434
GEORGE
LICHTHEIM
of her argument, which
e~chews
chronology and wanders back and forth
between the Greek concept of the good life (democracy
=
community)
and the modern attempt to fashion a rule ·of law for people not held
together by ties of consanguinity or physical cohabitation in an area
small enough for all active citizens to assemble in the market-place.
There is, after all, little new
to
be said about the problematic nature
of Rousseauist (or, for that matter, Jeffersonian) notions about politics.
But why are we told so little about the religious background? The
fundamental fact about the American Revolution surely is that it
occurred in a Protestant country with an Anglo-Saxon tradition of
limited self-government. Arendt makes much of the contrast between
the misery of the French peasant and the relative prosperity of the
American farmer; but this is merely the reverse side of the medal.
No Protestant population could ever have been beaten down to the
French (or Spanish, or Latin American) level. Even the serfs of
Prussia were not reduced to quite the existence of the peasant helotry
in neighboring Catholic Poland. In the 19th century the landless
English farm laborer had a pretty thin time, but it was the Irish
peasantry that actually starved
en masse.
These historic circumstances
are not irrelevant to Miss Arendt's work, just as it is not immaterial
to the theme of her concluding chapter that in present-day Europe
the two largest Communist parties are those of France and Italy (or
for that matter that Hitierism arose in Catholic Austria and Bavaria,
not in Lutheran Prussia). There are of course sound practical reasons
for keeping quiet about this explosive topic, notably in the United
States; but a political philosopher who wields so ruthless a scalpel
in dissecting the smallest logical flaw in the writings of Rousseau
or the speeches of Robespierre might have been expected to cast a
little light on so large and important a theme. The modern age-if
one is going to talk in these terms-begins with the Reformation. Once
Northern and Southern Europe had gone their separate ways (Germany
as usual was partitioned), all the rest followed, at any rate if one
takes the traditional view that the Dutch Rebellion and the English
Civil War set the stage for the American Revolution. Is the traditional
view wrong?
If
not, why is there no mention of Holland-the cradle of
the modern world? And why the desperate attempt (p. 36) to persuade
the reader that the English Revolution of 1640-60 was not a "real"
revolution, because, if you please, the participants at first thought they
were restoring the ancient order? What else did the French of 1789 think?
Practically speaking, all this is irrelevant. The French Revolution
needs no defense, least of all in an age that has witnessed the German
