modernity and human initiative: the … and human initiative: the structure of hannah arendt's...

MODERNITY AND HUMAN INITIATIVE: THE STRUCTURE OF HANNAHARENDT's LIFE OF THE MIND

Hannah Arendt was a philosopher of the modern condition, yet a

philosopher of that condition who possessed an enormousgrasp of the history of ideas. These two great confines-the condi-tion in which modern man finds himself and the tradition providedby the history of ideas-constitute the parameters within whicheverything Hannah Arendt ever wrote is located. Arendt did notwrite systematic philosophy. Her very approach made such a pro-duct unthinkable. Herein lies much of the difficulty various com-mentators have found in her writings. She was primarily a politicaltheorist, yet her unorthodox approach, her refusal to fit comfortablyinto the accepted mold of the political theorist, has produced anunsettling view of her work among political scientists.' Her refusal

1. See, for example, Margaret Canovan, The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt(New York, 1974), 1: " If the very existence of [Arendt ' s] work contradicts currentassumptions, its content and style present a conscious challenge to academic or-thodoxy;" Hans Morgenthau, "Hannah Arendt on Totalitarian Democracy," SocialResearch 44 (1977), 128: "The philosophic contribution which Hannah Arendt makesto political thought is highly original....For it refuses to recognize what the Westerntradition has recognized as politics" (cf. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition[Garden City, N.Y., 1959-hereafter referred to as HC], 9, 13, 15); Ernst Vollrath,"Hannah Arendt and the Method of Political Thinking," Social Research 44 (1977),161: "What distinguishes [Arendt's] thinking from that of others is an uncommondegree of theoretical unprejudice" (Vollrath's italics); George Kateb, "Freedom andWorldliness in the Thought of Hannah Arendt," Political Theory 5 (1977), 143:"Arendt's mission as a philosopher should be recognized as the recovery of the idea ofpolitical action, in a culture which she thinks has lost practice of it, and in which allphilosophy is united, if in nothing else, in denying intrinsic value to it" (cf., however,ibid., 177); and Dante Germino, Beyond Ideology: The Revival of Political Theory(New York, 1967), 144: "Arendt's own work is a testimony that a recovery of the senseof dignity and responsible freedom in human action is not only a possibility in our timebut may actually be underway. This, indeed, is what the recovery of political theory isall about" (cf., however, ibid., 142).

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to consider anything in her massive scholarly output withoutlikewise considering how it related to the history of human thought,her rejection of formalistic theorizing, and her continual return tothe modern condition in the process of her discussions, willguarantee the continuation of both the fascination with her ap-proach and the difficulties that approach occasions.

The concept of political action permeates much of her work, butit is in the last of her labors, the two volumes entitled The Life of theMind, that she presents a concerted attempt to understand the spr-ing from which human initiative flows-the process of humanreasoning. These volumes stand as a necessary complement toArendt's concern with political action, and there are a number ofparallels between what one finds in these volumes and the materialconsidered in her earlier publications. 2 There is a strikingly cohesive

John S. Nelson, on the other hand, finds in Arendt's "treatment of the problematicsof politics and truth...what she regarded a mark of great philosophy-fundamentaland flagrant contradiction." John S. Nelson, "Politics and Truth: Arendt's Pro-blematics," American Journal of Political Science 22 (1978), 271. Nelson adds thatthese "contradictions " testify "not only to the intricacy of [Arendt's] insight, but also tothe continuing war she fought against her own formalist inclinations." Ibid., 297.

Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind, 2 vols., ed. Mary McCarthy (New York,1978); volume 1: Thinking; volume 2: Willing. The substance of volume 1 and a por-tion of volume 2 were presented under the auspices of the Gifford Lectures at theUniversity of Aberdeen in 1973 and 1974. Hereafter, all references to passages fromThe Life of the Mind will be by volume and page number.

2. There is an obvious, and quite important, parallel to HC, a parallel recognizedby several commentators while the two volumes were still at the manuscript stage. SeeHans Jonas, "Acting, Knowing, Thinking: Gleanings from Hannah Arendt'sPhilosophical Work," Social Research 44 (1977), 28-29, 35-43; Vollrath, op. cit.,177f.; J. Glenn Gray, "The Winds of Thought," Social Research 44 (1977), 44 (adiscussion based upon Arendt's "Thinking and Moral Consideration," presented atColorado College in 1970); and Richard J. Bernstein, "Hannah Arendt: Opinion andJudgment," paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Political ScienceAssociation, Chicago, 1976,1.

