HANS JONAS
13
and catastrophe, and forever supported by her grounding in classical thought.
America taught her a way beyond the hardened alternatives of left and
right from which she had escaped; and the idea of the Republic, as the realistic
chance for freedom, remained dear to her even in its darkening days.
No immigrant has better repaid her debt . Here is not the place to
evaluate Hannah Arendt's work. But this much I can say : From "The
Origins of Totalitarianism" on, with which she broke upon the literary
scene , she has forced up the level of discourse in political theory and
imposed her standards of conceptualization on the intellectual community .
Even disagreement, contradiction itself, must follow her to the heights she has
set and must {Deet her there. And these heights are sustained by depth-that
depth of human insight and feeling which gave substance to everything
she said and saved it from mere brilliance . She did not strive for
originality; she just was original. Things looked different after she ·had
looked at them. Thinking was her passion, and thinking with her was
a moral activity. She was intensely moral, but completely unmoralistic.
Whatever she had to say was important, often provocative, sometimes wrong,
but never trivial ; never negligible , never to be forgotten again. Even her
errors were more worthwhile than the verities ofmany lesser minds . She liked,
of course, to be right, and on occasion could be quite formidably
contentious; but she did not believe, as she confided to me, that "truth"
is to be had for us these days . She believed, instead, in the incessant,
always temporary trying for that face of it which the present condition happens
to turn toward us . Thinking it through is its own reward, for we will
be more understanding after than we were before . We will have more light,
and still not have "the truth ." But when every proposition is melted down
again in the further process of thought , there still remains this: she has
set a style of inquiry and debate which will ensure that no cheap formula
for the human predicament will pass muster, so long as her example is
remembered .
But as she herself cherished friendship above all , let me end by
speaking of her as a friend. Last year, Hannah, we celebrated our fifty
years, reminiscing on how it began, in Bultmann's New Testament seminar
where we two were the only Jews; how it grew through the years,
weathering long separations in space and stormy clashes of opinion-always
sure in the one shared feeling of what matters and what not, what truly
counts , what to honor and what to despise . There are so many here who can
sing your praises as a friend-who can testify that any personal bond
you once entered in earnest was for life .
You
kept faith, you were
always there . We all are the poorer without you . The world has become
colder without your warmth .
You
left us too early . We shall try to keep faith
with you .
Hans Jonas
