[see also bibliography, part 1, part 2, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8] I do not need to be a politician or an artist to have a sense of this "movement which runs through the lineaments," of course. Indeed, as Berlin notes, this quintessentially perceptual operation is characteristic of the synthesis of "the fragments that make up life at any level... as every human being, to some extent, must integrate them" (Berlin 47). Further, this faculty, "based on learning and exprience" (Clausewitz 109) is developed in my daily life; it is nothing other than my personal, practical understanding of 'how the world works.' Appropriately, this corresponds to Arendt's conception of "common sense," which "occupies such a high rank in the hierarchy of political qualities because it is the one sense that fits into reality as a whole our five strcitly individual senses and the strictly particular data they perceive" (Arendt 208-9). That we are familiar with this perceptual phenomenon in our everyday life should not make it any less remarkable nor less important for the political actor, for whom it is indeed a more crucial skill than those who do not use such expressive means in their work. In a sense, this is the most important perceptual skill common to the artist, the writer, the politician, and the commander, all of whom realize their 'work' in the milieu of expression and action - that is to say, human society - despite the radically different expressive means particular to each. It is
a sense of direct acquaintance with the texture of life; not just the sense of a chaotic flow of experience, but a highly developed discrimination of what matters from the rest. To be able to do this well seems to me to be a gift akin to that of some novelists, that which makes such writers as, for example, Tolstoy or Proust convey a sense of direct acquaintance with the texture of life; not just the sense of a chaotic flow of experience, but a highly developed discrimination of what matters from the rest. Above all this is an acute sense of what fits with what, what springs from what, what leads to what; how things seem to vary to different observers, what the effect of such experience upon them may be; what the result is likely to be in a concrete situation of the interplay of human beings and impersonal forces (Berlin 47).
This 'direct acquaintance' of a concrete situation requires that the perceptive political actor "grasp the unique combination of characteristics that constitute this partiuclar situation... the character of a particular movement, of a particular individual, of a unique state of affairs, of a unique atmosphere, of some particular combination of economic, political, personal factors" (Berlin 44-5). These last, the unique 'personal factors' especially are crucial in considerations for any action, which for Arendt must be characterized by the disclosure of the unique identity of the actor (Arendt 179). As a unique individual confronting an unprecedented configuration of the political terrain, my actions are necessarily as unique and new as I am. The unpredictability of the results of action (due to the uncertainty of the terrain) is thus matched by the unpredictability of human actors as such, and man is revealed indeed to be "by no means an unproblematic but a dangerous and dynamic being" (Schmitt 61). Clausewitz similarly insists that in war, "the effect that any measure will have on the enemy is the most singular factor among all the particulars of action" (Clausewitz 139) and thus that the very nature of the interaction is bound to make it unique and thus unpredictable, exceptional. "Is there a field of human affairs where personal relations do not count, where the sparks they strike do not leap across all practical considerations?" (Clausewitz 94) If man were more predictable and less problematic, there would still be a multitude of paths to any particular goal, owing to the incredible density of the web of human relations and the uncertainty of action; accounting for the unpredictability and uniqueness of the actors themselves, "these questions of personality and personal relations raise the number of possible ways of achieving the goal of policy to infinity" (Clausewitz 94).
[next: part 4]