Making Facts, Using Facts: Two Poetics of the Factual and One Theory of the Political

Abstract

In political thought, there is perhaps no more penetrating scrutiny of the significance of the factual than hannah Arendt's essay “Truth and Politics.” “Facts and events,” Arendt observes, are the “invariable outcome of men living and acting together.” As such, they “constitute the very texture of the political realm” (227). Concerning words and deeds of many actors, factual truth must be the basis for deliberations and opinions in the political space. “Freedom of opinion,” she continues, “is a farce unless factual information is guaranteed and the facts themselves are not in dispute. In other words, factual truth informs political thought just as rational truth informs philosophical speculation” (234). Yet facts are infinitely fragile things, for they occur in the ever-changing field of human affairs, “established through testimony by eyewitnesses—notoriously unreliable—and by records, documents, and monuments, all of which can be suspected as forgeries” (239). Facts can be manipulated, even denied outright by the powers that be. The lie, opposed to factual truth as error is to rational truth, represents a deliberate political action, since it aims “to change the world” (246).