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Deception.

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It is not often noted that the problem of deception occupies a central place in Hannah Arendt's analysis of totalitarianism. At the outset of Origins of Totalitarianism, prior to her analysis of anti-Semitism, imperialism, or radical evil, she raises the issue of deception, considering the difference between ancient and mod ern sophists and their relation to truth and reality: "Plato, in his famous fight against the ancient Sophists, discovered that their "universal art of changing the mind by arguments (Phaedrus 261) had nothing to do with truth, but aimed at opinions which by their nature are changing, and which are valid only 'at the time of the agreement and as long as the agreement lasts,' (Theatetus 172). ...The most striking difference between the ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of the argument at the expense of truth, where as the moderns want a more lasting victory at the expense of reality".1 In these early pages of Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt claims that the characteristic that sets totalitarianism apart from tyrannical and dictatorial regimes is precisely the sophistic victory at the expense of reality, which she argues institutes a "lying world order" or what also might be deemed "radical deception." Indeed, her discussion of radical evil cannot be understood apart from her continuing preoccupation with the problem of this particular kind of political deception. When Arendt writes in 1945, "The problem of evil will be the fundamental question of post war intellectual life in Europe", she is indicating in the strongest terms possible that the problem of radical evil is by no means eradicated with the defeat of totalitarianism, and this in large part because of its inseparable link to radical deception, which for her has nothing to do with what we understand by falsehood, error, or even the deliberate lie -the ways in which deception in all its guises is traditionally distinguished from truth. Falsehood and error are the opposites of truth, while a deliberate lie is the intentional dissimulation of the truth. Radical deception is something else altogether.

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