UNDERSTANDING AND POLITICS
391
In the light of these reflections, our endeavoring to understand
something which has ruined our categories of thought and our stand–
ards of judgment appears less frightening. Even though we have
lost yardsticks by which to measure, and rules under which to sub–
sume the particular, a being whose essence is beginning may have
enough of origin within himself to understand without preconceived
categories and to judge without the set of customary rules which
is
morality.
If
the essence of all, and in particular of political, action
is to make a new beginning, then understanding becomes the other
side of action, namely that form of cognition,
in
distinction from
many others, by which acting men (and not men who are engaged
in contemplating some progressive or doomed course of history)
eventually can come to terms with what irrevocably happened and be
reconciled with what unavoidably exists.
As such, understanding is a strange enterprise. In the end, it
may do no more than articulate and confirm what preliminary under–
standing, which always consciously or unconsciously is directly en–
gaged in action, sensed to begin with. It will not shy away from this
circle but on the contrary be aware that any other results would be
so far removed from action, of which it is only the other side, that
they could not possibly be true. Nor will it in the process itself avoid
the circle which the logicians call "vicious" and may in this respect
even somewhat resemble philosophy whose great thoughts always
tum around in circles, engaging the human mind in nothing less
than an interminable dialogue between itself and the essence of
everything that is.
In this sense, the old prayer which King Solomon, who cer–
tainly knew something of political action, addressed to God for the
gift of an "understanding heart" as the greatest gift a man could
receive and desire, might still hold for us.
As
far removed from
sentimentality as it is from paperwork, the human heart
is
the only
thing in the world that will take upon itself the burden which the
divine gift of action, of being a beginning and therefore being able
to make a beginning, has placed upon us. Solomon prayed for this
particular gift because he was a King and knew that only an "under–
standing heart," and not mere reflection nor mere feeling, makes it
bearable for us to live with other people, strangers forever, in the
same world, and makes it possible for them to bear with us.
