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Jews to search and not find redemption and the redeemer, in contrast to the
truth announced by Christiaruty of redemption through the Son of God,
that really distinguishes Arendt's claims for thinking as the ultimate act.
There is a strange myopia in Arendt, an all-too-conventional vision of
the history of philosophy as a movement from the Greeks to the Romans
to the Christians to the Medieval schoolmen, and finally to the Germans.
But such a mecharucal rendition of the hi story of philosophy fails to explain
why Heidegger the existentialist falls prey to the same error as Carnap the
positivist. Why does the metaphysical impulse to certainty take precedence
over epistemological distinctions? Is not the answer at least in part located
in a shared scientific vision of the age in which the quest for mearung is seen
as less urgent than the delivery of truth, even the imposition of truth on
nonbelievers, infidels, and heathens? Perhaps in the third volume on judg–
ment such matters would have been addressed. I suspect otherwise. Having
rejected the philosophic dialogue written by opponents of the open society,
Arendt was powerless to cope with the betrayal of that life in its post–
Kantian phase. The elementary forms of democratic expression are described
as in mortal combat with the evolutionary N azi and historical Bolshevik
forms of anti-democracy. The allies of the demos are left disarmed, so to
speak, wrecked by intellectuals announcing the death of intellect.
There was a point when one would have had to shuffle in embarrass–
ment for reviewing a metaphysical work. But with figures such as Marx,
Durkheim, and Weber anchoring major tendencies, no apologetics for
reading such a masterful treatise is required, nor need it be hidden under
sociological pillows. To be sure, those who represent phenomenological,
symbolic interactiorust, and humanistic varieties of sociology will proba–
bly be far more attracted to this pair of volumes than will advocates of
behavioral, functional, or physicalist sociologies. But to disentangle a
potential audience for such an undertaking is aptly evocative of what
Arendt understands as the topsy-turvy world of action and theory:
The Marxian and existentialist notions, which play such a great role
in twentieth-century thought and pretend that man is his own pro–
ducer and maker, rest on these experiences, even though it is clear that
nobody has 'made' himself or 'produced' his existence; this, I think, is
the last of the metaphysical fallacies, corresponding to the modern
age's emphasis on willing as a subs titute for thinking....And thi s is
of some relevance to a whole set of problems by which modern
thought is haunted....Since Hegel and Marx, these questions have
been treated in the perspective of History and on the assumption that
there is such a thing as Progress of the human race. Finally...the only
alternative there is in these matters-we either can say with Hegel:
