Hannah Arendt
UNDERSTANDING AND POLITICS
Es ist schwer, die Wahrheit zu sagen,
denn es gibt zwar nur eine; aber sie
ist
lebendig und hat daher ein lebendig
wechselndes Gesicht.-FRANZ
KAFKA
Many people say that one cannot fight totalitarianism
without understanding it. Fortunately this is not true;
if
it were our
case would be
hopel~.
Understanding, as distinguished from correct
jnformation and scientific knowledge, is a complicated process which
never produces unequivocal results. It is an unending activity by
which, in constant change and variation, we come to tenus with,
reconcile ourselves to reality, that is, try to be at home in the world.
The fact that reconciliation is inherent in understanding has
given rise to the popular misrepresentation
tout comprendre c'est tout
pardonner.
Yet, forgiving has so little to do with understanding that
it is neither its condition nor its consequence. Forgiving (certainly
~>ne
of the greatest human capacities and perhaps the boldest of
human actions insofar as it tries the seemingly impossible, to undo
what has been done, and succeeds in making a new beginning where
everything seemed to have come to an end) is a single action and
culminates
in
a single act. Understanding is unending and therefore
cannot produce end-results;
it
is the specifically human way of being
alive, for every single person needs to be reconciled to a world into
which he was born a stranger and in which, to the extent of
his
dis–
tinct uniqueness, he always remains a stranger. Understanding
~
gins
with birth and ends with death. To the extent that the rise of
totalitarian governments is the central event of our world, to under–
stand totalitarianism is not to condone anything, but to reconcile our–
selves
to
a world in which these things are possible at all.
