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is to obliterate several centuries of thought, starting with Vico if not
Machiavelli. This is not conservative empiricism but mere dogmatism–
as doctrinaire as anything produced by the most extreme rationalists.
Once the discussion is brought down from the metaphysical heaven
to the profane earth on which ordinary mortals dwell, the question
that puzzles Arendt-why the "disastrous" French Revolution has been
so much more influential than the beneficial American one--finds a
ready answer, and this quite irrespective of a circumstance to which
she herself draws attention: namely that, over much of Europe,
absolutism had established a pattern which positively cried out for
"totalitarian" violence. Setting this familiar fact aside, the French
Revolution was more
radical
than the American in the fundamental sense
of the term: it went closer to the roots. For example, it did away
with slavery, while the American Revolution confirmed it (thereby con–
demning a later generation of Americans to the ordeal of Civil War).
It also (for a time) did away with theology, but then even quite con–
servative Protestants have acknowledged that this was simply the
penalty visited upon the Catholic Church for its antecedent attempt
to stamp out all other forms of thought, including rival brands of
Christianity. In short, the French Revolution was more "total" because
the
ancien regime
was more coherent (and more despotic) than its
Anglo-American counterpart.
These considerations are not irrelevant to the theme of a philo–
sophical essay which sets out to interpret the phenomenon of revolution
in the post-medieval age, with a mimimum of historical reference and
a maximum of emphasis on the thought processes of those concerned
(notably the professional ideologists among them). Since Miss Arendt
is, to put it mildly, no historian, it is no great matter that the events
themselves remain in the background, or that she occasionally becomes
lost in unfamiliar territory, as for example, when she suggests that the
Levellers whom Cromwell put down were radical democrats (they
were nothing of the sort). So far as France is concerned, it may
seem unkind
to
suggest that the Revolution (as distinct from what
some people at the time said and wrote about it) is a closed book to
her, but certainly the reader of Georges Lefebvre's great work on the
subject will have difficulty relating his account of what actually
occurred in France during those years to Miss Arendt's interpretation
of what presumably went on in the minds of the participants-or at
least of the more prominent and literate among them who had the means
for recording their illusions and disappointments in writing. All this
i~
relatively unimportant, as is the somewhat confused presentation