Arendt specifically addresses this parallel in the "Introduction" to volume 1 of TheLife of the Mind (the only mention of HC in either volume). There she notes that aconcern for the question "What is thinking?" has "renewed in me certain doubts thathave been plaguing me ever since I had finished a study of what my publisher wiselycalled `The Human Condition,' but which I had intended more modestly as an inquiryinto `The Vita Activa.' I had been concerned with the problem of Action, the oldest

HANNAH ARENDT'S LIFE OF THE MIND 191

quality to the relationships among her works which would lead oneto expect such parallels. 3 No study of the thought of Hannah Arendtcan avoid taking The Life of the Mind as a compelling point fromwhich to analyze her works as a whole. It is to these two volumes,therefore, that the following essay is exclusively directed. This veryattempt has its difficulties, since the volumes do not present aphilosophy as such. Rather, they project Arendt's reflections uponthe human rational propensity, reflections which bear fruitfulwitness to her life-long devotion to the history of human thought. Tothe extent that the present format allows, therefore, we should seekto understand these reflections in the manner in which Arendt hasunfolded them.

There is a certain personal quality in The Life of the Mind. Onehas the decided temptation to observe that what they project is theessence of Arendt's dialogues with herself.' Viewing the granddesign of the project as one which addresses the three qualities of thelife of the mind-thinking, willing, and judging-Arendt seeks toconfront squarely the rational experience in the post-metaphysicaland basically post-philosophical period in which we currently find

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concern of political theory, and what had always troubled me about it was the veryterm I adopted by my reflections on the matter, namely, vita activa, was coined bymen who were devoted to the contemplative way of life and who looked upon all kindsof being alive from that perspective" (1.6-unless otherwise indicated, all italics areArendt's). Cf. HC 242, where it is suggested that modernity has produced the necessityof evaluating the life of the mind by dismissing philosophy's pursuit of "Being in its trueappearance," and maintaining that it should properly discuss "the science of the struc-ture of the mind."

The "wisdom" of her American publisher did not translate into the German editionof HC which was in fact entitled Vita Activa: oder Vom ttitigen Leben (Stuttgart,1960).

3. See, for example, Leroy A. Cooper, "Hannah Arendt' s Political. Philosophy: AnInterpretation," The Review of Politics 38 (1976), 170-171, n. 84; Jonas op. cit., 26;and Vollrath, op. cit., 161. The nature of the present paper precludes a detailed ex-amination of such parallels. Relevant passages from Arendt's other works will be citedin footnotes.

4. See Bernstein, op. cit., 25; and Jonas, op. cit., 43, who writes of The Life of theMind: "May winds and waves be kind to what [Arendt] has set adrift in them of hermind's innermost self."

5. There is no doubt that Arendt both regarded the modern age as post-metaphysical and post philosophical and that she considered herself well within that


The design was not completed. Hannah Arendt died less than aweek after completing the section on willing.° We are left,therefore, without what would have become the "coping-stone" ofthe project-the concept of judging,' As is clear from the "Postscrip-tum" found in volume 1, Arendt conceived of the work as consider-ing thinking in volume 1 and willing and judging in volume 2. Thedivision is clear: thinking, of its very nature, generalizes, while will-ing and judging deal with particulars, and are therefore "muchcloser to the world of appearances" (1.213).

It is the manifestation of appearances which constitutes the initialdeparture of the first volume, and the texture of appearance whichserves to ground the last part of the second volume.° One is tempted tosuggest that while thinking, of its very essence, is a consideration of

approach. Toward the end of volume 1 we find the following personal observation: "Ihave spoken about the metaphysical `fallacies,' which...do contain important hints ofwhat this curious out-of-order activity called thinking is all about. In other words, Ihave clearly joined the ranks of those who for some time now have been attempting todismantle metaphysics, and philosophy with all its categories, as we have come toknow them from the beginning in Greece until today. Such dismantling is possible onlyon the assumption that the thread of tradition is broken and that we shall not be able torenew it. Historically speaking what actually has broken down is the Roman trinitythat for thousands of years united religion, authority, and tradition " (1.211-212). Seealso 1.12-13, where Arendt provides two advantages "of our situation following thedemise of metaphysics and philosophy." The first "permit[s] us to look on the past withnew eyes; unburdened and unguided by any traditions...." The second is the demise ofthe "ago-old distinction between the many and the `professional thinkers'...."

