Fifty years ago, German thinker Hannah Arendt died suddenly of a heart attack in her New York apartment. The same day, on his desk, he had written on his typewriter the title “The Trial”., which will constitute the third and final part of his posthumous work, The life of the spirit. Later, he managed to write two epigrams: a passage from Splendor of Goethe and a maxim of Cicero.
The Goethe quote says: “If I could renounce magic once and for all, crush the urge to summon spirits; if before you, Nature, I was a mere mortal, then being a man would always be worth it. » Arriving at an advanced age, Fausto contemplates the path of his life and concludes that, despite everything, it is worth living, because freedom is not given to us, but rather is a daily conquest.
For Fausto, this conquest is “the highest aspiration that a man can achieve, a sacred vocation”. Accepting the passage of time and accepting old age means accepting finitude and realizing that magic is not enough to understand us as humans. In other words, freedom does not involve conjuring magicians or succumbing to popular siren songs: rather, it is a fight we must fight every day.
The latter gravitates around Arendt, because in her work there is a demand for freedom of thought, while pushing us to cultivate this “extended mentality” capable of putting ourselves in the place of the other and conceiving it as a coexistence with which the public space is configured.
But even if judging must be autonomous, no one ever judges alone. For Arendt, the world is full of plurality, that condiment which makes each individual irreplaceable and unique, and among which we deploy our actions and give “the world more to the world”.
Cicero’s maxim tells us that “victorious affairs please the gods, but defeated ones please Cato.” Interpreted in light of the title that precedes it, the phrase suggests that judgment, like autonomous will, should not be guided or governed by contingency or majority opinion, but rather should be protected by the sapere aude Kantian (Dare to think!)
Judging events does not imply identifying with the current “winner” trend or the dominant ideology. The need for dissent is a condition of possibility for any “Republic,” and this requires having the courage not to be seduced by the herd mentality. This is why Arendt mixes the common sense of Kant with the impartiality of Homer: while the common sense Kantian leads us to place ourselves beyond our “I” and see the world from the other’s point of view, From there, to understand the complexity inherent in reality, Homeric impartiality considers all points of view, since history is an effort that must tell the vision of both the victors and the vanquished, of the Greeks and the Trojans.
Pleasing Cato means, in other words, assuming the courage to put aside the ego that floods our projection of the world. This means abandoning, even for a fleeting moment, partisan speeches or sectarian trenches to appeal to shared benefit. Perhaps this is the true victor’s cause to which we must appeal: the vision that there is a common interest, which is nothing other than that which unites the world.
Is this possible? Surely that’s unpopular? Yes (and even more so following elections). Is this necessary? If we accept, like Faustus, that the sacred calling of freedom is worth pursuing, then the answer is affirmative, for we must assume that without responsibility a common world is impossible.
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