More Truth Than Fact Disch

More Truth Than Fact: Storytelling as Critical Understanding in the Writings of Hannah Arendt Author(s): Lisa J.
Disch Source: Political Theory, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Nov., 1993), pp. 665-694 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/192078 . Accessed: 12/09/2011 07:15
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MORE TRUTH THAN FACT Storytelling as Critical Understanding in the Writings of Hannah Arendt
LISAJ. DISCH Universityof Minnesota
My assumptionis thatthoughtitself arisesout of incidentsof living experienceandmust remainboundto them as the only guidepostsby which to take its bearngs. -Hannah Arendt'
A well-craftedstory shares with the most elegant theories the ability to bring a version of the world to light that so transformsthe way people see thatit seems never to have been otherwise.Undercertainconditions,a story can be a more powerfulcritical force thana theoreticalanalysis.In a society where the abstractionof social theory and social science sometimes masks can real conflicts, a skillful narrative bringto light the assumptionsburiedin neutralarguments challengethem.Storytellinginvites critical and apparently engagement between a reader and a text and, more important,among the various readersof a work in a way that the impersonal,authoritative social science "voice from nowhere"cannot. This essay tells a story that Hannah Arendt did not tell because she consideredit inappropriate do so. It concernsthe methodologicalinnovato tions she made-but would not call attentionto-while writingabouttotalitarianism. Early on, she claims that "history has known no story more difficult to tell" than that of the concentrationcamps.2The camps and the regime that produced them "cannot be comprehendedthrough the usual moral standards or categories of political thought"or "judgedby traditional punished within the legal frameworkof our civilization."3In sum, Arendt
AUTHOR'SNOTE:I would like to thankBenjaminBarber,TracyStrong,Susan Bickford,and Dana Chabotfor their comments on this work at varous stages. Researchfunds from the GraduateSchool of the Universityof Minnesotaprovidedsummersupportfor its composition. POLITICAL Vol. 1993 665-694 THEORY, 21 No. 4, November ? 1993SagePublications, Inc. 665
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argues that totalitarianism was not just a moral crisis but an unprecedented "problem of understanding."4That problem of understanding is to find a way to make a spontaneous but principled response to the phenomenon of total domination. In the absence of the traditional categories and standards that ordinarily serve as "guideposts" to critical thought, she argues that such a response must take its bearings from the "personal experience" of the thinker.5 Storytelling is the term she uses to describe critical understanding from experience.6 What Hannah Arendt called "my old fashioned storytelling"7 is at once the most elusive and the most provocative aspect of her political philosophy. The apologies she sometimes made for it are well known, but few scholars have attempted to discern from these "scattered remarks" a statement of epistemology or method.8 Though Arendt alluded to its importance throughout her writings in comments like the one that prefaces this essay, this offhandedness left an important question about storytelling unanswered: how can thought that is "bound" to experience as its only "guidepost" possibly be critical? I discern an answer to this question in Arendt's conception of storytelling, which implicitly redefines conventional understandings of objectivity and impartiality. Arendt failed to explain what she herself termed a "rather unusual approach"9 to political theory because she considered methodological discussions to be self-indulgent and irrelevant to real political problems.?1 This reticence did her a disservice because by failing to explain how storytelling creates a vantage point that is both critical and experiential she left herself open to charges of subjectivism.1 As Richard Bernstein has argued, however, what makes Hannah Arendt distinctive is that she is neither a subjectivist nor a foundationalist but, rather, attempts to move "beyond objectivism and relativism."12 I argue that Arendt's apologies for her storytelling were disingenuous; she regarded it not as an anachronistic or nostalgic way of thinking but as an innovative approach to critical understanding. Arendt's storytelling proposes an alternative to the model of impartiality defined as detached reasoning. In Arendt's terms, impartiality involves telling oneself the story of an event or situation from the plurality of perspectives that constitute it as a public a phenomenon. This critical vantage point, not from outside but from within of contesting standpoints, is what I term "situated impartiality." plurality Situated impartial knowledge is neither objective and disinterested nor its explicitly identified with a single particularistic interest. Consequently, does not turn on what Donna Haraway calls the "god trick," the claim validity to an omnipotent, disembodied vision that is capable of "seeing everything from nowhere."'3 But neither does it turn on a claim to insight premised on
Disch / STORYTELLING ARENDT'S WRITINGS IN
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the experience of subjugation,which purportedly gives oppressedpeoples a of of privileged understanding structures dominationandexoneratesthem of using power to oppress. The two versions of standpointclaims-the privileged claim to disembodiedvision andthe embodiedclaim to "antiprivilege" from oppression-are equally suspect because they are simply antithetical. Both define knowledge positionally,in terms of proximity to power; they to differ only in that they assign the privilege of "objective"understanding opposite poles of the knowledge/poweraxis. Harawayarguesthatstandpoint claims are insufficientas criticaltheorybecause they ignore the complex of social relationsthat mediatethe connection between knowledge and power. She counters that any claim to knowledge, whether advanced by the oppressed or their oppressors,is partial.No one can justifiably lay claim to abstracttruth,Harawayargues, but only to "embodiedobjectivity,"which Thereis a connection she argues"meansquitesimplysituatedknowledges."'4 between Arendt'sdefense of storytellingand Haraway'sproject,in thatboth define theory as a criticalenterprisewhose purposeis not to defend abstract principlesor objective facts but to tell provocativestories thatinvite contestation from rival perspectives.'5 The effortto define social andpolitical theoryas a kindof knowledgethat is neitherperfectlyobjective norwholly subordinate interestis, of course, to not new.'6It accordswith what TracyStrongarguesis distinctiveto political the theory,that its validity turnsnot on fact but on "truthfulness," "capacity to strike humansat all points."'7And it is hardlyunorthodoxto suggest that to if HannahArendtmakes an important, largely unrecognized,contribution this debate. Both ErnstVollrathand David LubanarguethatArendt'sstorytelling is an attackon objectivity.Arendt'sstorytelling,they claim, follows in from her account of the "conditions" politics, "plurality" particular. of the conditionof humanmultiplicity,interconnectedness, Pluralitynames and perspectivaldifferentiation is, accordingto Arendt,the sine qua non that that of public life.'8 Vollratharguesthat it is because of interconnectedness must take the place of abstractanalysis; no political thinkercan storytelling claim to step outside the "web of humanrelationships"'9 Arendtclaims that nature well as constitutesthe public realmwithoutviolatingthe "phenomenal as the political statusof politicalphenomena."20 Lubanconcurswith Vollrath thatstorytellingis a way to understand public life from withinit, arguingthat Arendt's"methodsrequirea style of 'attentivenessto reality'thatis morethe mark of a political actor than a scholar."21 adds that storytelling also He follows from perspectivaldifferentiation,which precludesobjective analysis, because in politics "theobjective state of affairsis radicallydecentered: it offers us no Archimedean point from which it can be comprehended because every point is Archimedean."22 Luban and Vollrath suggest, As
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totalitarianism but mighthaveprovokedArendt'sturnto storytelling, situated criticismis notuniqueto thestudyof thatphenomenon; totalitarianism rather, accentuatesthe featuresof politics thatrequirethe political theoristto be a storyteller. This essay explicates the conception of critical thinking from personal experience that is implicit in Arendt's remarkson storytelling.I chart its developmentfrom the earliestpublicationswhere,in spite of her distastefor polemic, her writing is quite polemical. Next, I look at her discussions of she methodologyin the researchoutlines and memoranda composed while writing Origins. In these unpublishedwritings, she begins to justify the difference between her storytelling and simple polemic. I then treat the exchangebetweenVoegelinandArendtthatoccurredafterthe publicationof Origins. It is only when she is attackedby social scientists for her use of and metaphoras a substitutefor empiricalresearch23 by humanistsfor her that partiality24 Arendtattemptsto explicate her method. She argues for a neutralwriting of redefinition validitythatwas to be achievednotby abstract, but by storytellingfrom a committedmoralperspective.In the final section of the essay, I reconsiderthe lectures on judgment where storytelling is centralto the conceptionof spontaneouscriticalthinkingthat she develops Arendt'sstoryin herlectureson Kant's"enlarged Understanding thinking." of telling, then, is criticalto makingsense of her appropriation Kant'sThird Critique.Before turningto Arendt'swork,I addressbriefly some criticisms that might be raisedby the identificationof storytellingwith critical understanding.
AS STORYTELLING CRITICAL THINKING?