On the implications of "the Roman trinity," see Hannah Arendt, Between Past andFuture: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York, 1968)-hereafter referred toas BPF), 91-141 (especially 140, where almost the exact same language is used; the onenoticeable exception is that here Arendt considers the decline of the "trinity" to bebasically a political problem). Cf. Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (New York,1988-hereafter referred to as MDT), 196, 198-199; and id., On Revolution (NewYork, 1965-hereafter referred to as OR), 159.

6. See Mary McCarthy 's "Editor 's Postface," appended to each volume, which pro-vides both a deeply moving account of her long years of collaboration with Arendt andan explanation of the difficulties experienced in bringing the volumes to print.

7. We have included in the second volume an appendix derived from Arendt's lec-tures on Kant which undoubtedly would have constituted the basis for her discussion ofjudging (since Kant's Critique of Judgment remains the only work exclusively devotedto the subject-see 1.94-95).

8. 2.195-217: "The Abyss of Freedom and the Novus Ordo Seclorum."


things out of time, that is, without regard for the temporal realities ofexistence, and while willing, of its very nature, considers things whichhave not yet occurred, judging would provide the dimension of themind which seeks to bring existence back into focus, that which, in itsrelationships with the other two faculties of the mind, produces an ap-proach to particulars which allows the mind to overcome the non-temporal, non-present, domains of thinking and willing.

But so much for idle speculation. What we do possess in the twovolumes is overwhelming. In its decisive import, The Life of the Mindattempts to develop a proper understanding of rational existence. Evenin its uncompleted form, it has but one rival in the history ofthought-Kant's three Critiques. And even here, Arendt faces thedimensions of rational existence without the comforts which thedevelopment of a systematized philosophy provided for Kant. Arendt isnot developing a system. There are any number of questions introducedin the two volumes and not answered. ° The Life of the Mind is an ex-position; it is not written to either rescue philosophy or eulogize itsdeath. It is an exposition which often comments on its subject matter asmuch in the way in which Arendt addresses an issue as in terms of whatis actually said.

The Life of the Mind presents Arendt's essential explanation of themind, an explanation which provides both direction and insight to theproblem of action in the modern period. It is remarkable that the twovolumes deal so infrequently with the implications of action. This is lesssurprising when one considers what action implies-understanding,decision, and choice; that is, it requires thinking, willing, and judging.The Life of the Mind, therefore, stands as the unfolding of the necessarypre-conditions for rational conduct. And while action, of its verynature, encompasses activity directed at some external object, therebyplacing human conduct completely within the purview of physical ex-istence, the "now" of human collective existence, the mind must dealwith the intensely personal pursuit of meaning, of the equation ofmeaning to the basic uncertainty of that which is anticipated but whichyet does not exist, and with the corresponding problems which the inter-change between meaning and anticipation, between thinking and will-

9. This has occasioned a pronounced concern for the volumes among somereviewers. See, for example, Sheldon Wolin's review entitled "Stopping to Think," The

New York Review of Books 25 (October 26, 1978), 16-18.

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ing, connote. In action, one always becomes encapsulated by the im-mediate physical situation-in which that which is personal and thatwhich is external come to intersect. In the domain of the mind, on theother hand, one is completely at home with oneself. A good deal of thepessimistic sinews of The Life of the Mind arises from this intensely in-ternal relationship. Only in the domain of the mind must one continual-ly justify one's existence to the harshest of critics; it is only in the intense-ly introspective conduct of the mind that one comes to confront squarelyone's own being. Arendt marvelously presents the inordinately difficultlife of the mind by turning to Socrates and his discussions with Hippias:

When Hippias goes home, he remains one, for, though he lives alone, he does notseek to keep himself company. He certainly does not lose consciousness; he is simp-ly not in the habit of actualizing it. When Socrates goes home, he is not alone, he isby himself. Clearly, with this fellow who awaits him, Socrates to has come to somekind of agreement, because they live under the same roof. Better be at odds withthe whole world than be at odds with the only one you are forced to live togetherwith when you have left company behind (1.188).

