314
wholesale reorganization of
moral categories and judgments,
of the consequences of normal
actions, of the impact of inno–
cent behavior so as to discredit a
facile, conventional assignment
of complicities in and responsi–
bility for the Holocaust. Even
when she discussed insane colla–
borators like Rumkowski in
Lodz (p. 119), Arendt did not
allege complicity.
Third, while I accept the
historical inaccuracy of my ex–
tension of Arendt's friendship
with Walter Benjamin to others
in the Frankfurt School (I was
aware, from Arendt directly, of
her antipathy to Adorno, for
example) my point, Jay's correc–
tion notwithstanding, remains:
Arendt was not unaware of the
reinterpretation of Marx under–
way by her contemporaries. Her
personal library certainly bears
this out, if her circle of friendly
acquaintances-beyond Benja–
min-does not.
In his reply, Jay miscon–
trues Arendt's "Truth and Poli–
tics" essay. First, although she
was not a refugee from the barri–
cades of politics, she considered
writing and speaking as politi–
cal acts. She was not, in her own
self-image, merely a theoreti–
cian, removed from politics. Her
personal involvement in Jewish
politics from the early 1930s to
the early 1950s is but one piece
of evidence. Second, her clear
distinction between rational and
factual truth and political argu–
ment and opinion is part of her
argument which seeks to estab–
lish the danger, in modern poli–
tics, that the truth can become so
manipulated and unrecogniz–
able, often through media, that
it loses its visible
sui generis
aspect. The
descriptive
distinc–
tion in Arendt's essay between
factual and rational truth and
opinion does not imply a
nor–
mative
one about a separation of
truth from political activity.
I argued in my original re–
ply to Jay that Arendt's concept
of action contained a concern for
the ends of action and did not
constitute as Jay argues, a separ–
ation of normative considera–
tions in ends from action and the
means of politics. In discussing
the question of "principles" of
action, Jay simplifies Montes–
quieu and Machiavelli. The mo–
tivating forces of government in
Montesquieu's sense, for Arendt,
had parallels in individual be–
havior, as the discussion of sto–
rytelling and remembrance in
The Human Condition
indi–
cates. Furthermore,
virtu
is, for
Machiavelli, more than tech–
nique, but contains an explicit
concern for excellence in ends,
for the telos of action.
Jay's peculiar sloppiness in
reading Arendt is visible again
in his reply to my brief reference
to Kant. Nowhere did I state or