Storytellingis not a term thatArendttreatsas a concept to be defined or her thatshe employs consistentlythroughout writings.By stories,she means everythingfromthe casualanecdotestoldby friendsoverdinneror by parents and to children,to novels andshortstories,to the narratives essays she herself In general,storytellingsignals and wrote for TheNew Yorker Commentary. her resistanceagainstthe dictatethatthe political thinkermust withdrawto its a vantagepoint beyond the social world in orderto understand relations and adjudicateits conflicts of interest.She arguesthatthe Western of power political traditionwas constrainedfrom the outset by this "Archimedean" conception of political philosophy,which originatedwith Plato's abandonmentof politics becauseof his disgustandangerat the executionof Socrates. Plato's theory of the forms opened an "abyss between philosophy and
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politics" that left that traditionwithoutthe conceptualand ethical resources to understand totalitarianism and resist it.25 Storytelling is the way Arendt proposes to bridge this abyss and to dispel the pretense of the Archimedean vantage point. The belief that philosophy can and should be separatedfrom politics is fostered, in part,by the style of philosophicalwriting,accordingto Arendt. Principles that appear timeless and universal when couched in abstract experiences,so "nomatterhow abstract argumentsreally began as particular our theories may sound or how consistent our argumentsmay appear,there are incidents and stories behind them which, at least for ourselves, contain as in a nutshellthe full meaningof whateverwe have to say."26 Storytelling both situates our theories in the experiences from which they came and engages an audiencein a differentkindof criticalthinkingthanan argument and does. A story can representa dilemma as contingentand unprecedented position its audienceto thinkfrom withinthatdilemma.It invites the kind of situated critical thinking that is necessary when we are called upon, in Arendt'swords, to think "withoutbanisters."27 In the context of the Westernpolitical tradition,it is strangeto describe critical thinkingas storytellingwithoutbanisters,thatis, without"categories and formulas... whose basis of [sic] experiencehas long been forgottenand thanin their whose plausibilityresides in theirintellectualconsistencyrather Much of that traditionhas always taken it for adequacy to actual events."28 grantedthatconceptualthoughtis theprincipalweaponagainsttheprejudices carried by "old fashioned" stories. It is even stranger still to associate storytelling with discontinuity,to argue that the time to tell stories is when the past has "lost its authority," given the belief that stories preservecontitradition from one generation to the next.29Alasdair nuity, transmitting Maclntyre, for example, identifies stories with tradition,writing that "there is no way to give us an understanding any society, including our own, of the stock of stories which constitute its initial dramatic except through of resources."30 Strangest all is the claim thatstoriesinvite contestationwhen, in a traditionalsociety, storytelling is a consensus-buildingpractice that serves to handdown "acommon understanding the meaningand purpose of to these assumptions, Arendtarguesthatit was the of humanlife."31 Contrary very abstractionof moral categories that made it possible for the Nazis to supplantthe familiarguideposts of moral life with "languagerules."These rules kept Nazi functionariesfromequatingthe crimes made legal underthat and Undersuch regime "withtheirold, 'normal'knowledgeof murder lies."32 conditions, when "thoughtand reality have partedcompany,"one must tell stories to bring to light the incongruity between reality and the abstract concepts we hold.33
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In The Fragility of Goodness, MarthaNussbaumexplains how stories Nussbaum contrasts the work as a critique of Archimedean thinking.34 in abstract,rule-governedmodel of criticalunderstanding rationalist philosmethodof tragedy.She arguesthat where ratioophy with the particularist ethicalconflict by rendering nalistphilosophyaims to ruleout irreconcilable in "allvalues commensurable termsof a single coin"(p. 58), tragedypresents unique situations in which the choice is among values that cannot be of calibrated Tragicdramas,she claims, againsta commonstandard measure. teach a "horizontaldrawing of connections," so that one reflects on an down into the depthsof the particular, incident"byburrowing findingimages and connections that will permit us to see it more truly, describe it more richly" (p. 69). If tragic dramasteach us to think horizontally,rationalist philosophy teaches us to think vertically,to constructethical problems in rules termsof "pre-articulated" (p. 14).Thesetwo modesof criticalthinkingand one spontaneousand horizontal,the other "pre-articulated" verticalstories.The Archimedean both requirean altogetherdifferentway of telling thinkeris notreallyengagedin storytellingbutin illustration, treatinga story of an abstract as "a schematicphilosophicalexample" principle.In contrast, and of traces"thehistoryof a complex pattern deliberation" the tragicstory the to view the complexity,the indeterminacy, sheerdifficulty so "laysopen of actualhumandeliberation" 14). Tragicstorytellingserves not to settle (p. criticalthinkingin questionsbut to unsettlethemandto inspirespontaneous audience. its The implicit claim of Arendt'searliest writingsand final work on judgthat mentechoes Nussbaum'sargument storytellingbothexhortsandteaches criticalthinking.Like Nussbaum,Arendtarguesthat when the spontaneous salient feature of a dilemma is that it cannot be understoodin terms of rules, it is best represented telling a story.Archimedean by "pre-articulated" event because is inadequateto the challenge of an unprecedented thinking in such aneventcannotbe understood termsof familiarcategories.Todiscern one the salientfeaturesof a phenomenonlike totalitarianism, mustbegin not with categoriesbut with stories.
OR POLEMIC STORYTELLING? is In the earlyessays, Arendtarguesthattotalitarianism a criminalregime so unprecedentedthat it precipitatesnot simply a crisis of morality but a in because it is incomprehensible terms of the "problemof understanding" As of the Westernpolitical tradition.35 Luban existing conceptualcategories
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to an puts it, Arendtjudged totalitarianism be a moraland, more important, "epistemological"crisis.36She defines this "epistemological"crisis as the when "we are confrontedwith something which problem of understanding of has destroyedour categoriesof thoughtand standards judgment."37 in She begins to lay out this problemof understanding a very early book review of The Black Book, a denunciationof the Nazis that came out soon after the war. Arendt criticizes the book for purportingto be a " 'bill of indictment' " against the Nazis.38The book fails to persuade precisely truthandjustice and because the authorstake it as theirmission to resurrect attempt to do so by stating true facts to displace Nazi falsehoods. Arendt arguesthatthis strategyis naive.Withoutthe totalpower to fabricate"afalse and reality accordingto a lying ideology, [the] propaganda publicity of the style embodied in this book can only succeed in making a true story sound Whatits authorsdo not understand, unconvincing."39 accordingto Arendt,is that the Nazis have called into question the belief that truthcan vanquish power. The problemis that in the wake of a political regime that exercised power by means of the fabricationof reality it must be acknowledgedthat "truth"can be a construct of power. As she remarksin a letter to David Riesman at about the same time, "Truthmay disappearfrom the human communityif we do not wantit; afterall, we can also lie and-to a very large To extent-we can make our lies stick. This is a question of power."40 on behalf of the "truth" if true stories simply compel our as propagandize assent is to miss the point of what the Nazis accomplished.The Nazis did more than lie. They stirredpeople to act withoutthinkingby constructinga false story that compelled assent. The answer is not to oppose truthagainst falsehood because both truthandfalsehood "stick"equally well. Instead,the challenge that Arendtsees for herself and others who analyze thatphenomenon is to craft the story of totalitarianism a way that does not compel in assent but, rather,stirs people to thinkaboutwhat they are doing.41 In letters that she wrote about this time to Mary Underwood, editor at Houghton Mifflin for her book on totalitarianism,Arendt considers the in problem of understanding relationto her own projecton totalitarianism. Arendtcomplainsto Underwoodthatshe is havingdifficulty formulatingan outline of the project because she is unsure how to write the history of totalitarianismas a critique of that phenomenon.In one draft memo, she writes that "the coherence of this book[,] which is essentially a book The against[,] should not be the coherenceof continuity."42 dilemma, as she it in anotherdraftmemo, is thather subjectmattercalls for a history presents writtenagainst what she calls "the inherentlaw of all historiographywhich is preservationandjustification and praise."She wants "to presentits result in such a way thatit serves the opposite and intrinsicallyunhistoricpurpose