I.

In the "Introduction" to volume 1, Arendt distinguishes betweenreason and intellect-reason being related to the activity of thinkingand concerned with meaning; while intellect is related to the activity ofknowing, and is concerned with cognition (1.14). 1 0 It is the formertrilogy-reason, thinking, and meaning-and, further, where thinkingis to be properly positioned in the phenomenal world which comprisethe central concern of the entire volume. 11

10. "The need of reason is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest formeaning. And truth and meaning are not the same" (1.15). "The basic fallacy, takingprecedence over all specific metaphysical fallacies, is to interpret meaning on themodel of truth" (ibid.). The primary point of departure here is Arendt's distinctionbetween Kant's usages of Vernunft ("reason") and Verstand ("intellect"). See 1.13 and1.57-58. Cf. MDT 86f. On Kant' s realization that there is no theoretical truth for manand the "inhumanity of the moral philosophy" resulting, see ibid., 26-27.

11. Arendt finds this distinction between thinking and cognition in HermannBroch's writings. See ibid., 130ff. "This, at any rate, is what cognition aims at in thefinal analysis: it desires the deed. Because literature did nothing, Broch turned away


The first eight parts are collected under the chapter heading of"Appearance." What limits all things of this world together is thatthey "appear" to man. Appearance, by its very presence, assumesspectators (1.22). Being and appearance, therefore, coincide (1.19).How things "appear to me" is the manner "in which the appearingworld is acknowledged and perceived" (1.21), but precisely becausebeing and appearance are coincident, the problem of thinking andits position in the world emerges (1.23). In removing one's attentionfrom the life of the senses to the life of the mind, one still is seekingappearances, at a higher level than sense, but appearancesnonetheless (1.24). Neither the pursuits of modern science (cf, BPF267ff), nor those of philosophy, can ever elude the common senseworld), the world of appearance (1.26). Existence is primarily, ifnot exclusively, reflected in "the values of the surface;" 12 ap-pearance-both projected and received-constitutes the most visibleand vital ingredient of modern life. What is concealed withinoneself is never adequately expressed.

This is, as the heading of the part in which it is contained reveals,a "reversal of the metaphysical hierarchy," (see also HC 17, 262f;BPF 83) a reversal which the modern age in both science andphilosophy has energetically constructed. The "reversal," however,succeeds only in obfuscating the identification of the relationshipbetween internal and external dimensions of existence. The tensionwhich is produced is not resolved; it is merely viewed"upside-down." 13

from literature, he rejected philosophy because it was limited to mere contemplationand thinking, and ended by placing all his hopes in politics." Ibid., 148-149. Broch'swritings, with which Arendt was intimately familiar, provide the literary equivalentto her philosophical distinction between thinking and knowing. See the introduction toher edition of Brach's work-Hermann Broch: Dichten and Erkennen, 2 vols. (Zurich,1955), 5-42. On the distinction between meaning and cognition, see also HC 150f. Onthe modern confusion of meaning and end, compare BPF 78. See also Gray, op. cit.,53f; and Canovan, op. cit., 2. Kateb observes: "Arendt never unequivocably and withfinality says what the existential status is of spending a life in mental life" (Kateb, op.cit., 145), to which the following note is appended-"Her Gifford Lectures, to bepublished soon, may resolve the matter" (ibid., 178, n. 20).

12. Arendt is borrowing the morphological terminology of Adolph Portmann's DasTier als soziales Wesen (Zurich, 1953) at this point. Cf. Hannah Arendt, On Violence(New York, 1970-hereafter referred to as OV), 59-60.

13. Similarly, Arendt will contend (1.176) that when Nietzsche reversed Platonism,he forgot "that a reversed Plato is still Plato, " or Marx's "turn[ing] Hegel upside down "

nonetheless "produc[ed] a strictly Hegelian system of history in the process. " Hegel, for


The very process of thinking stands in contradistinction to the be-ing/appearance connection, 14 for thinking seeks to pursue an inter-nal beingness apart from the externality of appearance. 15 Turningfirst to Kant on the subject of the thinking ego and the self, and thento Descartes on the subject of reality and the thinking ego, Arendtdeftly brings the two major underpinnings of the modernmetaphysical and philosophical "collapse" into focus.

