IRVING LOUIS HOROWITZ
277
would have formed the nexus of the third
volume,Judgment.
For those to
whom limitations on knowledge are a fact to be overcome rather than cel–
ebrated, the problem bequeathed by Kant and now by Arendt is a
challenge of no small magnitude or light consequence.
Arendt suffered a dialectical passion, or at least a commitment to the
reality of reification: the warfare between thought and common sense, the
Greek question and the Roman answer, the gap between the past and the
future, thinking and doing, the active life and the contemplative life, the
impotence of the will versus the omnipotence of the will. This gives her
writings a tremendous tension, a dramaturgical sensibility. Perhaps that is
why she can so readily and categorically dismiss Hume's dictum on reason
being the slave of the passions as "simple minded," while Locke does only
a trifle better as a believer in "the old tacit assumption of an identity of
soul and mind." Indeed, the British empiricists fare less well at Arendt's
hands than at those of her master, Kant.
The work is really consecrated to Kant, for her divisions of thinking,
willing, and judging derive in great measure from Kant's
Critique of Practical
Reason, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals,
and
Critique ofJudgment.
From the transcendental dialectic of the
Critique
of
Pure Reason
she drew
the cardinal lesson: the insolubility of the nature of providence, freedom,
and immortality by speculative thought. But what is so unusual about
Arendt's work is that it infuses Kant's deadly logical prose with the excite–
ment of Hegel's dialectical scaffold. Whether by intent or accident-and to
know Hannah Arendt and her work is to know that scarcely a word, much
less a concept, happens randomly-Kant is given the ultimate victory in
the classical philosophic struggle. This is no cheap victory, but a victory
over titans like Plato and Hegel. For Arendt, Kant gives us conscience as a
realm of freedom unto itself: he understands that judgment is something
that can be practiced but not taught; and it is Kant who sits astride the will,
uniquely understanding it as neither freedom of choice nor sheer spon–
taneity of activity. Kant's will becomes Arendt's will, "delegated by reason
to be its executive organ in all matters of conduct." Karl Popper's propo–
nents of the closed society (Plato and Hegel) now meet their match in
Arendt's proponent of the open society (Kant).
Arendt points to a great divide in modern scientific quests: on the one
hand is the positivist quest for truth, and on the other is the rationalist
quest for meaning. For her, it is a basic fallacy to confound the two, a fal–
lacy to which even figures like Heidegger fall prey. The distinction
between the urgent need to think and the desire to know is an operational
way of distinguishing thinking from doing. And here, although the Greeks
are called upon to bear witness to this distinction, I dare say it is Arendt's
Jewishness that provides the missing link. For it is the historical role of the
