JUDITH N. SHKLAR
67
these years remained with Arendt for the rest of her life. So also, at a
very different level, did the preoccupation with death, the void, the
absence of all standards and realities, in short the condition of
"nothingness. "
Who can doubt that Martin Heidegger's
Sein und Zeit
must be
read as a long meditation upon the moods, experiences, and intima–
tions of that protracted horror? When Arendt eventually came to
describe the alliance between "the mob" and "the declasse elite"
she was drawing Heidegger's portrait, for not only had he joined the
Nazi Party, but he did so out of a long-held loathing for the pseudo–
solid world of the bourgeoisie and its hypocrisies, which veiled the
suffering of the soldiers with sentimental talk. That he was not just a
member of the elite but a genius, and her loved and admired teacher
as well, did not make these betrayals easy to bear. She did, however,
have a very clear grasp of the origins of Heidegger's conduct in the
trenches , and the worst she ever said of
Sein und Zeit
was that it was
egoistical. Eventually she found it easy to forgive Heidegger. She
had always seen through the cult that surrounded him, knowing per–
fectly well that none of his admirers had a clue to what he was say–
ing. That , in fact, is still the condition of the thriving Heidegger
industry. Arendt, however, not only understood him, she was and
remained under his philosophical spell.
Philosophy was for both of them an act of dramatizing through
word play, textual associations, bits of poetry, and other phrases
their direct experiences.
It
was "passionate thinking ." In this post–
Nietzschean activity there is no pretense about pursuing the truth or
any other end. Thinking is its own reward and purpose , and to out–
siders it seems a random response. Only those who shared a
Bildung
and a culture could decipher it, its myths and many puns.
It
is also
completely arbitrary. Nothing could, in any event, be more remote
from either Anglo-American philosophy or traditional Continental
idealism.
These philosophical habits were perfectly well suited to
Arendt's political experience after the rise of Hitler. She kept them
when she moved away from Heidegger and acquired other teachers,
such as Karl Jaspers. By then there was only one possible form of
politics: resistance , at first to fascism and then to all authorities,
even in Paris. For the condition of the refugees there was a perpetual
"Catch 22 ": no job without a work permit, and no work permit
without a job . Arendt did find employment with several Jewish
