Hannah Arendt
TRADITION AND THE MODERN AGE *
Our tradition of political thought has its definite begin–
ning in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. I believe it came to a
no less definite end in the theories of Karl Marx. The beginning was
made when in
The Republic,
in the allegory of the cave, Plato de–
scribed the sphere of human affairs-all that belongs to the living
together of men in a common world-in terms of darkness, confusion,
and deception which those aspiring to true being must turn away
from and abandon if they want to discover the clear sky of eternal
ideas. The end came with Marx's declaration that philosophy and
its truth are not located outside the affairs of men and their common
world but precisely in them, and can be "realized" only in the
sphere of living-together, which he called Society, through the emer–
gence of "socialized men"
(vergesellschaftete M enschen).
Political
philosophy necessarily implies the attitude of the philosopher toward
politics; its tradition began with the philosopher turning away from
politics and then returning in order to impose his standards on hu–
man affairs. The end came when a philosopher turned away from
philosophy so as to "realize" it in politics. This was Marx's attempt,
expressed, first, in his decision (in itself philosophical) to abjure
philosophy, and, secondly, in his intention to "change the world" and
thereby the philosophizing minds, the "consciousness" of men.
The beginning and the end of the tradition have this in com–
mon: that the elementary problems of politics never come as clearly
to light in their immediate and simple urgency as when they are
first formulated and when they receive their final challenge. The
beginning, in Jacob Burckhardt's words, is like a "fundamental
*
This essay is drawn from a series of lectures delivered under the auspices of
the Christian Gauss Seminars in Criticism at Princeton University.
