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acceptance of an award itself involved an obliga ti on to a po litical act o f
courage. Her speech , with its stress on th e need LO step away from the
arrogance o f men who cla im the exclusive possession of transcendent
truth in politics must be understood in terms of her sense of obli ga ti on
to th a t audi ence. Her audi ence had , after a ll , onl y recentl y experienced
and demonstra ted the rheLOri c and acti on of a "new order," whose
criteri a and values were the sole, exclusive " truth ," permilling of no
countercl a ims or a rguments o f refuta ti on. No wonder Arendt held
Lessing's ultima te hesita ti on u p to tha t audi ence as a model of
humani sm . We see here Arendt's method, her own actua lizat ion of
speech as po liti cal action , of her theory as
praxis.
J ay's critique of Arendt 's readin g of Ma rx di srega rds Arendt 's
consisten t use and fo r some, misu se, of texts. Her writings were never
ex igeti cal. They were no t interpreta ti ons of key theori sts. Ra ther,
Arendt di scussed histori cal questi ons of theoreti cal signifi cance, such
as autho rity, edu ca ti on , culture, domin a ti on , freedom , violence and the
like. Her use of intell ectua l fi gures of the pas t was twofold. First, as in
th e case of Marx (and Galil eo, Machi avelli and Pl a to as we ll ), she di d
no t a lways di stingui sh between th eir intenti ons and texts and the
subsequent hi stori cal perception of those intenti ons and texts. Second ,
she used writin gs and arguments from th e intell ectua l traditi on as
items o f las ting signifi cance whi ch could be reinterpreted by differing
hisLOri cal generations with an eye LOward political acti on and tho ught
w ithin their existing contempo ra ry wo rld. Arendt's concern with the
impact o f storytelling, with the evoluti on o f traditi on throu gh the
active remembrance of deeds, with myth, with an Old T estament-like
recogniti on of creati on through sp eech , led her LO use pas t speech and
pas t writers as the grounds fo r h er own new intell ectua l crea ti on s.
Consequentl y, her sea rch was no t usua ll y fo r a
correct
interpreta ti o n o f
Ari stotl e, fo r exampl e, but rather a sugges ti ve, defensibl e on e, one
which , no maller how unusual, could be supported by texts.
In
the case of Marx, her concern was no t Marx himself but the
subsequ ent intell ectual si gnifi cance and understandin g of Marx . T he
Arendti an view of Marx, whi ch Jay correctl y identifi es as no t accu–
ra tely Marx , smacks perh aps of an unsubtl e and unsympa th eti c reduc–
ti on of Ma rx . Yet that was certa inl y a common and important percep–
ti on of Marx in la te nineteenth -century and earl y twenti eth- century
tho ught and politics. As Arendt argued in her essay "Traditio n a nd th e
Modern Age," the " in verting" of the intell ectua l and politi cal tr ad ition
by Marx , Ni etzsche, and Ki erkegaard was a key hi sto ri ca l fact.
J ay canno t den y th at the Marx Arendt described was indeed the
Marx for seri ous po liti ca l groups and in tell ectua ls in Arendt 's lifetime
