Precipitated out

One might consider this a pessimistic view of the world – a "tragedy," as she wrote to Jaspers – yet it is one that also "warms and lightens the heart" because despite the revolution's failure, through Arendt's evocation of its memory in writing, the power of revolutionary association to create community and promulgate laws gains immediacy in the eyes of her readers as something of simplicity and greatness. In fact, she kindles in the reader a revolutionary yearning. It is as if the historical personages are precipitated out of the objective historical account and returned to the living, internal stage of their own world, which in turn is conceived of as a public space. The effect is grounded in Plato's idea that literature about tragic things is not, as Aristotle posited, written to make people experience empathy. Instead, its principal aim is to keep alive in the reader (who by reading rehearses taking action) the presence of values and concepts in a world where values have been lost, and to reinvigorate moribund collective ideas. This is the idea that shaped The Human Condition as well as Arendt's essay "Tradition and the Modern Age."

Translation: The "Oddly Circuitous Path," in Unlearning with Hannah Arendt by Marie Luise Knott, translated by David Dollenmayer

Photo taken in RISD Museum, Providence RI