Distinguishing Understanding: Writing-scenes in Hannah Arendt

In his legendary conversation with Hannah Arendt, broadcast on German television on October 28, 1964, the journalist Günter Gaus asks Arendt about the motivation and the premises of her "work." "You know," the political theorist replies succinctly, "what is essential for me is: I must understand." She continues:

In my case, this understanding also includes writing. Writing is, isn't it, part of the process of understanding [in the sound recording—versus the published transcription—of the interview, Arendt states: "writing is still there in the process of understanding" (Das Schreiben ist noch mit in dem Verstehensprozess)].

Gaus

When you write, that serves to further your own knowledge.

Arendt

Yes, because now certain things have been fixed. Let's suppose I had a very good memory and remembered everything I think: knowing my own laziness, I very much doubt I would have ever noted anything down. What counts for me is the process of thinking itself. When I have that, then I am quite content personally. If then I succeed in adequately expressing it in writing, I am content again. …

Gaus

Do you write easily? Do you articulate easily?

Arendt

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But I never write [schreiben] until I can, as it were, just copy it down [abschreiben].

Gaus

Until after you have thought ahead of time [vordenken].

Arendt

Yes. I know exactly what I want to write. I don't write before then. Most of the time, I write down only one version [Niederschrift]. And that goes relatively quickly because it really only depends on how quickly I type (Ich will verstehen 48–49).

The way in which I, understanding, and writing are related here needs interpretation. At stake in understanding is a subject bound by a must. If writing enters into relation with this existential understanding, if writing belongs to understanding or diffusely is "still in" it, then understanding (together with its synonyms thinking and knowledge) becomes a process, and the I moves along in writing. The next turn surprisingly imposes limits on this "intransitive" (Barthes) process of writing. The fact that the written logos fixes an object, that which is thought, actualizes metaphysical concepts of writing (such as Plato's) and suspends the process that just now was still mediated in writing. Thinking is now a process in itself; writing serves what is pregiven in thought by "adequately" representing it. Yet this arrangement, too, is prone to instability. A further expression reintroduces writing into thinking. Where writing easily and articulating easily—the sliding insignificance of writing—are measured by whether what has been thought ahead of time is "as it were" copied down to the rhythm of a "quick" typing movement, thinking must already have been writing before it was noted down. Running counter to this, and once more with regard to a "process of thinking itself" conceived of as independent (without writing), the standpoint of the I asserts itself, an I who claims to have known before writing what it expresses in writing. This knowledge on the part of the I, too, is interrupted by another turn. In a passage not preserved in the published versions of the conversation, the succinct answer and the subject of understanding are fundamentally qualified by the unavailability of self-knowledge:

Conversation

Arendt

What is really essential for me, it seems to me, I want to say all these things with the restriction that human beings never know themselves, that we are not supposed to look at our own cards, that, really, we shouldn't be doing the sort of thing I am now doing with you, so if we

Gaus

I'm glad you're doing it anyway.

Arendt

If for the moment we suppose all that, then I'd like to say that what is essential for me is: I must understand.

Published version

You know, what is essential for me is: I must understand.

(48)

No other passage in the published version undergoes more extensive cuts. All that remains of the spoken text is the...