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Arendtclaims thatother historiansfaced with this kind of of destruction."43 task have engaged in "polemicalwriting"but thatthis "is permittedonly as can values which long as theauthor fall backupona firmgroundof traditional are acceptedwithoutquestioningandon whichjudgmentscan be formed."44 takes this groundout from under Because she believes that totalitarianism her, she concludes, "I, therefore,had to avaid [sic] carefully the polemical style, much as I was tempted by it, because polemical attitudes today Polemic is, then, degenrate[sic] into cynism [sic] or superficialtriteness."45 normative a kind of Archimedean thinkingthatrelies on a "pre-articulated" frameworkand functionsnot to initiatediscussion but to settle it. Arendt's objectionto The Black Book was thatit was a polemic aboutthe very event the thatrulesout polemicalwriting,preciselyby shattering ethicalcertainties to which polemic needs to refer. Although she rules out polemical writing, Arendt is not calling for in detached,morallyneutralsocial science. On the contrary, an essay entitled "Social Science Techniquesandthe Studyof Concentration Camps,"Arendt is claims that totalitarianism an epistemologicalcrisis as much for positive claim science as it is for moralphilosophy.The essay opens with thedramatic that"everyscience is necessarilybased upon a few inarticulate, elementary and axiomatic assumptionswhich are exposed and exploded only when confrontedwith altogetherunexpectedphenomenawhich can no longer be She understoodwithin the frameworkof its categories."46 claims that the the of falsifiabilitythat guarantees possicamps explode the presupposition in the social sciences. The camps are organized in bility of objectivity accordance with an "inflexible logic," characteristicof paranoia,"where everythingfollows with absolute necessity once the first insane premise is "total"is precisely its capacity to What makes totalitarianism accepted."47 thatis, the knowledgethatit is possible to takea particular "fabricate" reality, hypothesisand"in the courseof consistentlyguidedaction, [ensurethat]the hypothesiswill becometrue,will become actual,factual,reality."48 particular This capacity to fabricatereality puts the totalitariansystem beyond the Tech"objectivenecessities conceived as the ingredientsof reality itself."49 of positive social science are discredited when confronted with a niques power thatcan makefacts in the image of its own hypotheses.The epistemothen,is precipitated the capacityto "make" by logical crisisof totalitarianism, which rendersobjectivitymeaningless. reality, The ethical crisis of totalitarianismis engendered by the systematic camp system. In dismantlingof "the individual"throughthe concentration contrast to the murder,which is a crime against a distinct person, the crime againsthumanity destructionof "the individual"is an unprecedented itself. Western ethics is premised on the assumption of an autonomous
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individualthatis responsiblefor its actionsandidenticalwith itself over time. Arendt argues that deportationto a concentrationcamp dismantles this premise by systematicallyviolating the threeconditionson which individuality depends-legality, publicity, and natality. First, legal individuality, which is defined in termsof actionand intent,is renderedmeaninglessby an arrestthat "standsin no connection whatsoeverwith the actions or arbitrary Second, identity over time, which depends on opinions of the person."50 which effects the totaldisappearance of by publicity,is ruptured deportation, the person from his or her place in the world. By secreting the camps from public view and discouraginginquiriesabout them, the Nazis ensured that neighborsnever knew where a deporteehad gone or even whetherhe or she had died; "it is as if he [sic] haddisappeared from the surfaceof the earth."5' of torture Third,the institutionalization experimental destroysnatality,which makes spontaneoushuman action possible, by creating an environmentin which individualsare reduced"to the lowest possible denominator 'idenof tical reactions.' "52The crime perpetrated the totalitarianregime is unby arrest,disappearancefrom public view, and precedentedbecause arbitrary of routinizedtortureeffect a fundamental transformation humannature.The concentrationcamp is more than a site for mass murder:its mechanisms function not simply to kill people but to negate their humanity. The controversial is partof this argument thatArendtdenies thathumanity is a distinct quality or propertythat is somehow essentially in all human beings; on the contrary,it is a capacity that depends on public space for its possibility of existence. The camps are "theimage of hell" because they are the antithesisof the democraticideal of "public space" that she defends in The Human Condition. Where the public space is constitutedby political equality, the concentrationcamp constitutesa "monstrousequality"of undifferentiatedbeings "withoutfraternityor humanity."53 Fraternityand huare lost because, without a public space, humanplurality-which is manity the condition of fraternity and individuality-has no place to appear. This essay is almost never mentioned in studies of Arendt's political It thought and with good reason.54 is not tightly argued, and its critique of social science is incomplete.Even worse,Arendtdefends the claim positivist that totalitarianismis a crime against human individuality as if everyone would understandwhat she means by terms like "natality"and "publicity." Although these termsare criticalto herclaim thatmass murderis not simply analogous to murderbut constitutes a genuinely unprecedentedcrime, she will not define them until almost ten years later when she publishes The Human Condition. Consequently, the essay is probably less importantfor its clarity and persuasivenessthanfor its remarkable prescience.In it, Arendtdemonstrates
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the storytellingtechniquesthat are innovativeeven now. In describingthe concentration camps,Arendtsets aside the literal idiomof social science for The the resonant"voice of poetry."55 style of a moreconventionalargument would be at cross purposeswith Arendt'ssubstantivetheme:that totalitariin anismis incomprehensible conventionalterms.Metaphor, oxymoron,and hyperbolepermither to express this claim in an idiom that matches it. She faccategorizesthe camps throughoxymoron,calling them "extermination
tories," or "death factories" for the "fabrication of corpses."56The incongru-
ity in the juxtaposition of opposites-production and annihilation-calls attentionto the fact thatthe phenomenonbeing describedviolates common that sense. This languagedramatizesthe insanityof the camps. "Factories" exist to "produce"death are absurditymade real. This language further is Wheremassmurder only quantitatively refutesthe analogyto mass murder. of the by unprecedented, systematicdismantling individuality the production in of corpses-dead and alive-is incomprehensible termsof existing categories of crime. If oxymoronframesthis analysis, moralhyperbolepunctuatesthe statistical and historicalevidence that constitutesthe body of the argument.The equality." camps are the "imageof hell" where inmatesexist in "monstrous The Nazis' crime is not just wicked but "deformedwickedness,"and the Like the incongruvictimizationof the Jews is "deformed. .. innocence."57 of the categories, the hyperbolein her judgments about the ous language evidence works to illustrateArendt'spoint thatthis event cannot be understood in termsof traditional categorieslike guilt andinnocence.But although the literarydevices she employs to dramatizeher belief that she intends the is totalitarianism incomprehensible, effect is thatthe early essays have a and polemical tone, in spite of Arendt'scritique of polemical moralizing writing. Whethershe states it or not, there must be some meaningfuldistinction between what she took herself to be doing and the style for which she criticized works like The Black Book. There is a clue to her method in the and evidence,as factthatshejuxtaposes writing empirical judgmental explicitly and if the resonantidiom of literature the literalidiom of social science were perfectly compatible. Seyla Benhabib explains Arendt'stechnique beautifully: "The moral resonanceof one's languagedoes not primarilyreside in the explicit valuejudgmentswhich an authormay pass on the subjectmatter; itself. The language rathersuch resonancemustbe an aspect of the narrative Thus the implicit must match the moral quality of the narrated object."58 distinction between storytellingand polemic is analogous to that between and literature pulp fiction;wherethe lattercapitalizeson shock value for the sake of titillation,the formerattunesits style to the substanceof its vision.
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becauseArendtdoes not explainthe Its implicitcomplexitynotwithstanding, underlyinglogic of this approachuntil much later (in her response to Eric Voegelin's critiqueof Origins),these earliestwritingsappearmore dogmatic than innovative. This examinationof the early essays and unpublishedmemos shows that is Arendt's claim thattotalitarianism poses a problemof understanding not just an analytic argumentbut also a practicaldilemmathatshe encountered in the course of trying to tell the story. In response to that problem of understanding,she experiments with a kind of storytelling, using literary devices to presenther analysis in affective terms.But in these early writings, and Arendtmerely identifiesthe problemof totalitarianism experimentswith storytelling techniques as a response. She neither refers to her work as storytelling nor attemptsto defend storytellingas a response either to the epistemic crisis of totalitarianismor to the conditions of politics more generally. I turn now to Origins to begin to discern Arendt's defense of storytellingas criticaltheory.
AS STORYTELLING NEW "OBJECTIVITY" It is curious that the methodologicaldilemmas of the early essays never maketheirway intoprint,despitetheirconnectionto Arendt'sprincipalthesis thattotalitarianism It precipitatesan epistemic breakdown. turnsout thatone of the most interestingaccounts of her storytellingis an untold story about the change from the workingtitle of the totalitarianism projectto Origins of the Totalitarianism, title underwhich it was publishedin the United States. This story can be inferredfrom the discrepanciesbetween the unpublished outlinesandmemos to MaryUnderwood the published and title andpreface.59 In the memos to Underwood,Arendtcomplainsof the difficultyof writing a historythatdoes not celebrateits subjectmatteror presentit as a necessary outcome of an evolutionaryprocess. The title she proposesis consistentwith the methodological dilemmas she spells out. The working title, "The Elements of Shame:Antisemitism-Imperialism-Racism," namesthe method of the book, which is to be an analysis of the "elements"of totalitarianism for which anti-Semitismis the "amalgamator."60 "Elements" makesthe break with historicalnarratives chartthe continuousevolutionof an event from that occurred from a its causes. "Amalgamation" suggests that totalitarianism coincidence of elements that are not necessarily or causally connected but whose intersectionis not simply random.Togetherthese terms give Arendt a vocabularyfor contingency. Finally, the use of the explicitly judgmental
