Politics," p. 235." ' Ibid., p. 239.*^Ibid., p. 241.


diversity of human opinions and rejoiced that mankind hadnot been endowed with access to a single, uniform truth, shehad praised Lessing's thinking for its freedom and humanity.Thinking, she said, was to him one of the ways of movingfreely about among others in the world, and so great had beenhis commitment to freedom that he had refused to be coercedby truth itself, or even by the demands of consistency."^^Instead of pursuing truth, or looking for results from histhinking, he had engaged in unending discourse of a kind thathumanizes the common world through continual talk aboutcommon affairs. Arendt writes of Lessing with great sympathy,and in her reflections on him it is easy to hear echoes of herpraise of Jaspers's open and communicative philosophy, as wellas reminders of the account of Socrates' political thinking thatwe have seen her giving in her lectures on "Philosophy andPolitics." It is important to recognize, therefore, that sheexplicitly distinguishes the kind of thinking Lessing engaged infrom philosophy. "Lessing's thought is not the (Platonic) silentdialogue between me and myself, but an anticipated dialoguewith others."5 In other words, as in her essay on "Truth andPolitics," Arendt appears to distinguish between two kinds ofthinking, one of which is authentically political because it isoriented toward discourse between citizens with different viewsof the common world, whereas the other is authenticallyphilosophical because it is solitary and oriented toward truth.Truth and solitude, it seems, still separate philosophy frompolitics.

There can be no doubt that Arendt's characterization hereof philosophers (as opposed to political thinkers^') as seekersafter absolute, proven truth would have been endorsed by

^ Arendt, "On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts about Lessing," Men in DarkTimes, p. 8.

""Ibid., p. 10.^' Elsewhere Arendt specifically distinguished "philosophers" from political "writ-

ers" who "write out of political experiences." Course at Cornell University, 1965,"Machiavelli to Marx," Arendt MSS, Box 39, pp. 023453, 023468.

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most of the great historical philosophers. One reason for theambiguity of her position, however, is that Arendt had herselfgrown up with a very different conception of the task andpotentialities of philosophy, namely, i Jaspers's vision of aphilosophy without results and without proof. As we havealready seen, she suggested in her lecture on "Concern forPolitics in European Philosophy" that this new and more fluidconception of philosophy might help to bridge the gulfbetween philosophy and politics. Her own commitment to itcan only have been strengthened by the fact that Heidegger inhis later writings adopted a similar position. His magnum opusof the 1920s, Being and Time, had (as Ayendt observed52) beenstartlingly original in content but traditionally systematic inform. By the time Arendt came to write her own Life of theMind, however, it would become possible for her to preface thevolume on Thinking with an epigraph: from Heidegger thatsurpassed even Jaspers in its modesty: ;

Thinking does not bring knowledge asido the sciences.Thinking does not produce usable practical wisdom.Thinking does not solve the riddles of the universe.Thinking does not endow us directly W|ith the power to act.^s

The interest of this for our present purposes is thatalongside the distinction she was developing between philosoph-ical and political thinking, Arendt also had available to heranother distinction, between two conceptions of philosophy:the traditional conception, according to which philosophy aimsat true doctrine, and the modern one, common both to Jaspersand the later Heidegger, according to which it is an endlessmotion that does not produce results. Consequently, in spite ofher numerous references to Plato's quest for absolute truth,

^^ Arendt, "Existenz Philosophy," p. 45; Cf. Life ofthe Mind 1:15.^'Arendt, Life ofthe Mind 1: 1. In "Martin Heidegger at Eighty," p. 296, looking

back with affection and reverence at Heidegger the teacher, Arendt saw him as a"thinker," exploring pathways of thought that did tiot lead to conclusions, andexpressed doubts whether he could be said to have a "philosophy" as such.