Kant sought to ground appearance in being. He sought todemonstrate that there was "a `thing in itself,' behind `mere' ap-pearance," reflected most clearly in the thinking process which ex-hibits the "thinking ego" as the "thing in itself" (1.42). 16 Since allphysical life is appearance, however, and the progression of ap-pearance constitutes time as we know it, the true being of the think-ing ego stands somewhat apart from time, and thus somewhat apartfrom reality.

It was Descartes, however, who had posited a relationship bet-ween reality and the thinking ego, 17 one which established a"theoretical and existential consistency" for solipsism (1.46).Descartes' famous cogito ergo sum (which Arendt rightly argues

his part, asserted that "the world of philosophy [is for common sense] a world turnedupside down" (1.89, referring to Hegel's "Ueber das Wesen der PhilosophischenKritik" [ Hegel Studienausgabe (Frankfurt, 1968), I, 103]). On Nietzsche's " reversedPlatonism," see 2.176, HC 17; and BPF 30,35.

14. Science's very pursuit has given new force to the refutation of "the elementarylogical fallacy of all theories that rely on the dichotomy of Being and Appearance..."(1.25-26). Cf. OV6-7. See HC 100-101 for the connection between the discovery ofprocess by the natural sciences and introspection in philosophy; and Hannah Arendt,The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2nd Ed. (London, 1958-hereafter referred to as OT),298, on the emancipation of twentieth century man from nature (as eighteenth centuryman had been emancipated from history) and the problems this emancipation occa-sions for "humanity." On introspection, see the powerful statement in Arendt 's RahelVarnhagen: Lebensgeschichte einer Deutschen Judin aus der Romantik (Munich,1959), especially Arendt's cogent comments in the "Forward " (notably 11-13); also HC254ff. On process, see also ibid., 207-208, 270; and BPF 62.

15. Cf., however, ibid., 3: "My assumption is that thought itself arises out of in-cidents of living experience and must remain bound to them as the only guideposts bywhich to take its bearings."

16. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B429.17. Cf. HC 230 on Descartes and the "persistent trend in modern philosophy" to be

"exclusively concerned with the self. " See also Canovan, op. cit., 90-91 (philosophyand modern science); and Kateb, op. cit., 145 (on the "self-absorption" of the concernwith self).

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should be correctly expressed by either cogito cogitationes or cogitome cogitare, ergo sum [1.52]) 18 constitutes a fallacy (1.49) becauseall that is gained from the statement is an admission that the thoughtis real, the process of thinking remains incapable of proving its ownreality (cf. HC,249, 371, n50). Upon deeper reflection, we are fur-ther drawn to "the tacit assumption that thought processes are in noway different from common-sense reasoning" (1.51), 19 a therenesswhich "remains forever beyond [thinking's] grasp" (1.52).

This identity of thinking and common sense, introduced by thefoundation of Descartes' method, reflects itself clearly in modern science

The questions raised by thinking and which it is in reason's very nature toraise-questions of meaning-are all unanswerable by common sense and therefinement of it we call science. The quest for meaning is 'meaningless' to com-mon sense....[I]t is [common sense's] function to fit us into a world of ap-pearance and make us at home in the world given by our five senses; there weare and no questions asked (1.58-59). E0

There is an undeniable connection between reason and intellectthinking and knowing, but there are as well decisive differences bet-ween them in mood and purpose. "Philosophers have always beentempted to accept the criterion of truth-so valid for science andeveryday life-as applicable to their own rather extraordinarybusiness as well" (1.62).

The coincidence of this theme emanating from Descartes and theattempt to liberate the thinking ego from the world of appearancefound in Kant's philosophy produces the rise of the modern pro-blem. By ushering in the age of speculative thought, liberated fromthe dogmatic pursuits of earlier philosophy, Kant singularly occa-sioned the rise of German Idealism and its consequent metaphysical

18. See Rene Descartes, Discourses on the Method of Rightly Conducting theReason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, trans. John Veitch (LaSalle, Ill., 1952),35-36 [Part IV]. Cf. HC 370, n.40.

19. In the sense of Aquinas' senses communis. See. 1.50.20. See, however, OV 62: "Science is called upon to cure us of the side effects of

reason by manipulating and controlling our instincts, usually by finding harmlessoutlets for them after their 'life-promoting function' has disappeared."


systems (1.63). The confusion of reason and intellect, likewise con-fused meaning and knowing, producing both a return to the Carte-sian solipsistic premise (cf. Kateb, 145) and the last wave ofmetaphysical fallacies, the wave which would ultimately put to restmetaphysics, and in its wake philosophy, as major dimensions of themodern age.

