ROl3ERT WISTIUCII
31
determination to defend the integrity of "living experience." Disch relates
this emphasis to the Arendtian critique of Archimedean thinking with its
claim to disinterested impartiality, based on a vantage-point outside space or
time. The critique was eventually extended by her to the entire Western tra–
dition of political philosophy fi'om Plato through to the twentieth century.
Alongside the "tradition," Arendt began
to
develop her own original
lexicon of poli tics, giving special importance to concepts like "pI urali ty ,"
"natality," and "publicity"-in the sense of a public realm in which every–
thing "can be seen ;lIld heard by everybody." There were tillles when she
seemed to identifY the true meaning of public life with the ancient Greek
polis; at other moments with the founding concepts of the American
R.epublic; or even with the spontaneous democratic participation, ephemer–
ally produced by the revolutionary councils' movement in modern
European history. However, what remains characteristic of her work
through all its shifts is the search for the lost public space-moral and cul–
tural as well as geographical or political. This focus, as Disch's book suggests
in the closing c1upters, derived directly fi'om Arendt's own experience of
homelessness and marginality, a theme that had very IllUch permeated her
wri tings on Jewish identi ty and poli tics.
Such preoccupations also reflected the powerful philosophical influ–
ellce of Martin Heideggcr, who had been her most charismatic teacher (and
lover) in the I<J1()s. Dana Vill;l's book is a new alld thought-provoking re–
reading of both Arendt alld Hcidegger, which serves to correct some of the
misconceptions of their critics alld supporters alike. Villa regards Arendt as
having picked up the challenge thrown down first by Nietzsche and then
by Heidegger concerning the question of politics,
II/tel'
the death of meta–
physics. She emerges in his accoullt as the first postllletaphysical and
P0.iflllOderl/
political theorist who had thought through the implications of
the break wi th "tradi tion "-the collapse of objective correlates to our val–
ues, ends, and purposes. Arelldt would build on Heidegger's concept of
homeless, "massified" people, the kind of rootlessness required by totalitar–
ian regImes in their drive to destroy reality ;lIld achieve total domination.
She was equally illfluellced by Heideggcrian insights into nihilism and
technology and by his contrast between authellticity and inauthenticity.
Once she had detached Heidegger's philosophy from his politics, Arendt
could further develop his existentialist analyses, while avoiding the irra–
tionalist
wl-de-.ill(
that had led him towards National Socialism.
The
On:l!ill.i
(!f'/(Jflliiftirillilis/ll
provides a phenomenology of totali tarian
rule which owed more
to
Heideggerian concepts than is usually realized,
while transmuting his vision to very different uses. Crucial to the Arendtian
theses is that totali tarian domination seeks to reflbricate man, to radically
transform a human nature which is assumed
to
be infinitely malleable. In
