Isak Dinesen said that all pain can be endured if we turn it into a story. Something similar could be affirmed of the unclassifiable Hannah Arendt and her fruitful relationship with political theory, a field of knowledge that she vindicated hard and that helped her to cope with all the political and personal crises of the bitter times that she had to live. Today, as then, the vocabulary he used to think and narrate the world, his reflections and that writing so beautiful, so his, help us to interpret what happens to us, even if it is only as simple dwarves looking at the world on the shoulders of giants. She, of course, was, and it is always a wonderful surprise to discover that, behind a brilliant work, there is also a life that radiates light. It was thus, curiously, how she herself described her referents inMen in times of darkness : Isak Dinesen, the passionate author of Memories of Africa , for whom telling stories was "letting them go" and encouraged "repeating life in the imagination"; Walter Benjamin, that "hunchbacked little man" of poetic thought; or his teacher Karl Jaspers, whose life consecrated to Humanität made the light of the public end by "modeling his whole person".
This is how Arendt looked at and described his contemporaries, with the same empathy and intellectual honesty with which he tried to contemplate and analyze the political turmoil of the 20th century. Whoever wants to find in it a systematic thought, an ordered and coherent theoretical corpus, it is better not to go to his writings. Arendt's originality lies precisely in the fact that his books escape any classification. Each one obeys a different purpose and theme, and in them dissects concepts with the precision of a surgeon and the beauty of those who know that language is a precious treasure, escaping from any temptation to enclose their thinking in a system, even of offer a storyline that serves as a "railing" or "handrail", as she herself said, to build us a reassuring refuge where everything fits us. On the contrary, he described the activity of thinking as he understood his own life, as a risk and from a deeply Socratic inspiration, understood as an exercise that shakes and expels routines, which forces us to constantly weave and unweave our thoughts.
Arendt faced the most complex issues with the courage and prudence of the thinker who looks at them head-on and analyzes them from a distance and with the filter of reflection. In his works, he underlined the importance of political judgment as that concrete way that thinking in the world of politics adopts, and also spoke of our responsibility, of the radicality of evil and its trivialization, of totalitarianism as a homogenizing mortar of atomized subjects, of the activity of thinking and the artificiality and evanescence of the public sphere, and of that "brilliant light of the constant presence of others". He did not wrinkle before any topic: truth and lies in politics, power as concerted action and its opposite, the attraction to violence. They are just some examples of everything Arendt dared to think in a genuine, controversial and incisive way, always with his own voice: the only way to think. So it is no coincidence that today his words challenge us so strongly. Its power is in its peculiar way of approaching the great issues, of bringing to light its many and paradoxical aspects, of subtly linking concepts and daring to ask all the questions.
During the last years, we have been forced to turn our gaze towards The origins of totalitarianism , where he dissects the keys that explain this strange inherent loyalty to the mass movements that populists of all stripes are seeking today. The paradigmatic example is, of course, Trump, and those chilling words he uttered in Iowa in the 2016 campaign: "I could be in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone, and I would not lose voters." This uncritical follow-up was related to that idea that he knew how to activate in his voters and that Arendt described in his magnum opus: they were part of something greater than a conventional political force; they were part of a movement. Many of the phenomena that describe this post-truth era were explained and developed by Arendt when he spoke of the unwavering adherence to the new demagogues of his time. Surviving a more troubled time than today, Arendt knew how to see such movements always present perfectly coherent alternative meaning systems, where what convinces their members are not the facts ("not even the invented facts", he tells us) but the apparent consistency of what we feel we belong to. The unbearable emotional charge with which we today adhere to our tribe already appears here.
The author of Truth and Politics also helped us differentiate between factual truths and opinions, warning us that "freedom of opinion is a sham if objective information is not guaranteed and the facts themselves are not accepted." From these observations is distilled the immense importance that Arendt attached to the public sphere, that space that allows the existence of a "common world" and its inevitable connection with the plurality of opinions and human freedom. Because only with the discussion “we humanize what is happening in the world and in ourselves, just by talking about it; and as we do, we learn to be human. " Arendt alerted us to the risk of filling that space with a single truth, since any truth "necessarily ends the movement of thought." Thus, plurality and freedom always go hand in hand, connected to the public sphere from its republicanism, in that space of appearance that enables personal and political autonomy precisely where dissident voices coexist, promoting an authentic discussion, capable of generating a "Common world". But it is the objective information that guarantees that we can pronounce on something with an anchor in the real, fleeing from parallel realities or from the temptation to transfer mere private concerns to the public. Opinions can only be formed on the condition that there is such objective information and a genuinely plural and open discussion; otherwise, there will be "moods, but no opinions." It is inevitable to think about the current bankruptcy of public space derived from the absurd power of networks, their power to expel dissenting voices and fill the debate with mere emotionality.
The claim of pure facticity did not make him avoid political questions about how the events of the past affected the present, but also the future. Her motivation, her political drive were characterized by what she herself called "love of the world", by our responsibility for her care. That is why we need Arendt, because he builds on hope, turning it into a political category. Today, when it seems that all ills reside in the future, Arendt reminds us that, as long as there are new lives, there will always be the possibility of "a new beginning", because "each newcomer" has the ability to "do something new", the power to make and keep new promises to build "islands of security". These promises are the pacts on which the institutions are built, the frame of reference that allows us to develop the game of our life together. Without them, no game or stability is possible, but neither, curiously, plurality, action or movement. The absence of certainties does not free us from the responsibility of caring for the world we share. That is Hannah Arendt's legacy. It may not be a bad starting point.
Readings
Hannah Arendt. A biography. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl. Paidós.
Hannah Arendt. Laure Adler. Ariel.
Eichman in Jerusalem. Hannah Arendt. Lumen / Debolsillo
The origins of totalitarianism. Hannah Arendt. alliance
The human condition. Hannah Arendt. Southern
The life of the spirit. Hannah Arendt. Paidós
About the revolution. Hannah Arendt. alliance
Between the past and the future. Eight exercises political reflection. Hannah Arendt. Southern
Comprehension tests. Hannah Arendt. Untamed page
Republic crisis. Hannah Arendt. Trotta
Present times. Hannah Arendt. Gedisa
Men in times of darkness. Hannah Arendt. Gedisa
Philosophical journal. Hannah Arendt. Herder.
Poems. Hannah Arendt. Herder