Hannah

Arendt
1906-1975

“Truth and
Politics”
1967
 two classic works
Two pathologies of modern
republicanism:
1. Ethnicity and Nationalism
-> fascism
2. Equality and Class ->
communism
• “right to have rights”?
“banality of evil”:
1. following orders
2. technocratic-bureaucratic
system
Models of authenticity
What does authenticity primarily concern?
1. Simone de Beauvoir: subjectivity, self-relation, and radical
existential choice and freedom to challenge alienation and
bad faith with oneself.
2. Hannah Arendt: relationship with truth and
communication to challenge alienation and untruth with
oneself and others.
3. Rahel Jaeggi: authenticity too subjective; active
appropriation and formation of self within social relations.
 Heidegger Arendt

public sphere fallen and inauthentic Where reality of existence

everydayness engaged
life Thrown being-towards- natality-mortality
death
existence being-there (Dasein) Human condition – willing, acting,
knowing in public and private

others Being-with in solicitude Collaboration and Cooperation

truth event of unconcealment Condition of human and public
existence
democratic No, fallen alienated Yes, based on constitutional limits,
republics form of life participation, and public sphere
 Heidegger and Arendt: truth is the
condition of human existence; human
existence not condition of truth.
Arendt: truth is a condition of social
Truth life that can conflict with untruth as

