Violence by Bernstein Richard J.;

Author:Bernstein, Richard J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2013-03-27T16:00:00+00:00

Arendt’s Exaggerated Thinking

Throughout her intellectual career, from the time of her earliest writings about Jewish affairs and Zionism, Arendt was controversial. The most notorious controversy was provoked by Eichmann in Jerusalem, a controversy which continued until her death in 1975 and long after. Arendt thought of herself as an independent thinker (Selbstdenker), and she simply didn’t “fit” any of the conventional academic or political labels. At a conference dedicated to her work, which she attended in 1972, Hans Morgenthau, the distinguished political scientist (and a personal friend), bluntly asked her, “What are you? Are you a conservative? Are you a liberal? Where is your position within contemporary possibilities?” Arendt forthrightly replied: “I don’t know. I really don’t know and I have never known. And I suppose I never had any position. You know the left think I am conservative, and the conservatives sometimes think I am left or I am a maverick or God knows what. And I must say I couldn’t care less. I don’t think that the real questions of this century will get any kind of illumination by this kind of thing.” (Hill 1979: 333, emphasis added).

She might have given the same reply if asked whether she was a philosopher, a political theorist, a cultural or literary critic.27 Arendt simply didn’t think in these terms, and she certainly did not “fit” any of the traditional academic professions; nor was she much concerned with dominant intellectual trends and fashions. She was not only an independent thinker, but an irritating thinker. When she deals with a problem or a thinker, she frequently writes as if there is one, and only one, correct view. And she had strong opinions concerning just about everything she discussed. When she had a fixed idea about something, she would rarely budge (or consider alternative interpretations). For example, she stubbornly insisted that both Hegel and Marx substituted a philosophy of history and a doctrine of historical inevitability for a genuine understanding of human freedom.28 Her rhetoric is frequently essentialist. When she entitles essays “What is Freedom?” or “What is Authority?” she writes as if there is really one, and only one, correct answer to these questions. When she distinguishes “power,” “strength,” “force,” “authority,” and “violence,” she doesn’t say “I propose to introduce these distinctions for the following reasons”; rather, she presents these distinctions as if any clear-thinking person will see that these refer to “distinct phenomena” (Arendt 1970: 43). Sometimes these dogmatic pronouncements seem like sheer intellectual arrogance. She was frequently accused of exaggeration – even by sympathetic friends. In their extended correspondence, Karl Jaspers makes this accusation several times. In her letter to him dated January 22, 1952, she expressed her pique.

“Exaggeration” – of course. “Relationships between ideas,” as you say, can hardly be presented any other way. And then they are not really exaggerations either. They are products of dissection. It’s the nature of thought to exaggerate. When Montesquieu says that republican government is based on the principle of virtue, he is “exaggerating”, too.

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