Arendt's later works contain increasingly explicit claims thatthis is not something that authentically philosophical thinkingcan be expected to supply. Already in The Human Condition shehad distinguished between "thought," which produces noth-ing, and "the great philosophical systems," which "can hardlybe called the results of pure thinking" because their authorshad to stop thinking in order to build these structures.^^ Inlater writings she spells out the implication that these reifiedsystems misrepresent the authentic thinking of their authors.Since antiquity, she says, "philosophers have exhibited anannoying inclination toward system-building, and we oftenhave trouble disassembling the constructions they have builtwhen trying to uncover what they really thought."^^ Elsewhere,in an essay treating Socrateswho taught no doctrineas theparadigm of the thinker, she suggests that philosophers mayhave composed their treatises for "the many, who wish to seeresults."5^ Her final and most complete treatment of thesubject, the volume on Thinking in The Life of the Mind, claimsunequivocally that authentic thinking is and always has been anendless process, which does not produce results and which is inany case concerned with "meaning" rather than with "truth."The contrary conviction of philosophers from Plato to earlyHeidegger that philosophy, and their own philosophy inparticular, could yield truth, is there diagnosed as a naturalmistake arising out of the confusion of "thinking" with"knowing," particularly with mathematical certainty. "Philoso-phers have always been tempted to accept the criterion oftruthso valid for science and everyday lifeas applicable totheir own rather extraordinary business as well."^^

The complement of Arendt's growing certainty that philo-sophical thinking cannot supply truth was of course herconviction, constantly reiterated in her writings, that our

^'* Arendt, Human Condition, p. 170.^^ Arendt, "Heidegger at Eighty," p. 298.^ Arendt, "Thinking and Moral Considerations," p. 426." Arendt, Life ofthe Mind 1: 62.

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fullest and most reliable knowledge of reality can only begained from the plural perspectives of many persons, movingabout freely in a common public space arid viewing objects andissues from all sides. If, as this seems to imply, the kind ofknowledge at which philosophy has traditionally but mistak-enly aimed is in fact to be found in the very location in whichpolitical action takes place, it might seem that the long riftbetween philosophy and politics could in! principle be healed.^s

Thinking and the World

As we have seen, many of Arendt's coriiments on the relationbetween philosophy and politics contrast the openness andpluralism of political thinking with traditional philosophy'squest for coercive truth. But what if authentically philosophicalthinking is as endless and inconclusive a business as politicaldiscussion itself? What if Plato and the jearly Heidegger weremistaken about the nature of their own iactivity, and Socrates,Jaspers, and the later Heidegger right? Are the barriersbetween philosophy and politics removed, making way for anew harmony? Up to a point, Arendt; does seem to havebelieved that this was so. After all, the revised conception ofphilosophy undermines the ancient dream of the philosopherking who can override political opinions because he has access

58 1E.g., Human Condition, pp. 50, 57. There is a very interesting manuscript inGerman (undated, though evidently subsequent to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956)m which Arendt actually interprets the freedom of the ancient Greek citizens asfreedom to grasp reality in its fullness by moving about between the differentperspectives from which plural men view their common, world ("Einleitung: Der Sinnvon Politik," Arendt MSS, Box 60, pp. 010, 13). At this point in Arendt's thought,political action and the philosophical search for truth | seem very close together. Anotable feature of this manuscript is that echoes of Heidegger are particularly audiblein it: Arendt's reflections sound like an amended and "politicized" version ofHeidegger's claim that freedom for human beings means allowing truth to appear inthe "open region" constituted by human "Dasein." (M. Heidegger, "On the Essence ofTruth," Basic Writings, ed. D.F. Krell [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 19781 p127). ^


to the absolute truth. As Arendt had remarked in 1954 in herlecture on "Concern with Politics in Recent EuropeanPhilosophical Thought," one of the conditions for a renewal ofpolitical philosophy was precisely that philosophers should nolonger claim any special wisdom in political affairs.^^ Unfortu-nately, however, this does not mean that all the barriers aredown, and that there is no longer any necessary differencebetween authentic philosophy and the kind of free politicalthinking that Arendt attributed to Lessing. For although in herlater writings Arendt detached philosophy unambiguouslyfrom the quest for truth, she insisted ever more strongly on theother obstacle that divides philosophy from politics, namely, itssolitariness: the fact, as she sees it, that philosophy demands awithdrawal of the thinker from the world.^^ In The Life of theMind Arendt reaffirmed what she had been saying throughouther work: that thinking is a dialogue between me and myselfthat can take place only in solitude, away from public affairs.Political philosophy, therefore, seems still to be a self-contradictory enterprise: for how is the political philosopher tobe sufficiently withdrawn to be able to practice philosophy, andyet sufficiently attuned to the public world to understand andappreciate public action?