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"shame" suggests thatcontingentevents, unlikethose thatareeitherrandom or necessary,demandan exercise of criticaljudgment. The title that actually makes it to press is inconsistentwith the methodological imperativesshe lays out in the memos to Underwood.Both "elements" and "shame"disappearin the switch from the working title to its publishedversion;they are replacedwith the more conventional"origins." is about "Origins" a temporalconcept thatimplies an evolutionarynarrative causally relatedevents. This change redefinesthe work itself. Where "Elements of Shame"announcesa study that violates the conventionsof social science to explain a contingentevent that is incomprehensiblewithin that framework, suggestsa causal analysisthatappearsto follow those "Origins" conventions.6' Similarly,in the brief referencesto methodology that she makes in the she preface, Arendtsuppressesthe uncertainty revealed in the Underwood memos. In the publishedversion,Arendtframesthe problemof contingency She an as the problemof comprehending event like totalitarianism. asserts that comprehensioncan neithermean explanationin termsof general laws nor fatalist acceptance. Instead, it entails a critical posture, achieved by attentive facing up to, and resisting of, means of "the unpremeditated, it may be or might have been."62 Presumably,the term reality-whatever is an allusion to her earlierargumentthat totalitarianism "unpremeditated" is an unprecedented phenomenonthat shattersall prior conceptualframeworks.But becauseArendtonly alludesto the vivid accountshe madein the voice is so authoritative, social science essay, andbecauseherfor-publication her the prefaceactuallyserves to undermine thesis thattotalitarianism poses of Wherethe uncertainty Arendt'stone in the a problemof understanding. is Underwoodmemos makesherclaim thattotalitarianism anepistemiccrisis all the more plausible, her for-publicationvoice sounds polemical and idiosyncratic.63 The preface is even more confusing because Arendtretainssome of the physics languagefrom the earlierversionbut mixes it with the evolutionary If metaphor. anything,the physics languageis moreemphaticin this version. but Anti-Semitismis no longerthe "amalgamator" now the "catalyticagent" is And totalitarianism the of National Socialism, the war, and genocide.64 that brings the "elements and origins" of "final crystallizing catastrophe" But into totalitarianism theopen.65 thissentenceis the problem.Arendtwrites as if "elements"and "origins"meant the same thing. This is confusing because the termelements suggests a contingentformationand so is consistent with the term crystallization,whereas the term origins implies that evolved from a primarycause. Arendtactually clarifies the totalitarianism and distinctionbetween these termsin a draftfor the essay "Understanding
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Politics," where she writes that "the elements of totalitarianismform its

origins if by origins we do not understand 'causes.' . . . Elements by them-
selves nevercause anything.They become originsof events if and when they

suddenly crystallize into fixed and definite forms."66This passage, however,
does not make it into the version of the essay thatwas publishedin Partisan Review.67Thus, in the preface to Origins, her only public statement of of method,Arendtmixes metaphors physics andevolution,therebyobscuring the distinction between contingency and causality that presumablymoved and her to choose such peculiarwords as elements, amalgamation, crystallization in the first place. Of course, it is possible that Arendt simply changed her mind over the course of writing Origins. Perhapsshe believed that she had solved these dilemmas and consequentlyhad no need to carryher uncertaintyinto print. I suggest that she did not, in fact, resolve them but, rather,suppressedthem to conformto conventionsof explanation.This is evidenced by the fact that that the she resurrects arguments did not make it into the prefacein her reply to Eric Voegelin's review of the book. Because Arendtfails to make public as her more detailed statementof the problemof understanding she lays it out in the early memos, and fails to justify her method as a response to that in problem,she leaves her work open to misinterpretation termsof the very epistemic frameworkshe claims to write against. It is just such a misinterpretation,by Voegelin, that promptsArendtto be more forthcomingabout her method. Voegelinobjectsto Arendt'sworkon bothmethodologicalandsubstantive grounds. He characterizes her approach as an "emotionally determined method of proceeding from a concrete center of shock toward generalizations."68 objection is not to Arendt'semotionalpresence in the work;in His fact, he calls that "the strength"of the book and says it is reminiscentof Thucydides.Rather,he objects to the fact thatArendtis so caught up in the that difference"of totalitarianism she does not see its "essential "phenomenal sameness"to the crises that follow fromthe agnosticismof the modernage. Voegelin claims that totalitarianismis not unprecedentedbut, rather,the "climaxof a secularevolution"thatbegan in the High Middle Ages with the heretical notion that the perfection of humanity could be achieved not Although he agrees with her throughthe grace of God but by acts of men.69 that it is a mass social phenomenon,he criticizes what he describes as her attempt to "make contemporaryphenomena intelligible by tracing their events He origin back to the 18th century."70 arguesthateighteenth-century are only surface manifestations of the deeper "spiritualdisease" of the Arendtwould modernage, and so to penetratethe essence of totalitarianism have to locate its origin at "the genesis of the spiritualdisease."7'Voegelin
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depictsArendt'sworkas an evolutionarytale thatfalls shortof the originand the thereforemisunderstands essence of totalitarianism. The methodologicaldilemmasthatshe excised fromthe prefacereturnin herresponseto Voegelin.In fact,thereplybeginswithArendtacknowledging the shortcomingsof the prefaceas a statementof methodand admittingthat she ought to have madesuch a statement.She writes,"I failed to explain the method which I came to use, and to account for a ratherunusual particular approach... to the whole field of politicalandhistoricalsciences as such."72 Arendtrepeatsthe problemshe explainedto Mary Underwood,that totalitarianism made her "write historically about something . . . which I did not
Her want to conserve but on the contraryfelt engaged to destroy."73 answer into its "chief elements" and to this problem was to break totalitarianism to phenomenon.74 analyzetheir"decisiverole"in contributing thatparticular Arendt makes it clear that she chose quite consciously not to constructan of because that would be the kind of evolutionarynarrative totalitarianism laudatory,preservinghistoriographyshe wants to avoid. Thus Voegelin's presupposes readingof her workas a storyof the "genesis"of totalitarianism thatshe claims has been shattered. the continuingexistence of a framework Arendt concludes her response to this section of Voegelin's review with a does title:"Thebooktherefore, of remarkable repudiation the for-publication deal with the 'origins'of totalitarianism-as its title unfortunately not really claims-but gives a historicalaccountof theelementswhichcrystallizedinto Hers totalitarianism."75 is an analysis, then, of theformationof totalitariannot its genesis. ism, Nowhere is the fact thatVoegelin has completely missed her point more evident than in his accusationthat she is herself prey to the disease of the that modernage. Voegelinmakesthisclaim in responseto Arendt'sargument of cannotbuteffect a transformation humannature. an epistemic breakdown Voegelin mistakes Arendt's complex argumentfor a mistaken use of the concept "humannature."He asserts that "a 'nature'cannot be changed or with of a transformed; 'changeof nature'is a contradiction terms;tampering Arendtrespondsthat the 'nature'of a thing means destroyingthe thing."76 totalitarianismis not a "spiritualdisease" but a political crisis and that humanityis not an essentialessence buta publicphenomenon.Althoughshe agrees that the masses are spirituallyempty, their problemis not that they have lost theirfaithbutthatthey have lost a public space in whichto act. She chides Voegelin for a cowardly escape into a comforting anachronism: "Historicallywe know of man's natureonly insofaras it has existence, and no realm of eternalessences will ever console us if man loses his essential from utterlyinVoegelin and Arendtassess totalitarianism capabilities."77 to the compatibleperspectives.He attributes rise of totalitarianism agnosti-
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truthsconcerningGod, humannature, cism, the loss of faith in fundamental and the universalprinciplesthat follow from them. She attributesit to the loss of the publicrealm,which can be restorednot by the recoveryof abstract truthsbut by reunitingthinkingwith acting. To reestablishthe connection between thinkingand acting, Arendtmust redefineobjectivity.She does this in her defense againstVoegelin'scriticism Arendtarguesthat of thatthe structure Originsis "emotionallydetermined." that she uses morallychargedlanguagebecause she believes, paradoxically, explicit judgments are not less but, rather,more objective than ostensibly neutral categories. She writes that she "partedquite consciously" with objective historiographyas it is conventionally defined, in an attempt to "describethe totalitarian phenomenonas occurring,not on the moon, but in the midst of humansociety."78 Objectivityis not abstractneutraldescription but explicitly moralstorytelling,situatedin the "personal experience"of the theorist.She illustrateswith a hypotheticalexample, positing a historianof the British working class who describes its poverty in the early industrial revolution:
The naturalhumanreactionto such conditions is one of angerand indignationbecause these conditions are against the dignity of man. If I describe these conditions without phenomenonout of permittingmy indignationto interfere,I have lifted this particular its context in humansociety and have therebyrobbedit of partof its nature .... For to arouseindignationis one of the qualitiesof excessive povertyinsofaras povertyoccurs among humanbeings.79
Arendtarguesthat it is a "methodologicalnecessity"to situatethe phenomenon she describesin the context of herown moraloutrageagainstit because to describe a social phenomenon out of context of the moral response it She provokes is to deprive it of partof "its importantinherentqualities."80 calls attentionto the fact thatthis narrative strategyamountsto a redefinition of objectivity: "in this sense, I think that a descriptionof the camps as hell on earth is more "objective,"that is, more adequateto their essence than statementsof a purely sociological or psychological nature."8' The reply to Voegelin raises at least as many questions as it answers, however. The claim thatindignationis a "natural" responseto an affrontto the "dignity of man" assumes a sharedconception of dignity and a shared it. belief thatpovertyis "against" This exampleimplies thatsituatedthinking is not randomor idiosyncratic;rather,it takes its bearings from a general moralcommonsense. But she does notexplainhow such a moralsense would be possible without the traditional"guideposts" whose loss she has so definitively proclaimed.It is to answerthis questionthatshe turns,morethan a decade later,to Kant's ThirdCritique.
