380
PARTISAN REVIEW
Gentil es to gain worldl y legitimacy, she saw her as fa iling mi era bl y in
her effort
to
absorb her environment 's va lues. Arend t was interes ted in
Rahel as a poignant and signifi cant self-con scio us fa ilure in the
a ttempt to avo id the Jewish ques ti on th rough appa rent ass imil a ti on
and di sregard of facts. Jay mi sreads Arendt 's Rahel, and therefore
Arendt. The corpus of Arendt 's work tes tifi es to her pass iona te ethi cal
and interi or intell ectual res istance
to
fascism or any conveni ent facil e
surrounding ideologies.
Arendt, unlike Jay 's " latter-day po liti cal existenti ali st," was com–
mitted
to
a means-end continuum th rough her encounter with Kan t.
Her commitment to freedom and truth in po liti cal action was tempered
onl y by a Lessing-like fear of intolerance in the name of " truth "; a fear
tha t power and the hubri s of moral infa llibility can lead to d isastro us
politi cal o ppress ion . Like Augustin e and Ki erkegaa rd, Arend t was
conscio us of the ultima te limita ti ons on human intell ect and judg–
ment. To call that " rela tivi sm " or "antira ti onalism ," as Jay does, is to
seri ously mi suse those terms. Arendt's concern for human di gnity, for
freedom, for equality, fo r excell ence in the qua lit y of life-her lifelong
commitment to the truth as she saw it-however uncomfortabl e (as her
book on Eichmann indi cated )- contradi cts Jay's assertion tha t " the
search for truth h ad no place in th e public rea lm for Hann ah Arendt. "
Faith in politi cal truths and con victi ons is no t in confli ct, for Arendt ,
with di alogue, speech and acti on among citi zens in a free p ubli c rea lm .
Arend t possessed a vision of a true humanity, a true politi cs whi ch
could res tore our sense of a renewed, sha red worl d.
Finall y, Jay sees Arendt as havin g an "animus" towa rds "society,
hi story, reason ." Yet Arendt 's writin gs, from th e very first, were born
o ut of a pass ion and a use for hi story, out of her con victi on tha t the
intell ectual's use of reason and speech and the traditi on o f tho ught
could lead society and its constituent members towa rd a po liti cal
conditi on in whi ch human potenti al would fl o uri sh . Arendt's writing
sought the conques t of the contempo ra ry dangers o f sp iritua l one–
d imensionality, of a bureaucra ti c recas ting of ethi cs, of po liti ca l
oppress io n , and more ultima tely, the threa t o f phys ical annihil a ti on
th rough nucl ear wa r.