and
the apparent condition of politics.
Can conflict of truth and politics be
Politics resolved or is it irresolvable aporia?
Real or only apparent paradox?
1. Truth as the condition of human life
2. Untruth as the condition of politics
 • Politicians expected to lie: what does this
imply?
• Is the essence of truth to be ineffective and the
essence of power to be deceitful?
• what reality does truth possess if it is ineffective
in the public realm, which more than other
human spheres guarantees the authenticity and
reality of existence to natal and mortal humans
Opening –beings who know they appear out of non-
being and disappear into it?
Questions • can non-political truth be condition of political?
 Truth as condition of life
1. Truth: condition of individual and public existence.
2. Untruth: refusal to consider whether life is authentically worth
living without justice and freedom.
• human world would not survive without individuals willing to say
what is – truth-telling.
• No permanence, no perseverance, can be conceived without
persons who testify about what is and what appears authentic to
them because it is.
Truth and authenticity = speaking, witnessing, testimony
 contemporary fragility of truth
I. Early modern truth:
1. conflict between truth and politics was expressed with respect to rational
truth, philosophy, and science.
2. mathematical, scientific, philosophical truths belong to rational truth
demarcated from factual truth.
II. Contemporary truth:
1. truth is construct of the human mind.
2. factual truth more exposed to erasure by manufactured mass opinion and
authoritarian & totalitarian regimes. / contemporary social media?
• Thesis: facts and events, outcomes of persons living and acting together,
constitute the very texture of human life and political realm.
 Plato: truth as philosophical dialogue
vs. power of persuasive rhetoric
Death of Socrates
• Truthteller: risks own life trying to free
fellow-citizens from untruth.
• conflict between truth and opinion: the
philosopher and the citizen.
1. Citizen: changing opinions about
affairs, persuaded by rhetoric and self-
interest.
2. Philosopher: eternal truths and
principles should order human affairs.
Arendt’s Kant: from public to community
1. powers that restrict persons’ freedom to publicly
communicate restrict the freedom to think;
2. only guarantee for “correctness” in thinking is that we
think “in community with others to whom we
communicate our thoughts as they communicate theirs
to us.”
3. Human reason, as fallible, can function and flourish
only in its public use.
 Systemic distortion of facts and events
• Plato to Hobbes: none held that organized lying, which
now defines the public realm, could overcome truth.
factual truth seen as dangerous
can factual truth survive power’s onslaught?
• modern ideologies: only political weapons; no truth
and truthfulness - private and public authenticity.
• mass public: facts are publicly known, yet public who
knows them can limit their discussion and make them
what they are not, secrets.
 direct political relevance of factual truth
• Political untruth: If simple factual statements are not accepted,
truths witnessed with the eyes and the body, doubts arise that
the aim of the political realm is to deny every kind of truth.
• Philosophical truth inadequate: becomes opinion in the
marketplace, shifts from one form of reasoning to another and
from one way of existing to another.
• Factual truth: concerns events and circumstances involving
other people; established by witnesses, depends on testimony;
exists in communication; even in privacy, it is political.
Truth as sociality and authenticity in relation with others
 Two problems
1. historical record or mere opinion? in view of truth telling, tendency
to transform fact into opinion, to blur dividing line, is problem.
2. do facts, independent of opinion and interpretation, exist at all? Is
it possible to ascertain facts without interpretation?
• Reply: truths opposed to opinion in seeking and asserting validity.
• Validity: not mere epistemological question; but question of
authentic existence and public life.
• Opinion and interpretation -> against the existence of facts and
events; justify blurring lines between fact, opinion, and
interpretation, or excuse their manipulation.
 Non-political truth and existence
power checked by:
1. Political realm: constitution, bill of rights, multiplicity of powers,
system of checks and balances.
2. Non-political realm: what arises from outside the political realm,
independent of wishes and desires of citizens and tyrants.
from the viewpoint of politics, truth has a coercive negative
character; truth demands acknowledgment and assent:
1. Tyrants rightly fear the competition of other forces and realms
they cannot monopolize.
2. Democracies consent and opinion contrary coercive force.
 • truthfulness, unsupported by distorting
forces of power and interest, becomes a
political issue when society uses organized
lying on principle.
Untruth • Modern mass manipulation of fact and
opinion:
politicizes rewriting of history, image-making,
truthfulness propaganda, and government policy.
When everyone lies about everything, the
truthteller must be political.
• Deception as self-deception – question of
ideology, structural distortion
 I. “Democratic free world”
• government has not monopolized power, but interest groups,
advertising, governmental propaganda influence thought.
• Images made for consumption become a reality for everyone.
II. “Despotisms”
• one-party regimes shield their ideologies and images from the
impact of reality and truth.
• result of brainwashing is cynicism; refusal to believe any truth, no
matter how well truth is established.
• result of substitution of lies for factual truths destroys the “sense by
which we take our bearings in the real world.”
• human affairs contingent , could be otherwise; possibilities for lying
are boundless; but this boundlessness can lead to their self-defeat.
• sign of factuality of facts and events is
this stubborn thereness, its contingency
defies efforts at conclusive explanation.
• images appear and make plausible, have
facticity and image
a transient advantage over factual truth.
• but they cannot compete in stability with
that which simply is because it happens
to be thus and not otherwise.
• consistent lying pulls ground from under
us and offers no other ground to stand.
• Loss of our sense of direction and reality
is among the most common and vivid
experiences under totalitarian rule.
 power vs. facticity of truth
1. Persuasion & violence destroy truth yet cannot replace it.
2. Power: no viable substitute for truth and presupposes
truth it would control.
• Past as factual reality beyond power’s reach.
• Facts stubbornly assert themselves; their fragility is
combined with resiliency; the same irreversibility
characterizes human action.
• Power’s transience makes it an unreliable tool for achieving
permanence; not only truth and facts are insecure in its
hands but untruth and non-facts.
 Political requires non-political
1. limited constitutional governments: political realm
recognizes worth of existence of individuals and
associations over which it has no power.
2. truth-telling: politics needs standpoint outside political.
political priority of non-political spheres
1. Public: free action and discussion
2. Academia: pursuing independent research and inquiry
3. Journalism: important political function of supplying
information is exercised from outside the political realm; no
political action and decision should be involved.
 • Authenticity and being oneself occur in
corporation with others, in acting together as a
public, from being in the world in word and deed,
acquiring and sustaining personal identity and
social and beginning anew.
non-political • political sphere is limited: it cannot encompass
truth as the whole of human life, the world, and that
condition of which humans cannot change at will.
political life • only by respecting its own limits can the political
realm, and freedom to act and change, preserve
truthfulness and keep promises.