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Before moving on to the lectures on judgment, however, I want to conclude the discussion of Arendt'sredefinitionof objectivityby analyzing an essay on history and a lectureon epistemology in which she revisits the themes she initiatesin her reply to Voegelin.Given that Voegelin misinterprets so much of what is unusualaboutArendt'sproject,it is ironic that he should claim that the strengthof Origins is its similarityto the writingsof Thucydides.In her writingson historyand epistemology,Arendtoffers The Peloponnesian Waras a model of the kind of historicalwritingshe is trying to achieve. She sees Thucydides'work as an exemplarof a kind of critical in universalsbutin experience. historicalwritingthatis notgrounded abstract She uses a contrastbetween Archimedesand Thucydidesas the vehicle for that a critiqueof objectivist impartiality extends the themes she introduces in her reply to Voegelin. and Arendtmakesa distinctionbetweenpoliticalunderstanding objective model of knowledge is apolitknowledge.She arguesthatthe Archimedean ical because of "its objectivity,its disinterestedness,its impartialityin the Thucydides,on the consequences which its pursuitof truthmight have."82 in other hand, strives for political understanding that he attemptsto inspire his readersto engage in criticalthinking.PeterEubendescribesThucydides' projectin a way thatspells out the differencebetween objective knowledge and political understanding, writing that "by constructinga text that replireaderthat he faced as an historiandescribing cates the difficulties for the and makingsense of his real world,Thucydidespresentsfor us the problem As collective experience."83 Euben and of tryingto reconstitute comprehend is precisely analogous to the problem of describes it, Thucydides'project Origins,which is to write in a way thatgives one's readersthe experienceof a interpreting complex historicalsituation. Note that the contrast Arendt draws between abstractobjectivity and does not set upa simpledichotomybetweenobjective politicalunderstanding and experientialthinking.Thatshe values a kind of objectivityis evidenced by herassessmentof Thucydides,whomshe praisesfor having"kepthimself aloof, and quite consciously so, from involvement with the events themselves. . . . Obviously, no judgment such as Thucydides'-'This was the
greatestmovementyet knownin history'-would have beenpossible without model is not The such withdrawal."84 problemshe has withthe Archimedean that it is impartial but that it makes abstract objectivity a requisite of impartialityand is consequentlyso far removed from political conflict that it cannot "pay any attention to human interests."What she takes from Thucydides is a kind of impartialityachieved by a "much more limited"
withdrawal.85
IN Disch / STORYTELLING ARENDT'S WRITINGS
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It is typical of HannahArendtto toss off a controversialstatementas if it needed no explanationandalso typicalfor such statementsto touchon points of controversy and obscurity in her own thoughts. This presentation of she Thucydides as a model of the kind of impartiality thinks is appropriate to historical writing is a classic instance. If Thucydidescan be considered impartial,it is not in any conventionalsense of the word. In the first place, he is no disinterestedobserverof the PeloponnesianWar.He is a committed participant,a general, who opens his account by identifying himself in explicitly partisanterms as "Thucydidesthe Athenian."Second, there is ambiguity over the question whetherThucydides,who wrote in exile after the war, was in a position to reporthistoryor whetherhe reconstructedthe events of the past. Some classicists question whetherwhat he wrote can be at considered"history" all or whetherhe used the past as a means to present events of his lifetime.86 his own maturereflectionson important Arendtseems to have viewed Thucydidesas she did herself, as a political theorist from whom the question of historical objectivity is an irrelevant methodological debate. The task of the political theorist is not to report objectively but to tell a story that engages the critical faculties of the audience.Eubenmakes a similarclaim, creditingThucydideswith "offering a new standard accuracy"to his readers.He writesthat"howeverpersonal of or Athenianhis work,however muchhe may have had ties to the aristocratic class at Athens, there is a sense in which he is absentfrom his discourse.Or he to put it more accurately, is tryingto sustainconditionswithinthe text that makes discourse outside it possible."87 This is no conventional model of as objective reporting, it consists neitherin a bloodlessly neutralwritingstyle nor in an attemptto avoid selectivity but, rather,in the fact thatThucydides leaves the reader with the task of interpretingthe various conflicts he represents. To Euben and Arendt then, who are political theorists, Thucydides' work achieves something more importantthan objectivity: political impartiality. Political impartiality not securedby meansof detachmentfrompolitics is but by fosteringpublic deliberationthatdependson the ability "to look upon the same world fromone another'sstandpoint."88 Arendtcreditsthe practice of political impartiality to the polis, which she idealizes as a realm of "incessanttalk"andplurality,in which "theGreeksdiscoveredthatthe world we have in common is usually regardedfrom an infinite numberof different standpoints, to which correspond the most diverse points of view."89 Thucydides' work fosters political impartialityby an artistic (though not of fictional) creation of plurality by his representation speeches from the that constitute the public realm. Euben multiple, divergent perspectives
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writesthatThucydidesgives us "aformof political knowledgethatrespects, the even recapitulates, paradoxes 'perspectivism' politicallife."9? and of This accountof political impartiality, not characterized by abstraction by the but interplayamong a pluralityof perspectives, anticipatesthe conception of that Arendt will discernin Kant'sdescriptionof the "enlarged impartiality in mentality" ThirdCritique.She admiresThucydidesbecause his imaginative history makes it possible for the readerto think as if engaged in the debatesof his time. This section bears out the claim that there is an "untoldstory" about storytellingin the discrepanciesamong the various statementsof method, that over the courseof writing publishedandunpublished, Arendtformulated to Origins.This storydocumentsher"unusual approach" politicaltheoryand historicalwriting,in the shift she makes from abstract,neutralreportingto explicitly moralstorytellingfromthe personalexperienceof the author.She and to adoptsthisapproach demonstrate teacha kindof criticalunderstanding that,in Nussbaum'swords, "consistsin the keen responsivenessof intellect, This early work of imagination,and feeling to the particulars a situation."9' to describe how to make a judgment from experience, arguingthat begins but framework one proceedsnot by applyingprinciplesfrom a transcendent consideredattentionto one's immediateresponseto an event. It does not by judgmentcritical.The answerto this yet explain whatmakesthis contingent lies in her attempt to discern a political philosophy in Kant's question
Critique of Judgment.
SITUATED IMPARTIALITY
In her lectures on ThirdCritique,Arendtexplains that she is drawn to Kant'sconceptionof tasteas a modelfor political thinkingbecauseshe finds that in it a formulationof impartiality accordswith plurality.Its subject,she Where is "menin the plural,as they reallyareandlive in societies."92 claims, reason is individualand abstract,imaginingthe principleof one's practical act as a universalrule, Kantdefines the impartiality necessary for aesthetic which he calls "enlargedthought."93 in termsof intersubjectivity, judgment Arendt creatively appropriatesKant's description of taste as "enlarged thought"to explain how one gets from experience to criticism:the critical move entailsa shift fromthinkingfroma privateperspectiveto thinkingfrom a public vantage point. Her version of enlarged thought makes a bridge critical understanding. between storytellingand situatedimpartial
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Arendt foreshadows her turn to Kant's Third Critique as early as the preface to Origins where she uses the term "crystallization."As Seyla Benhabib argues, this term is an attempt to explain the unconventional that Arendtexplained structureand organizationof the book-the structure to MaryUnderwoodas writing"against" history-by alludingto Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History."Benjamin argues that the critical historianwho refuses to writefrom the perspectiveof the victormust "brush history againstthe grain."94 Accordingto Benhabib,Arendtuses the peculiar because she, like Benjamin, language of "elements"and "crystallization" wants "to breakthe chainof narrative continuity,to shatterchronologyas the naturalstructure narrative, stressfragmentariness, of to historicaldead ends, The failures and ruptures."95 crystallizationmetaphoris unquestionablyan attemptby Arendt to bring Benjaminto mind, but it is also an allusion to Kant's accountof taste. The reference to Kant affirms the claim of Arendt'searly writings that political events are contingentand so cannotbe namedor known in termsof existing conceptualcategories. In ThirdCritique,Kantintroduces"crystallization" as a metaphorfor contingency, which he calls "the form of the purposiveness of an object, so far as this is perceived in it without any representationof a purpose."96Crystallizationdescribes the formationof objects that come into being not by a gradual, evolutionary process but suddenly and unpredictably a shooting together,i.e. by a suddensolidi"by
fication, not by a gradual transition . . . but all at once by a saltus, which
transitionis also called crystallization."97 describinga kind of being that In is contingentbutsusceptibleto criticalevaluationnonetheless,crystallization justifies the possibility of a kind of judgment that is both spontaneousand principled.98 In calling totalitarianism "thefinal crystallizingcatastrophe" constithat tutes its various"elements"into a historicalcrisis, Arendtmakes an analogy between contingentbeautyandunprecedented evil. This analogyturnson the claim that totalitarianism, phenomenonto which no abstractcategorical a frameworkis adequate,poses a problemof understanding is similar to that that posed by beauty.Political events, like aesthetic objects, can neitherbe explained in evolutionaryterms nor judged with reference to an external purposeor principle.Even so, we are boundto discerntheirmeaningor else to relinquishour freedomby reactingwithoutthinkingagainstforces we do not understand. Arendtis drawnto ThirdCritiquebecauseshe wantsto arguethatpolitical judgment is not a kind of practicalreason or moraljudgmentbut a kind of which meansthat taste.Moraljudgment,accordingto Kant,is "determinant,"