In another of the essays sparked off by the Eichmann affair,a brilliant meditation on "Thinking and Moral Consider-ations,"^' Arendt tried out an ingenious way of bridging thisgulf between the thinker and the world. Reflecting there uponthe apparent connection between Eichmann's evil deeds andhis sheer thoughtlessness, she suggested that there may after allbe some practical usefulness in thinking, and that the thinker'swithdrawal from the world may in the end feed back intoaction. For although the inner dialogue of thought, practicedparadigmatically by Socrates, cannot deliver an authoritative

^^ "Concern with Politics," p. 02325 L^ Cf., e.g., Lectures on "Philosophy and Politics: What Is Political Philosophy?"

1969, pp. 024429; 024445-6."' 1971. See note 45 above.

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answer, or provide instructions on what one ought to do, itdoes have certain implications, mainly of a negative kind, thatcan make a difference in time of crisis. Fbr one thing, the habitof being alone with oneself in the internal dialogue of thinkingactivates not only consciousness but conscience, setting limits towhat one can do, simply because one will have to live withoneself afterward in full consciousness of one's deeds. Again,thinking questions all certainties, making it impossible for thethinker to drift with the crowd and adbpt generally acceptedopinions without scrutiny. Most positively (though Arendt didnot enlarge upon the suggestion in i this essay), thinkingliberates "the faculty of judgment . . .' the most political ofman's mental abilities." The ability to judge what is right orwrong may be absolutely vital "in the rare moments when thechips are down."^^ I

The implication of these reflections 'appears to be that ifEichmann had been capable of reflectiye thinking, he couldnever have become a Nazi; the life of the mind would haveimmunized him against it. For a thinker trying to connectphilosophy and politics, this must haye been a comfortingconclusion, but it was scarcely one in which Arendt could rest.For the obvious riposte was that, in that fnoment in 1933 whenthe chips were down, thinking of the most profound kind didnot apparently do anything to save Heidegger from support-ing Nazism, at any rate for a time. Arendt did not commentdirectly upon this discrepancy, but it is siirely revealing that inanother article published in the same year as "Thinking andMoral Considerations," in celebration of Heidegger's eightiethbirthday, she offered a quite different account of the practicalimplications that follow from the thinkjer's withdrawal fromthe world. Stressing once again the need:for that withdrawal ifthinking is to be possible, she suggests there that whereas lesserthinkers withdraw into the solitude of thought from time totime, Heidegger is one of the few who has actually taken up

*^ "Thinking and Moral Considerations," p. 446.


"residence" in the "abode" of thinking. And in contrast to herargument in "Thinking and Moral Considerations" thatsolitary thinking may liberate sound political judgment, in theHeidegger essay she suggests that it is more likely to weakenthe thinker's common sense and to incapacitate him for life inthe world. Thales, gazing at the stars, fell into a well and waslaughed at for his pains; Plato embarked upon the preposter-ous enterprise of trying to turn a tyrant into a philosopherking; and Heidegger too entirely misjudged the situation in theworld when he emerged briefly from his reflections to givecountenance to Hitler.^^

Socrates or Heidegger? Which is the better model for thepolitical implications of philosophical thought? The fact thatthese two essays date from the same year, 1971, revealssomething of the internal dialogue still going on withinArendt's mind concerning the relations between philosophyand politics. It is therefore particularly interesting to read theLectures on Kant's Political Philosophy that date from the sameperiod, because Arendt believed that she could find in Kantone unquestionably great philosopher who could be said to bein harmony with free politics, both in the practical sense ofsympathizing with republics rather than with tyrants, and inthe theoretical sense of having a less solitary and more politicalconception of what was involved in philosophy itself. Kantheld, according to Arendt, that "company is indispensable forthe thinker,"64 and that although thinking itself can be doneonly in solitude, it cannot be done effectively without thatfreedom to communicate and to exchange one's thoughts inpublic which enables one to enlarge one's mind by incorporat-ing the insights of others.^^ Kant's critical thinking dependsupon "public use of one's reason,"^^ and feeds back into public

^^ Arendt, "Heidegger at Eighty," pp. 301-303.^* H. Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, ed. R. Beiner (Chicago: tJniversity

of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 10.^^ Ibid., pp. 40, 42.'^^ Ibid., p. 39.

