The tyranny of truth and the tyranny of opinion: Thinking with Arendt

Abstract This Article is an attempt to think with Arendt about the crisis of liberal democracy in the face of the populist attack in recent decades on judicial review, human rights, immigrants, minority rights, academic and judicial elites, etc. Most of the arguments deployed against populism draw on principles and vocabulary borrowed from the liberal tradition, while few come from the separate democratic tradition. Because of this, the debate has taken on a shape in which populists claim to speak in the name of democracy—the will of the people—while liberals stand in the opposing camp, thus creating a tension between liberalism and democracy. In this Article, by reflecting on Arendt’s work, I develop a democratic, rather than liberal, argument against populism. I do so by analyzing the double role that truth plays in Arendt’s political thought: on the one hand she thinks that the idea of truth can be fatal to politics, for politics is based on opinion rather than truth, on the many rather than the one, on free citizens rather than a philosopher king. On the other hand, majority opinion can become totalitarian, crushing freedom and truth as well—and as such, it constitutes a threat to politics. In such cases, truth becomes a site of resistance to totalitarianism. Truth thus plays an ambivalent role in Arendt’s politics: at times it’s a problem, at other times a solution. The Article tries to elicit a certain Arendtian conception of politics that has its own internal constraints—not borrowed from liberal morality—that can place limits on populist politics and thus provide a democratic-republican opposition to populist politics.