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it functionsby subsuminga particular instanceundera general rule that is Taste,on the otherhand,is reflecrationallyderivedpriorto thatinstance.99 tive. It operatesin a contingentsituation,meaningone for which there can be no predetermined principle,so thata thinkertakes her bearingsnot from the universal but from the particular(p. 15). Leaving technical language concerned behind,the implicationof reflectivejudgmentis thatit is primarily with questions of meaning.Arendt'sturnto ThirdCritiquefor a model for politicaljudgment is utterlyconsistentwith her early essays, then, because aesthetic judgment confronts the world from the start as a problem of understanding. Kant's problem in Third Critique is to account for the possibility of aestheticjudgmentby distinguishing judgmentsaboutbeautyfrom idiosyncratic preferences,on one hand, and from categoricalvalues, on the other. He claims thatan expressionof taste in the beautifuldiffersfromourinterest in the pleasant,to which we are drawnby the desire for gratification,and from our regard for the good, which we are compelled to esteem by its objective worth accordingto the categoricalimperative.Taste is unique in that it is spontaneousbut principled.He calls it "a disinterestedandfree satisfaction;for no interest, either of sense or of reason, here forces our assent" (p. 44). To account for the possibility of aestheticjudgment, Kant must explain how an expressionof taste can be more than "groundlessand vain fancy," withoutarguingthat it is objectively necessary (p. 191). Kant answersthisproblemby proposingthataestheticjudgmentis intersubjective. A statementof preferenceis subjective,in thatwhen I affirmthatsomething is pleasing I mean that it is pleasing to me; in stating that something is to beautiful,however,I am expressinga preferencethatI attribute everyone else. Aestheticjudgmentdiffers from pureand practicalreason in that this claim to intersubjective validity is notjustifiedwith referenceto an abstract universal concept of beauty but rests on a purportedlycommon sense of pleasure in the beautiful.This common sense is, according to Kant, what because"it is not an empiricalconcept, makes taste "strangeand irregular" but a feeling of pleasure (consequentlynot a concept at all) which, by the to judgmentof taste, is attributed everyone"(p. 27). He explains furtherthat taste speaks "with a universalvoice ... [but]does not postulate the agreeof the rule in respectof which it expects, not confirmationby concepts, but assentfromothers"(pp. 50-51). Thatis, althougha judgmentof tastecannot that others would assent to be proved, its validity turnson the presumption it. The paradoxthat Kantsustainsin defining taste as a judgmentthat takes its bearingsnot from transcendental concepts but from feeling is analogous
ment of everyone. ... It only imputes this agreement to everyone, as a case
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to Arendt'sattemptto define politicaljudgmentas criticalunderstanding that does not withdrawto an abstractvantagepoint but takes its bearingsfrom experience. Paul Guyer has noted that Kant's account is deeply ambiguousbecause Kant proposes to defend the possibility of taste both on the grounds of thata judgmentabout beauty is imputedto everyone else, intersubjectivity, that and on the groundsof communicability, it actuallysecures the assent of others in public exchange. Although Kantappearsto suggest that intersubjectivity is both necessary and sufficient to communicability,one could imputea judgmentto otherswithoutcommunicatingit to themor defending it to their satisfaction.Guyer claims that intersubjectivity takes precedence over communicabilityin Kant'sargument,writingthat althoughKant "is at pains to show that pleasurein the beautifulmay be imputedto others, he is not at equal painsto show how suchpleasuremay be conveyed fromone who feels it to one who, in particularcircumstances, does not.""l' What is interestingabout this ambiguityfor the purposesof this essay is thatArendt makes a creativeappropriation tasteby suggestinga significantlydifferent of groundof validity. Arendtpoliticizes Kant'sconceptof tasteby arguingthatits validityturns on "publicity."'o' Publicity means openness to contestation,which she describes as "the testing that arises from contact with other people's thinkThis claim that critical thinkinginvolves contestationsuggests that ing."'02 neither intersubjectivitynor communicabilityadequately accounts for the possibility of reflective judgment. In contrastto intersubjectivity, publicity requires that a judgment come into "contact"with others' perspectives;it cannot simply be imputedto them. But "contact"and "testing"in no way imply that validity dependson actuallysecuringgeneralassentto one's own beliefs. On the contrary,given Arendt's claim that the public realm is constitutedby a pluralityof divergentperspectives,generalassent would be not just an unlikely outcome of public debate but an undesirableone. Thus Arendtpoliticizes Kant's"taste"by eschewing its tendency towardconsensus in favor of contestation. Even though "publicity"makes a significant departurefrom Kant's defense of taste, Arendt attributesit to him nonetheless, claiming that she learned it from his concept "common sense." Kant argues that aesthetic judgment presupposes common sense, which he defines as a capacity to practice "enlargedthought."This practiceinvolves "comparingyour judgment with the possible ratherthan the actualjudgments of others, and by putting ourselves in the place of any other man, by abstractingfrom the Thus Kant limitations which contingently attach to our own judgment."'03
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arguesthatone raisesone's idiosyncratic preferencefor an object to a critical fromone's own contingentsituationto arriveat the judgmentby abstracting standpointof any observer. HannahArendtappropriates "enlargedthought"from Kant's ThirdCribut with a creative departurefrom the original that she does not tique acknowledge. Arendt writes that the general validity of taste is "closely with the particular conditionsof the standpoints connectedwith particulars, one has to go throughin orderto arriveatone's own 'generalstandpoint.'"104 fromthe Whereenlargedthinking,as Kantdescribesit, involves abstracting limitationsof a contingentsituationto thinkin theplace ofany otherman,"'05 Arendt speaks explicitly of a general standpointthat is achieved not by abstractionbut by considered attention to particularity.'6Thus enlarged thought, in her terms, is situatedratherthan abstract.She calls it training "one's imagination to go visiting,"07which involves evoking or telling yourself the multiple stories of a situationfrom the pluralityof conflicting Enlargedthoughtis Arendt'sanswerto the perspectivesthatconstituteit.'08 but questionof how one moves fromexperienceto criticalunderstanding, it thatshe has in mind. is not the Kantian"enlargedthought" of In hercreativeappropriation ThirdCritique,Arendtredefinesenlarged She thought from abstractreasoningto what I call "situatedimpartiality." that abstraction credits Kant with breakingfrom the customaryassumption "is is requisiteto impartiality, writingthatKantianimpartiality not the result that of some higherstandpoint wouldthenactuallysettle [a] disputeby being altogetherabove the melee";instead,it "is obtainedby takingthe viewpoints of others into account."109 Curiously,Arendt conceals her innovation by thinkingand Kant's failing to markthe distinctionbetweensituatedimpartial Where enlargedthinking is a consequence of either "enlargedmentality." securing assent to one's judgmentor simply imputingit to others, situated impartialthinking involves taking divergentopinions into account in the processof makingup one's mindand,ultimately,locatingone'sjudgmentin relationto those views. Althoughshe conceals it, Arendtmakesa significant breakwith the universalizingassumptionsof Kant'sthought. The departurefrom Kant's "taste"is even more pronounced,as Arendt argues that it is not the philosopherbut the storytellerwho possesses an 0 talentfor enlargedthinking." Arendtdescribesstorytellingas extraordinary fromthe heady,intoxicatingbusiness an artthatneeds "acertaindetachment of sheer living that,perhaps,only the bornartistcan managein the midstof living.""'Althoughthis descriptioncomes from her essay on Isak Dinesen, of the conceptualization storytellingon which it relies bringsto mind Walter Not "The Storyteller." only does Benjamincredit storyBenjamin'sessay, tellers with the ability to thinkcritically"inthe midst of living," but he also
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implies that storytellersinspireenlargedthinkingin others:"the storyteller takes what he tells fromexperience-his own or thatreportedby others.And he in turnmakes it the experience of those who are listening to his tale.""2 As Benjamin describes it, the capacity for situatedimpartialthinkingis not the storyteller's exclusive privilege, and the storyteller is not the kind of teacherwho impartsa lesson to her listeners.Rather,the storyteller'sgift is, in his words, the ability to craft an accountthat is "free from explanation," therebyteaching the practiceof situatedimpartialvision.13 A skillful storyteller teaches her readersto see as she does, not what she does, affording them the "intoxicating" experienceof seeing from multipleperspectivesbut the them with the responsibilityto undertake criticaltaskof interpreleaving tation for themselves. This capacity of storytellingto invite situated impartialthinkingcan be understood only if the distinctions among storytelling, testimonial, and A illustrationareclearlydemarcated. testimonialis self-expressive:it asserts "this is the way I see the world."It is fully determinedby the experience of the speaker and, as such, can inspire refutationor empathy but not critical engagement as Arendtdefines it. In contrast,illustrationis not at all expressive. Its purposeis to give anecdotal"proof' of a theory;consequently,it is determinednot by experience but by the abstractframeworkit is meant to exemplify. The kind of story thatArendtand Benjaminhave in mind invites the readerto "go visiting,"asking "how would the world look to you if you saw it from this position?" The critical perspectivethat one achieves by visiting is neitherdisinterested, like Kant's taste, nor empathic. Arendt writes that "this process of representationdoes not blindly adopt the actual views of those who stand somewhereelse, and hence look uponthe worldfroma differentperspective; this is not a question of... empathy,as though I tried to be or to feel like something else ... but of being and thinkingin my own identitywhere I am not."'l4Visiting means imaginingwhatthe world would look like to me from another position, imagining how I would look to myself from within a that differentworld, and coming to understand I might define my principles if I did not stand where I am accustomed to."5 Where visiting differently empathyobstructsit. By empathizingwith another, promotesunderstanding, I erase all difference. But when I visit another place, I experience the that disorientation lets me understand how differentthe worldlooks from just differentperspectives. is The relationshipbetween storytellingand situatedimpartiality multiple andcomplex. Storytellingis a meansby which one "visits"differentperspecformthatlends itself to giving a multiperspectival tives. It is also a narrative accountof a situation,that,in turn,invitesothersto "visit"those perspectives.
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Relativeto abstractargument, the testimonial,and illustration, advantageof a story is that it can be both ambiguous and meaningful at once. An ambiguousargument, testimony,or example is less effective for its indeterbecausethe purposeof suchmodesof discourseis to distill the plural minacy, meanings of an incident into definitive conclusions. Ambiguity in a story of encourages the permanent contestation and multiple reinterpretation meaningsthatmake situatedimpartiality possible. In Arendt's unfinished lectures on judgment, then, there is an implicit answerto the questionof how thinkingfromexperiencecan be critical.This of answer turns on a creative appropriation Kant's enlarged thinking by For means of storytellingand situated impartiality. Arendt,critical understanding involves telling or hearing multiple stories of an event from the pluralityof perspectivesthat it engages. One purposeof testing one's perspectiveagainstthe perspectivesof othersis to takea standin full recognition of the complexity and ambiguityof the real situationsin which judgments are made. One furtherpurposeis to hold oneself responsibleto argue with and speak not only to those with whom one agrees but to those with whom one disagrees.This meansnot simplyacknowledgingthe inevitablepartiality of any individualperspectivebut insisting thatperspectivaldifferences be raised, contested, and situated in referenceto each other.The point is not consensus or accuracybut pluralityand accountability.
