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LETTERS
More on Hannah Arendt
EDITORS:
The most revealing moment
10
Leon Botstein's defense of
Hannah Arendt against my cri–
tique of her political existential–
ism comes in his attempt to
explain away her admittedly
faulty reading of Marx. Arendt,
he claims, did not usually search
"for a
correct
interpretation
... but rather a suggestive,
defensible one. " This unortho–
dox approach to her material, h e
claims, was justified by her po–
litical inlentions: "Hers was a
quest for an effective interpreta–
tive history, for a political
praxis
through history. Her use of
Marx, however inadequate from
a narrow historical and textual
vantage point, appeared legiti–
mate.. . ." Whether or not
Arendt would have accepted this
characterization is less impor–
tant than the fact that Botstein
finds it beyond reproach, and
indeed imitates it in his own
reading of her work.
There are many examples of
Botstein's cunous method-his
putting words in my mouth con–
cerning the
Eichmann in Jeru–
salem
debate, his false supposi–
tion of her friendly relations
with the Frankfurt School, his
misreading of Arendt's attitude
towards the biblical contribu-
tion to her notion of glory, his
mistaken understanding of her
desire to banish the processes of
history from her ideal political
arena-but limilations of space
force me to confine myself to
three particularly telling ones.
The first concerns the issue of
truth and politics, the second the
ethical dimension of her politi–
cal theory, and the third the link
between political existen tialism
and fascism.
According
to Botstein,
Arendt's "lifelong commitment
to the truth as she saw it" contra–
dicts my assertion that the
" search for truth had no place in
the public realm for Hannah
Arendt." The source of my con–
tention, which Botstein entirely
ignores, is her essay on "Truth
and Politics," where she clearly
states that both rational and
factual truth are opposed to the
persuasive exchange of opinion,
which is the essence of the politi–
cal. "Truth carries within itself
an element of coercion . . . seen
from the viewpoint of politics,
truth has a despotic character."
The essay ends with a plea lO
respect the border between poli–
tics and truth, the very line Bot–
stein thinks she advocates cross–
ing. While he is certainly correct
in praising her own personal
desire to tell the truth, he fails to
see that she was a
theoretician
of
politics and not a true practi–
tioner for precisely that reason.
