Do Politics Repel Truth? Hannah Arendt on Political Controversies in Dialogue with Plato

This article uncovers Hannah Arendt’s debt to Plato’s work in her analyses of political controversies of her time, as Nazi propaganda and state lies on American involvement in the Vietnam War, and her assessment of the failure of the French Revolution. While her relation to Plato’s oeuvre when she tackles political issues most often took the form of a stormy and one-sided dialogue resembling a monologue, her treatment of these controversies shows that Arendt had at times an authentic, open, and fruitful dialogue with the Greek philosopher. To make sense of these phenomena and events, she uses a range of concepts and philosophical motives first developed through her account of the antagonism between the philosopher and the polis and draws from Plato’s discussions of the relations between truth and opinion. Uncovering this crucial source of Arendt’s thinking allows a more nuanced and perceptive grasp of her political thought