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GEORGE LICHTHEIM
cover metaphysical referents for this circumstance, since on any inter–
pretation of what either history or political science is about, such
referents do not account for politically relevant happenings in the
short run. To take a currently topical example: the recent tentative
rapprochement between the Vatican and the Kremlin cannot sensibly be
discussed in terms of Thomist and Leninist philosophy, although it is
a fact that both have a common source in Aristotle, and that Lenin's
writings on the subject sit better with some contemporary Catholics
than with most Western liberals. The two levels are simply not closely .
enough related to permit any meaningful inference to be drawn from
such evidence.
I have purposely applied this seemingly far-fetched comparison
because Hannah Arendt, throughout her writings and more than ever in
her latest offering, shows an inclination to discuss political themes
in philosophical terms, and vice versa, until the distinction between
metaphysics and politics is lost or dimmed in a twilight zone where
it no longer seems to matter whether we are dealing with actual events,
contemporary beliefs about these events, or subsequent reflections upon
them by thinkers motivated by convictions and interests quite foreign
to the participants. At some stage a writer has to decide whether the
discussion is to be about the political realm ordinarily so called, or
about the most general principles regulating human behavior.
It
is
no use asserting that this distinction was overcome once and for all
by Aristotle and his successors. (Who are they? Do they include the
medieval Aristotelians who no longer had a
polis
to reflect upon?)
Since the 17th century (or according to some people, since Machiavelli)
the classical tradition has ceased to be binding upon political thinkers.
Those who do not regard political philosophy as a body of truth re–
vealed once and for all to the Greeks, and embellished since then
only in unimportant respects, have tended to infer from their own
reading of history that "revolutions" in human society (e.g., the
industrial revolution ) are something quite different from the kind
of cyclical movement with which the ancients were familiar. The
decline of the city-state is itself not explicable on the assumptions
entertained by Aristotle or any other classical thinker-not surprisingly,
since they lacked the necessary perspective.
If
there are permanent
principles to be derived from their writings, they can only bear upon
certain very general notions, for example, the rule of law. To suppose, as
Miss Arendt does, that "the phenomenon of revolution" can be meaning–
fully discussed in supra-historical terms such as "violence," or related
to mythical events ("Cain slew Abel and Romulus slew Remus"),
