Issue #25

Abstract: In her essay ‘Truth and Politics’ Arendt discusses the role of historical facts in politics. According to her, although the politician, by nature of his activity, shows little respect towards facts, he cannot completely ignore them. Moreover, since in the modern age it is no longer possible to maintain continuity of a community’s existence by means of verbal tradition or public architecture, it is historical facts that constitute a framework, within which political activity may have durable results. Arendt attributes the key role in the constitution of such a framework to the figure of ‘the teller of factual truth’. However, on closer examination, it turns out that this description may signify people of diverse vocations and professions, such as historians, writers, journalists or political advisers, and that none of them seems to be able to play the role assigned to them by Arendt. The article shows that Wystan Hugh Auden’s discussion of the poet’s condition allows one to close the gap in Arendt’s conception of the role of facts in politics and at the same time to see the fundamental limitations of that conception.