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life in its turn by questioning authorities and accepted assump-tions^''' and making possible impartial judgments. Arendt's ac-count of Kant is strongly reminiscent of hdr picture of that otherfree thinker, his contemporary, Lessing, with one very importantdifference: Lessing, whose thought was s6 thoroughly political,was not a philosopher, but no one could possibly deny that titleto Kant. We might therefore be tempted to, suppose that, after allher deliberations about the relations between politics and phi-losophy, Arendt had at last found them reconciled in Kant, andtaken him as her model of the truly political philosopher.

Alas, as usually happens with Arendt, the case is not so sim-ple. For one thing, her apparent solution is reached only by wayof an interpretation of Kant that is highly selective, not to sayperverse. In her lectures she purports toifmd in the Critique ofJudgment Kant's "unwritten political philosophy," airily dismiss-ing the fact that he had written his own,68Jas well as choosing toignore for the moment those rigidly dogmatic features of hismoral philosophy that she had elsewhere [Stigmatized as "inhu-man."^s Furthermore, even if she could j-einterpret Kant in away that made possible a reconciliation between philosophy andpolitics, this does nothing to alter the antipolitical stance of somany of the other philosophers whom she admired, Plato,Spinoza, Nietzsche, Heidegger. In The Life of the Mind she con-fronted the problem again, drawing attention not only to thehabitual withdrawal of the thinker^ but also to the lack ofsympathy with freedom shown by almos't all philosophers. Itseems likely that she intended in her unwritten third volume totackle her persistent dilemma once agairi, and perhaps to ad-umbrate a modus vivendi between philosophy and politics, basedon a distinction between two different kinlds of reflective think-ing: on the one hand purely philosophical thought, which is

^'' Ibid., p. 38. ''^^ Ibid., p. 19. Cf. P. Riley, "Hannah Arendt on Kant^Truth and Politics," Political

Studies 35 (1987): 379-392. ''^^ Arendt, Men in Dark Times, p. 27. Arendt was here iontrasting Kant with Lessing. Arendt, Life of the Mind, 1: 75, 197. '


solitary and unpolitical, and on the other hand judging, whichis intrinsically linked to the world.

Speculating about the intended contents of Judging, the un-written third volume of The Life ofthe Mind, is a rash undertak-ing. Nevertheless, both Mary McCarthy, who edited the manu-script after Arendt's death, and Ronald Beiner, who edited theLectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, have argued plausibly thatthe Kant lectures would have formed the basis for the volume.^'If so, it might well have been concerned among other things todescribe a form of reflective thinking distinguished from philos-ophy by drawing its impetus from public life and feeding backinto the world. It is certainly suggestive that, as Beiner pointsout, Arendt's interest in the faculty of judgment changed overtime. After portraying it in her earlier work as a part of practicalpolitical action, she included it in her final book as part ofthe lifeof the mind. "The more she reflected on the faculty of judg-ment, the more inclined she was to regard it as the prerogativeof the solitary (though public-spirited) contemplator as opposedto the actor."''^ j ^ the light of what we have seen of her long-continued reflections on the tension between philosophy andpolitics, it may be that one of the motives behind her shift ofemphasis was the search for a form of reflection that was notintrinsically hostile to politics, as philosophy seemed to be. If thiswas indeed the reason, however, it would give the story a furtherironic twist, for this new bridge from philosophy to politics wouldhave been built at the cost of shifting her own focus from actionto thought. As Ronald Beiner says, "Judgment is . . . caught inthe tension between the vita activa and the vita contemplativa (adualism that pervades Arendt's entire work)."^^

If we attempt now to sum up Arendt's persistent reflectionson philosophy and politics, can we say that she made anyprogress? Did any fragments of Penelope's web survive the

" M. McCarthy, "Editor's Postface," in Arendt, Life of the Mind 1; R. Beiner,"Interpretive Essay," in Arendt, Kant's Political Philosophy.