CONCLUSION
This essay has told the story of Arendt'sattemptto find a way to think withoutrecourseto an Archimedeanvantage criticallyabouttotalitarianism point and a way to write aboutit thatwould engage her readersin makinga critical responseto thatphenomenon.In answerto this problem,she writes in that an explicitly moralnarrative situatestotalitarianism the contextof her it thinkerwhose ethicaltradition has destroyedandtells the reactionto it as a from as many perspectivesas she can imagine. Her story of totalitarianism not her style, is like Thucydides':to re-presenttotalitarianism aim, though in a way thatexhortsher readersto judgment. Arendt'sconceptionof political theoryis, in the wordsof VirginiaWoolf, "moretruththanfact."16Woolf uses this phrasein the opening pages of A Roomof One'sOwn, which is ostensibly an essay on the subjectof "women and fiction." Like Arendt, she apologizes to her audience that she cannot produce a "nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your Like Arendt,her apology notebooks"and proposes to tell a story instead."7
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is disingenuous.Woolf tells a story not because it is the best she can do but she because it is the best she can do. Further, does so not because she wants to illustrateher theoriesaboutwomen writersor to express herfeelings about being a woman writerbut to give the "audiencethe chance of drawingtheir own conclusions as they observe the limitations,the prejudices,the idiosyncrasies of the speaker."18 Woolf, like Arendt,suggests thatthe most "objective" way to write about a social question or problem is to situate it in the context of the beliefs that gave rise to it. This means telling the story of a situationin a way thatmakesexplicit the dispositionof the authorandrelates as many of its constituent perspectives as possible. Storytelling is "more in thanfact because it communicatesone's own criticalunderstanding truth" a way that invites discussion from rival perspectives. From her early writings to her unfinished lectures on judging, Arendt sustains the belief that political theory can be understood as a kind of it, storytelling.Its purpose,as she understands is not to make a descriptively accurate reportof the world but "to transcendthe limitations of facts and information" tell a provocativeand principledstory."9In almost so many to words, it is Woolf's distinctionbetweentruthand fact thatArendtis attempting to achieve. She strugglesto inventa way of writingabouttotalitarianism that will not define that phenomenon so much as answer its ethical and epistemological challenge: she writes to move her audience to engage with her in thinking"whatwe are doing."'20
NOTES
1. HannahArendt,Between Past and Future(New York:Penguin, 1954, 1968), 87. 2. HannahArendt,"The Imageof Hell," Commentary (1946): 291-95, at 292. 2 3. Arendt,Between Past and Future,26. 4. HannahArendt, "Notes for Six Lectures"esp. "The Great Traditionand the Natureof Totalitarianism," (presentedat the New School, March 18-April22, 1953). 5. Hannah Arendt, "A Reply" [to Eric Voegelin's review of Origins of Totalitarianism], Review of Politics 15 (1953): 76-84, at 79. Although positivists in Arendt's time may have modeled theirresearchmoreclosely afterthatof objectivescience, few political scientiststoday sustainthe belief that theoriescan be perfectlydetachedfrom the commitmentsof the scientist who espouses them, and few deny that methodologyand results are mutuallyconditioning.If read for her critique of positivism, these early essays would be of little interestbecause they of addressa well-worn debate-and not very persuasivelyat that.But the attraction these essays is not for the case she makesagainstpositivismas forthe case she makeson behalfof storytelling. Arendt is exceptional that she actually tells stories about Dreyfus and Disraeli, uses passages from Proust,and refers to Lawrenceof Arabia in supportof the theoretical claims she makes in Origins.
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6. Seyla Benhabib argues that "the historiographyof National Socialist totalitarianism Arendtwithextremelydifficultmethodological dilemmaswith normative dimensions, presented andthatwhile reflectinguponthese dilemmasArendtdevelopeda conceptionof politicaltheory as 'storytelling.' " See, "HannahArendt and the Redemptive Power of Narrative,"Social Research57 (1990): 167-96, at 170. 7. HannahArendt,"Actionand the Pursuitof Happiness" (paperdeliveredat the American of Political Science Association,Library Congress, 11). "Hannah Arendtand the Methodof PoliticalThinking,"Social Research 8. ErnstVollrath, 44 (Spring 1977): 160-82, at 161. Along with Benhabib, Vollrath'sessay is a noteworthy exception, as is David Luban,"ExplainingDarkTimes: HannahArendt'sTheory of Theory," Social Research50 (1983): 215-47. 77. 9. HannahArendt,"Reply," "Hannah Arendtandthe Methodof PoliticalThinking,"162. 10. Vollrath, 11. See, for example, MartinJay,"HannahArendt:OpposingViews," Partisan Review 45 (1978): 348-80. 12. RichardBernstein,Beyond Objectivismand Relativism(Philadelphia:University of PennsylvaniaPress, 1985). 13. Donna Haraway,"SituatedKnowledges:The Science Question in Feminism and the FeministStudies 14 (1988): 575-99, at 581. Privilegeof PartialPerspective," 14. Ibid. 15. Althoughthere are similaritiesbetween the pluralistand contestedquality of Arendt's "situated knowledges,"therearealso significantdifferences.To note storytellingandHaraway's one, the distinctionthat Arendtmakesbetweenthe public andsocial realmsrules out some just of the questionsthat Harawayconsiderscrucialto "situating" knowledgeclaims and "embodyAs the focus of this essay is the workof HannahArendt,it is beyond its scope ing" objectivity. to it to pursuethis comparisonhere.Consequently, is important makeit clear thatin mentioning HarawayI mean to do no more than suggest partial affinities between her work and that of of HannahArendt.Because my own thinkingaboutthe epistemologicalcontributions Arendt's has obviously been influencedby Haraway's"situated knowledges,"it is important storytelling and necessaryto acknowledgethe connection,even withoutmakinga precise comparisonand conferencepaper, contrastbetween them. I treatthis comparisonmore fully in an unpublished and of "SituatedImpartiality: Exploringthe Intersection Feminism,Poststructuralism, Political Philosophy." 16. For an accessible historyof the problem,see RichardBernstein,The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory (Philadelphia:University of PennsylvaniaPress, 1976). For a feministtheory,see Alison Jaggar of discussionof the intersection this debatewith contemporary and Susan Bordo, eds., Gender/Body/Knowledge (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989). 17. TracyStrong,TheIdea of Political Theory(NotreDame, IN: Universityof Notre Dame Press, 1990), 119-20. 18. Hannah Arendt,TheHumanCondition(Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress, 1958), 7. 19. Ibid., 184. Arendtandthe Methodof PoliticalThinking,"165. 20. Vollrath,"Hannah DarkTimes,"248. 21. Luban,"Explaining 22. Ibid.,228. 23. Ibid.,247. Reviewof Politics 15 (1953): 68-76. 24. EricVoegelin,"TheOriginsof Totalitarianism," 25. Hannah Arendt, "Philosophy and Politics" (Arendt papers, Library of Congress, 1954), 32.
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26. Arendt,"Actionand the Pursuitof Happiness,"2-3. 27. HannahArendt,"On HannahArendt,"in HannahArendt:The Recoveryof the Public edited by Melvyn Hill (New York:St. Martin's,1979), 336-37. World, 28. HannahArendt,"PersonalResponsibilityUnder Dictatorship" (draft,Libraryof Congress, 1964), 27. 29. Arendt,Between Past and Future,28. 30. Alasdair Maclntyre,After Virtue(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 201. 31. BenjaminBarber,The Conquestof Politics (Princeton,NJ: PrincetonUniversityPress, 1988), 183. 32. HannahArendt,Eichmannin Jerusalem(New York:Penguin, 1963, 1983), 86. 33. Arendt,Between Past and Future,6. 34. MarthaC. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1986). Subsequentreferencesto this work appearin the form of page sources. 35. Arendt,"Notes for Six Lectures," and esp. "TheGreatTradition the Natureof Totalitarianism." 36. Luban,"ExplainingDarkTimes,"218. 37. HannahArendt, "Understanding Politics,"Partisan Review 20 (1953): 377-92, at and 382. 38. TheBlack Book: TheNazi CrimeAgainstthe JewishPeople, compiled andedited by the WorldJewish Congress,the JewishAnti-FascistCommittee,the VaadLeumi,andthe American Committeeof Jewish Writers,Artistsand Scientists (New York:Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1946). 2 Quoted in HannahArendt, "The Image of Hell [review of The Black Book]" Commentary (1946): 291-95, at 291. 39. Ibid., 292. 40. Letterto David Riesman, datedJune 13, 1949. 41. See also the preface to BetweenPast and Future,where Arendtarguesthat it is not by logical consistency or accuratedescriptionthat one tells the truthbut by criticalthinking. 42. Draftof memo A to Underwood,probablyAugust 1946, Libraryof Congress. 43. Draftresearchoutline,"TheElementsof Shame.Antisemitism-Imperialism-Racism," August 1946, Libraryof Congress. 44. Draftof Memo A to MaryUnderwood,probablyAugust 1946, Libraryof Congress. 45. Ibid. 46. HannahArendt, "Social Science Techniquesand the Study of Concentration Camps," Jewish Social Studies 12 (1950): 49-64, at 49. 47. Ibid., 50. 48. Arendt,Between Past and Future,87. 49. Arendt,"Social Science Techniques," 61. 50. Ibid., 60. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid., 61. 53. Arendt,"TheImage of Hell," 292. 54. Luban's "ExplainingDark Times" is a noteworthy exception. This essay is a most illuminatingexplicationof Arendt'scritiqueof positivesocial science. AlthoughLubancriticizes Arendtfor relyingtoo muchon passingreferencesto theoreticalphysics andtoo little on explicit argument,nonetheless he draws from Arendt'svarious assertionsabout social science a more plausible critiqueof positivism thanshe makes herself. 55. See Michael Oakeshott, "The Voice of Poetry in the Conversationof Mankind,"in Rationalismin Politics (New York:Methuen,1962, 1981).
