UNDERSTANDING AND POLITICS
379
he is dead. (This is the truth of the ancient
nemo ante mortem beatus
esse dici potest.)
For mortals, the final and eternal begins only after
death.
The most obvious escape from this predicament is the equation
of totalitarian government with some well-known evil of the past–
such as aggressiveness, tyranny, conspiracy, etc. Here, it seems, we
are on solid ground; for together with its evils, we think we have
inherited the wisdom of the past to guide us through them. But the
trouble with the wisdom of the past is that it dies, so to speak, on our
hands as soon as we try to apply it honestly to the central political
experiences of our own time. Everything we know of totalitarianism
demonstrates a horrible originality which no far-fetched historical
parallels can alleviate. We can escape from its impact only if we
decide not to focus our attention on its very nature, but to let it
run away into the interminable connections and similarities which
certain tenets of totalitarian doctrine necessarily show with familiar
theories of occidental thought. Such similarities are inescapable. ' In
the realm of pure theory .and isolated concepts there can be nothing
new under the sun; but such similarities disappear completely as soon
as one neglects theoretical formulations and concentrates on their
practical application. The originality of totalitarianism is horrible, not
because some new "idea" came into the world, but because its very
actions constitute a break with all our traditions; they have clearly
exploded our categories of political thought and our standards for
moral judgment.
Unaerstanding, while it cannot be expected to provide results
which are specifically helpful or inspiring in the fight against total–
itarianism, must accompany this fight if it is to be more than a mere
fight for survival. Insofar as totalitarian movements have sprung up
in the non-totalitarian world (crystallizing elements found in that
world, for totalitarian governments have not been imported from the
moon), the process of understanding
is
clearly, and perhaps primarily,
also a process of self-understanding. For while we merely know, but
do not yet understand, what we are fighting against, we know and
understand even less what we are fighting for. And the resignation.
so characteristic of Europe during the last war and so precisely formu–
lated by an English poet who said that "we who lived by noble
dreams/defend the bad against the worse," will no longer suffice. In