'^ Arendt, Kant's Political Philosophy, p. 92.''^ Ibid., p. 140.

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continual unraveling that we have seen her engaged in? Some,we must answer, but with a great many loose ends. As we haveseen, Arendt reflected throughout the 1950s on two alternativepictures of the relations between philosophy and politics. Thefirst, associated with Plato and the Heidegger of Being and Timeand Nazi fellow-traveling, suggested thkt philosophical excel-lence could be bought only at the cost of tyrannical sympathiesin politics, because the philosopher's solitude and his quest fortruth made him hostile to plurality and freedom. The second,associated with Socrates and Jaspers, suggested that, on thecontrary, authentic philosophy is comniunicative and not ori-ented toward exclusive truth, so that the historical tensions be-tween philosophers and free politics have been merely contin-gent. In the course of her refiections,| and greatly aided byHeidegger's renunciation of philosophy's claim to provide an-swers, Arendt moved part of the way toward the second posi-tion, removing one of the barriers between philosophy andpolitics by affirming that (contrary to the aspirations of most ofthe great philosophers) philosophy does not establish or seekfor truth. The other obstacle, solitude, was harder to shift.When she thought of Socrates, philosophical solitude seemed toprovide a safeguard against moral and political errors, but whenshe thought of Heidegger Arendt's confidence evaporated. Herrefiections on Kant suggest that if she had been able to finishThe Life of the Mind, she would have concluded that philosoph-ical thinking has two sides to it and is a 'mixed blessing from apolitical point of view, in that althougli solitary thinking canfacihtate judging, which is politically beneficial, it is just as likelyto deprive the thinker of all common sense in political affairs.The specter of Heidegger the Nazi haunts Arendt's refiections,forcing her again and again to tear up |her attempted resolu-tions and to start again. i

I

IInternal Dialogue \

Hannah Arendt was herself a philosopher turned citizenand political thinker. Let us therefore ehd our attempt to trace


her thought-train about the relation between philosophy andpolitics by turning her reflections back upon her own activity.To what extent was she able to overcome in practice theobstacles to authentic political philosophy with which we haveseen her wrestling in theory?

Arendt was herself free from many of the occupational vicesshe attributes to philosophers. Her thought betrays no fond-ness for tyranny, no lack of sympathy with freedom and plu-rality, no craving for absolute truth or iron consistency. Neithercan she be accused of the sheer unworldliness to which sheattributed Heidegger's ill-fated foray into politics. Watching theevents of her time with intense interest, she sought always to"think what we are doing,"''^ JQ "reconcile ourselves to reality,"''^and to respond directly to political experience.^^ Nevertheless,we would do well when reading her work to bear in mind herreflections upon the difflculties that beset political philosophy,and we would be wise in particular not to forget her reiteratedassertion that thinking is a solitary business. Clearly, this wastrue not only for Plato or Heidegger but (in spite of her in-tensely articulate marriage and many friendships) for Arendtherself,'^ and the solitude of the thinker, while mute in itself,marks her writings in a number of different ways. One suchrevealing feature of her work is its curious self-sufflciency. Forall her deference to Jaspers's emphasis on communication, de-spite her praise of Kant's "enlarged mentality," in striking con-trast to Lessing's public disputation, she herself in her pub-lished works did not in general engage in dialogue with anyoneexcept herself. ^ ^ One of the reasons why her books seem so

'* Arendt, Human Condition, p. 5." H. Arendt, "Understanding and Politics," Partisan Review 20 (1953); 377.'^ "Events, past and present . . . are the true, the only reliable teachers of political

' scientists" ("Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution," included as an epilogue in thesecond edition of Origins of Totalitarianism [London: Allen & LInwin, 1958], p. 482). Cf.Between Past and Future, p. 14.

