424
PARTISAN REVIEW
they assume without much reflection that there is such an es–
sence and that it is discoverable. The assumption does not have
to
rest on a rationalist metaphysic; it is as often tied
to
some form
of intuitionism. But whether it is assumed that reason (or scien–
tific intellect) finds the essence or that intuition does the job, the
goal is the same: truth. A biography is supposed to be analogous
to a truth statement that is adequate to, or corresponds to, "the
essence of a life."
The philosophical problem involved in this assumption is
a variant on the one that has been with us throughout the history
of philosophy: What is truth? I certainly do not propose
to
offer
a treatise on this question. But I believe that if one does not-as I
do not-accept the assumption that there is an "essence of a
life," all is not given over
to
relativism, anarchism, meaning–
lessness, or any of the other doorways upon irrationality that be–
lievers in essence fear will open if their answers
to
the "What is
truth?" question are not embraced.
In
my own practice as a biog–
rapher, I did without the notion of essence by constructing for
myself a schematism of types of statements I thought I could and
should make. I borrowed the notion of such a schematism from
Karl Jaspers and from a book I wrote about him.
It
should be
immediately apparent that the possibility of stating "the truth"
grows more and more remote toward the nether reaches of this
schematism.
I first made statements of fact about events in Hannah
Arendt's life and about events in the social and political contexts
in which she lived. That is, I made a catalogue of events, a chro–
nology, a chronicle, to serve as the organizing framework of my
biography. The goal here
was
truth, accuracy, and completeness.
Next I made statements about Hannah Arendt's conscious–
ness as it related
to
the consciousness of others who shared her
world, who observed
Wh~H
she observed, traveled where she trav–
eled, read the books and newspapers she read. The purpose here
was
to
present the truth as Hannah Arendt conceived it and ar–
ticulated it and shared it with others, by serving as an excerpter
of quotations from correspondences, published materials, and
documentary sources.
I then proceeded
to
make statements about Hannah Arendt 's
culture, that is, in the broadest sense, about the education of her
spirit, her philosophical and political
Geist.
At this level of my
