思想权威的黄昏

“ E ven in the darkest of times,” wrote Hannah Arendt, “we have the right to expect some illumination.” The words are promi- nent on the back cover of an early Pelican edition of her book Men in Dark Times, which I noticed on one of the crammed shelves in my Hima- layan home one calamitous morning of the New Year. I had just recoiled from a New York Times headline: a defense of u.s. intervention in venezuela. The subhead was more horrifying still: the former envoy elliott abrams says the administration should push harder for regime change. I immediately reached for the Arendt volume, intrigued by her notion that in a dark time illumination is a human right. …