" On Arendt's habit of retreating into intellectual trances, see M. McCarthy, "SayingCoodbye to Hannah," New York Review of Books, Jan. 22, 1976, p. 10.

'^ And sometimes, implicitly, with Heidegger. Cf L.P. and S.K. Hinchman, "In

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exotically original to her readers is precisely that they pay noattention whatever to the preoccupations of existing politicaland academic communities.'^^ When she interprets other think-ers, her interpretations are notoriously I idiosyncratic,^o oftenfinding in the thinker concerned fascinating things which hehimself never intended to say. Similarly; although her reflec-tions often arise from something that has 'happened in the pub-lic world, they rapidly leave the event itself, going off on fur-ther explorations of the byways of Arendt's own spaciousintellectual realm. She herself was under no illusions about this.A perhaps rather rueful footnote to thei essay on "Truth andPolitics" informs us that the reflections it contains arose fromthe Eichmann controversy, "but may . . . serve as an example ofwhat happens to a highly topical subject when it is drawn intothat gap between past and future which is perhaps the properhabitat of all reflections."^i Reading her is therefore less likereceiving a contribution to public debate than like eavesdrop-ping on her own internal dialogue.

The consequence is that although Arendt managed to avoidmany of the occupational defects of the political philosopher,she could not entirely evade the dangers; of solitary reflection.One of these, from which her work contlinues to suffer, is thedanger of being misunderstood. When she wrote aboutcontroversial issues such as poverty, race; the place of moralityin politics, or the activities of the Jews, lier readers supposed,naturally enough, that she was taking sides in current debates,and did not realize that in most cases she was simply followingup some aspect of her own reflections, trying to make sense ofthe world in her own terms. And if beingimisunderstood is one

Heidegger's Shadow: Hannah Arendt's Phenomenological Humanism," Review ofPolitics 46 (Apri\ 1984): 183-211. '

' Sheldon Wolin, reviewing The Life ofthe Mind, cominented on Arendt's "majesticindifference toward the existing literature that surj-ounds her subject matter"("Stopping to Think," New York Review of Books, Oct. 26,' 1978, p. 16).

^^ Cf. P. Stern and J. Yarbrough, "Hannah Arendt," Amencan Scholar 47 (1978): 376.*' Arendt, "Truth and Politics," p. 227.


danger, misunderstanding is, of course, another. Her practiceof trying to understand events by drawing them into her ownmental space and pondering them there produced manyfascinating insights, but carried the risk that her ownimaginative constructions in their very richness and originalitymight get between her and the reality about which she wastrying to think. Just as she continually read her own views intothinkers she was trying to interpret, so she also read intohistory and politics the results of her own efforts to make senseof the world. In spite of her distrust of grand theories of thekind produced by Hegel and Marx, her own accounts oftotalitarianism and revolution are vivid and dramatic imagina-tive constructions, offensive to sober historians who are blessedwith less power of reflection.

For all that, Hannah Arendt leaves us with two conundrumsto ponder. In the first place, is there indeed a gulf between thesingle vision of the philosopher and the inherent plurality ofpolitics, and to the extent that this is so, what are itsimplications for political philosophy?^^ And secondly, how is itthat eavesdropping on the private meditations of these solitarythinkers enables us to learn something about the world? Forwhatever the inconclusiveness of Arendt's reflections, we are,surely, the wiser for having shared them.

^^ Cf. M. Canovan, "Arendt, Rousseau and Human Plurality in Polincs," Journal ofPolitics 45 (1983): 286-302. The problems Arendt raises connect with those raised byRichard Rorty, for instance in "The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy," in M.Peterson and K. Vaughan, eds., The Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom: 200 Years After(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 257-282.

*I am indebted to the British Academy for awards which enabled me to consultArendt's manuscripts, preserved in the Library of Congress in Washington. Papers inthis collection are referred to below as Arendt MSS, with references to the Library'slong page numbers where these have been stamped on the manuscripts, and otherwiseto Arendt's own page numbers. I am also grateful to Jerome Kohn for his commentson an earlier draft of this paper.

socrates or heidegger? hannah arendt`s reflections on philosophy and politics

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