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56. Arendt,"SocialScience Techniques," 51, 58. 50, 57. Arendt,"TheImageof Hell,"292. 58. Benhabib,"Hannah Arendtand the RedemptivePowerof Narrative," 186. 59. In England,the book appearedas The Burdenof Our Times,a title less in the style of social science thanthatwhich appearedin the UnitedStatesbut still missing the allusionof the workingversion. 60. HannahArendt, "Outline,"for Mary Underwood,probablyAugust 1946, Libraryof Congress. for 61. Similarly,Seyla Benhabibcalls the term origins a "misnomer" the work, in which Arendtmakesit "clearthatshe is not concernedto establishsome inevitablecontinuitybetween the past and the presentof such a naturethat one has to view what happenedas what had to 171. Arendtandthe RedemptivePowerof Narrative," happen."In "Hannah 62. HannahArendt,Antisemitism (San Diego: Harvest, 1951, HarcourtBrace Jovanovich, 1951, 1968), x. 63. This is exactly the point on which she is takento task by critics who see her as a Cold in et Warideologist.See BenjaminR. Barber al., Totalitarianism Perspective:ThreeViews(New York:Praeger,1969). x. 64. Arendt,Antisemitism, 65. Ibid.,xi. An 66. HannahArendt,"Onthe Natureof Totalitarianism: Essay in Understanding" (typescript, Libraryof Congress,undated),7. and 67. Arendt,"Understanding Politics." 68. Voegelin,"[Reviewof] Origins,"70. 69. Ibid.,69. 70. Ibid.,emphasisadded. 71. Ibid.,74. 77. 72. Arendt,"Reply," 73. Ibid. 74. Ibid.,77-78. 75. Ibid.,78-79, emphasisadded. 76. Voegelin,"[Reviewof] Origins,"74. 83. 77. Arendt,"Reply," 78. Ibid.,79. 79. Ibid., 78. 80. Ibid.,79, 78. 81. Ibid.,79. 82. HannahArendt, "The ArchimedeanPoint" (publishedtranscriptof a lecture for the Universityof MichiganCollege of Engineers,1968). 83. J. Peter Euben, The Tragedyof Political Theory(Princeton,NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1990), 197. 84. Arendt,"TheArchimedean Point,"6. 85. Ibid.,25. Forrelateddiscussionsof the epistemologicalstatusof politicalunderstanding, see William Connolly,The Termsof Political Discourse (Princeton,NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1983); and TracyStrong,The Idea of Political Theory,chaps. 1, 3. 86. For a discussion of this controversy,see John Finley, Three Essays on Thucydides (Cambridge,MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 1967). Finley's readingof Thucydidessupports nor Arendt'sposition.He arguesthatthe work is neithera simple fabrication a literallyaccurate reportbut, rather,a "possible picture of men's attitude"towardthe events of the war (p. 3).
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of Thucydides offers a representation things that could have been said in a work that "in style as well as in thoughtcarriesthe imprintof the past itself' (p.89). 87. Euben, The Tragedyof Political Theory,197, emphasisadded. 88. Arendt,Between Past and Future,51. 89. Ibid. 90. Euben, The Tragedyof Political Theory,199. 91. Nussbaum,The Fragility of Goodness, 191. 92. Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, edited by Ronald Beiner (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1982), 13. (hereafterLectures) 93. ImmanuelKant, Critiqueof Judgment,translated J. H. Bernard(New York:Hafner, by 1951), 136. 94. WalterBenjamin,Illuminations(New York:Schocken, 1969), 257. Arendtand the RedemptivePower of Narrative,"182-83. 95. Benhabib,"Hannah 96. Kant,Critiqueof Judgment,73. 97. Ibid., 194. to 98. Paul Guyer also connects the discussionof "crystallization" contingency.He argues that Kant uses crystallizationto arguethat the "mechanicalprocesses of nature"are sufficient to account for the existence of naturalforms,and so "theactualexistence of beautifulforms in Kant and naturedoes not requireus to attributeany actual intentionsto natureor its creator." the Claims of Taste(Cambridge,MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1977), 349. 99. Kant, Critiqueof Judgment,15. Subsequentreferencesto this work appearin the form of page sources. in 100. Paul Guyer,"Pleasureand Society in Kant'sTheoryof Judgment," Essays in Kant's Aesthetics,edited by Ted Cohen and PaulGuyer(Chicago:Universityof Chicago Press, 1982), 21-54, at 23. Also, Guyer,Kantand the Claimsof Taste,279-82. 101. Arendt,Lectures,42. 102. Ibid. 103. Kant, Critiqueof Judgment,136. As Guyer notes, the claim that common sense is a practice is only one of the three ways that Kantdefines that concept in the text. Kantand the for Claimsof Taste,280-81. This definitionis mostimportant the purposesof this essay, however, because it is the one on which Arendtfocuses in Lectures. 104. Arendt,Lectures,43-44. 105. Kant, Critiqueof Judgment,136, emphasisadded. 106. Dagmar Barnouw remarks upon another instance of what I would call creative appropriationin Arendt's translationof allgemein as "general." Barnouw notes that it is customaryin Kant scholarshipto translatethe term as "universal," although it can also mean "general,""common,"or "public."It is used idiomatically to indicate widespread belief or common consent ratherthan universaltruth.Barouw claims that Arendt'sdecision to drawon its idiomatic use is a deliberatedeparturefrom "the desirable universal standpointin Kant's thanin community." meaning[which] is locatedabove rather DagmarBarnouw,VisibleSpaces: Hannah Arendt and the German-JewishExperience (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 21-22. 107. Arendt,Lectures,43. 108. There is also some ambiguityin Arendt'saccountof judgment, as Ronald Beiner has noted. Whereasin Arendt'searlierwritingspublicityhas literallyto do with the public space, in the Kant lectures it can be internalto the mind of the theorist.She writes that critical thinking is "still a solitary business, [thoughit] does not cut itself off from 'all others.' [Rather,]by the force of imaginationit makes the others presentand thus moves in a space that is potentially
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public, open to all sides" (Arendt,Lectures,43). Beiner takes this passageto mean that Arendt into has simplyimported herown workKant'sambiguityoverthe differencebetweenimputation and actualcommunication. Althougha full discussionof Beiner'swork is beyond the scope of this essay, I disagree with Beiner and also with BenjaminBarberwho claim that in her last writingsArendtretreatsfrom politics to the rationalismof the solitaryspectator.As I argue in the following pages, therearesignificantdifferencesbetween Arendt'sand Kant'sconceptions of the imagination.See BenjaminR. Barber,TheConquestof Politics (Princeton,NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 1988), chap. 8. 109. Arendt,Lectures,42. 110. In arguingthat Arendtassigns the practiceof enlargedthinkingto the storyteller,I disagreestronglywith RonaldBeiner.He readsthe Kantlecturesas a shift "fromthe represenand tative thoughtand enlargedmentalityof political agents to the spectatorship retrospective See Essay,"in Lectures,91. judgmentof historiansand storytellers." Beiner,ed., "Interpretive As I have arguedthroughoutthis essay, the problemof historicalwriting as Arendtsees it is precisely thatthe historianis not a spectatorof the past who is disengagedfromthe problemof actionbut a critic who tells the story of the past in the midstof presentquestions. 111. HannahArendt,Men in Dark Times(New York:HarcourtBrace Jovanovich, 1959, 1968), 97, emphasisadded. 87. 112. Benjamin,Illuminations, 113. Ibid., 89. 114. Arendt,BetweenPast and Future,241. 115. For an accountof somethingquite similar,see MariaLugones,"Playfulness,'World'in Travelling,and Loving Perception," Gloria Anzaldua,ed., MakingFace, MakingSoul (San Francisco:Aunt Lute Foundation Books, 1990). Brace Jovanovich,1929, 116. VirginiaWoolf,A Roomof One's Own(New York:Harcourt 1957), 4. 117. Ibid., 3. 118. Ibid.,4. 6. 119. Arendt,"Onthe Natureof Totalitarianism," 120. Arendt,TheHumanCondition,5.
Lisa J. Disch teachespolitical theoryat the Universityof Minnesota.Her book,Critical in Understanding the Workof HannahArendt,will be publishedby Cornell University Press. She has publishedessays in PS and Signs.

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More Truth Than Fact: Storytelling as Critical Understanding in the Writings of Hannah Arendt Author(s): Lisa J.

LISAJ. DISCH Universityof Minnesota

THEORY/ November 1993 POLITICAL

Disch / STORYTELLING ARENDT'S WRITINGS IN

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AS STORYTELLING CRITICAL THINKING?

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Politics," where she writes that "the elements of totalitarianismform its

selves nevercause anything.They become originsof events if and when they

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