316
recognizes the vulgar, anti–
contextual
mIsmterpretation
visible in Eichmann's notion of
obedience to law
qua
law, di–
vorced from a consideration of
the origin or content of a partic–
ular law. The two pages preced–
ing the quote jay uses are a
critique of Eichmann's attempt
to invoke Kant on his own be–
half. The quote does not argue
against the categorical impera–
tive. Rather, it refers back to the
"household~ '
version of Kant
and to Eichmann's substitution
of practical reason with the will
of the Fl,lehrer. jay misrepresents
Arendt's defense of Kant against
Eichmann's crass misuse of Kant
on behalf of wholly un-Kantian
behavior.
As to jay's response
to
the
technological optimism that
Arendt displayed in the 1950s,
the possibility still remains that,
despite that perhaps naive opti–
mism, Arendt's focus on purely
political activity as a separate,
but not autonomous sphere still
constitutes a powerful and use–
ful perception. It need not have
anything
to
do with "political
existentialism."
It
constitutes a
cogent corrective to even obscure
Marxist efforts to subsume and
eliminate the notion of the polit–
ical.
This brings me to the last
point in jay's reply. I regret
that he thinks I misrepresented
his circumlocution regarding
Arendt and the thinkers he asso–
ciates her with, that their ideol–
ogy "was not entirely blameless
in the rise of fascism." Assuming
for a moment that jay's label on
Arendt is convincing, then his
words do have the ring of an
allegation of historical responsi–
bility. Certainly he did not
charge Arendt with being a Nazi,
but some sort of peculiar histori–
cal reasoning and accusation
lingers in the last paragraph of
jay's original piece. I challenged
them as glib and arrogant. jay's
claims about Arendt's supposed
political existentialism are pre–
cisely the kind of debasement of
truth into mere opinion which
Arendt so fears in the essay
"Truth and Politics." Even if
minor philosophers affect his–
tory, Arendt was simply blame–
less in every common sense
meaning of that word for the rise
of fascism, Fascist thinking or
the charms of comparable no–
tions. Her thinking was wholly
opposed to fascism, grew di–
rectly in response to it and re–
flected none of its suppositions.
I should like to point out that
all of Arendt's work was commit–
ted tb preventing a recurrence of
the catastrophe of fascism; what
greater "safeguards" she could
have provided, I do not know.
jay's use of Sheldon Wolin
in his own defense is the last
example of wilful misreading I
would like to discuss. Wolin is
