The question is how to think about the political functioning of historical narratives and causal explanations. We're familiar with the idea of re-writing history for political purposes, e.g. the 1619 Project. What I find astonishing is that Benjamin, and Arendt following him, are entirely ready and willing to throw over traditional historiographical practices, and to develop entirely new ones(!), for the sake of de-legitimating ANY "explanation" for totalitarianism, saying not only that it was totally unprecedented, but that it was truly without any historical-causal rationale. In the end, it must be purely arbitrary, chosen, in no way inevitable.
I think, as I indicated in a footnote, it is Hegel at the back of everything. (Existentialism would then be read as the absolute repudiation of Hegelian-inspired politics.) As Arendt argues at the end of her long (!) Origins book, totalitarianism's own internal rational heavily depended on the "Laws of Nature" and the "Laws of History" to justify its "logic." She wasn't going to give one ounce of credence to that, even to the point of working out a whole new genre for research and writing.
The lesson we probably should take is that there is a huge danger in any political philosophy that would justify itself based on "nature" -- i.e. "it can't be otherwise." I can't help but think this includes political philosophies based on "natural law," like integralism on the New Right. Fukuyama's idea of an "end of history" is also implicated.
I think you can posit a cohesive and continuous explanation for the ills of history without endorsing them or supporting them as inevitable. If readers cannot understand that what has happened is not inevitable just because it did happen, then that is the fundamental problem. That would imply that humans have no free will at all, and everything is simply inevitable. It is lazy or maybe hopeless.
Now, I can see how different historical narratives can obscure the 'truth' of what happened - the rewriting of history as it were. There is certainly a lot of modern mistrust of historical narratives for exactly this reason. I'm curious how this would inform Arendt's diving. Not that this is her fear, but it is a modern counterpoint to examining the pearls of history.
The question is how to think about the political functioning of historical narratives and causal explanations. We're familiar with the idea of re-writing history for political purposes, e.g. the 1619 Project. What I find astonishing is that Benjamin, and Arendt following him, are entirely ready and willing to throw over traditional historiographical practices, and to develop entirely new ones(!), for the sake of de-legitimating ANY "explanation" for totalitarianism, saying not only that it was totally unprecedented, but that it was truly without any historical-causal rationale. In the end, it must be purely arbitrary, chosen, in no way inevitable.
I think, as I indicated in a footnote, it is Hegel at the back of everything. (Existentialism would then be read as the absolute repudiation of Hegelian-inspired politics.) As Arendt argues at the end of her long (!) Origins book, totalitarianism's own internal rational heavily depended on the "Laws of Nature" and the "Laws of History" to justify its "logic." She wasn't going to give one ounce of credence to that, even to the point of working out a whole new genre for research and writing.
The lesson we probably should take is that there is a huge danger in any political philosophy that would justify itself based on "nature" -- i.e. "it can't be otherwise." I can't help but think this includes political philosophies based on "natural law," like integralism on the New Right. Fukuyama's idea of an "end of history" is also implicated.
I think you can posit a cohesive and continuous explanation for the ills of history without endorsing them or supporting them as inevitable. If readers cannot understand that what has happened is not inevitable just because it did happen, then that is the fundamental problem. That would imply that humans have no free will at all, and everything is simply inevitable. It is lazy or maybe hopeless.
Now, I can see how different historical narratives can obscure the 'truth' of what happened - the rewriting of history as it were. There is certainly a lot of modern mistrust of historical narratives for exactly this reason. I'm curious how this would inform Arendt's diving. Not that this is her fear, but it is a modern counterpoint to examining the pearls of history.