21

Chapter 2 of volume 1 considers "mental Activities in a World ofAppearances." Having posited that thinking is not reflected in thephenomenal world, and, further, that the rise of idealistic attemptsto effect such a placement produced only metaphysical fallacies onthe subject of thinking's relationship to the self, Arendt proceeds tounfold what, in her mind, constitutes the proper positioning of thethinking faculty. We are first told that thinking, willing, and judg-ing-the three basic mental activities-"cannot be derived fromeach other," that "while they have certain common characteristics,they cannot be reduced to a common denominator" (1.69). Rather,each is autonomous, obeying "the laws inherent in the activityitself" (1.70). This autonomy, further, implies their being uncondi-tioned; none of the conditions of either life or the world correspondsto them directly" (ibid.). Whereas "plurality is one of the basic ex-istential conditions of human life on earth,...[t]he mind can be saidto have a life of its own only to the extent that it actualizes" theduality implicit in consciousness-"to know with myself" (1.74).

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This state of being with myself is termed "solitude" by Arendt

21. While the approaches of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, approaches made possi-ble by Kant's "systematic metaphysics," both sought to lessen the distinction betweenreason and intellect and were at variance with Kant's specific design, Kant himself waspartially subject to the same problem. Arendt notes the prevalence of the term Ver-nunfterkenntis ("knowledge arising out of pure reason") throughout the Critiques.Kant "could not part altogether with the conviction that the final aim of thinking, as ofknowledge, is truth and cognition" (1.63).

22. See Doff Sternberger, "The Sunken City: Hannah Arendt's Idea of Politics,"Social Research 44 (1977), 136ff.; and Canovan, op. cit., 52, on the distinction bet-ween unity (or individuality) and plurality. On the distinction between public andprivate which a concern for the individuality/plurality issue occasions, see Noel 0'Sullivan, "Hannah Arendt: Hellenic Nostalgia and Industrial Society," in Contem-porary Political Philosophers, ed. Anthony de Crespigny and Kenneth Minogue (NewYork, 1975); 247ff.; Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, "Hannah Arendt's Storytelling," SocialResearch 44 (1977), 185; and Cooper, op. Cit., 155f.

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(ibid.).28

Solitude is a withdrawal from the plurality of appearance.Such a withdrawal, however, is less a withdrawal from the world asit is a withdrawal "from the world's being present to the senses"(1.75). "Every mental act rests on the mind's faculty of having pre-sent to itself what is absent from the senses" (1.75-76).

Arendt denies that there is a strict hierarchy among the facultiesof thinking, willing, and judging, but posits that an order orpriorities exists. Thinking fundamentally differs from willing andjudging by being the only mental faculty which addresses generalsrather than particulars. As such, "thinking, though unable to movethe will or provide judgment with general rules, must prepare theparticulars given to the senses in such a way that the mind is able tohandle them in their absence, in brief, de-sense them" (1.75-77).

Thinking is a curious "out-df-time" mental exercise. 24 The verywithdrawal of thinking from the world of the senses places it at oddswith the human condition as that condition is experienced inphenomenal life (1.78). It is not the world of the senses, however,which requires this withdrawal, this solitude. Rather, the solitude isfreely chosen by philosophers, the "professional thinkers" (Kant'sDenker von Gewerbe-1.3, 2.4), whose position vis-a-vis the worldof common sense has become so problematic. Thinking "annihilatestemporal as well as spatial distances" (1.85). 2 ' Since common senseconstitutes the collective reserve of phenomenal experiences, and inits more formalized reflection produces science, that mental activitywhich withdraws from the phenomenal world likewise is awithdrawal from the world of common sense and science.

Thinking is "surrounded not by sense-objects but by images thatare invisible to everybody else" (ibid.). One is aware of the "mind'sfaculties only so long as the activity lasts;" (1.88) there cannotemerge, therefore, a concerted statement of the thinking process

23. Cf.,HC 67: "To be in solitude means to be with one's self, and thinking,therefore, though it may be the most solitary of all activities, is never altogetherwithout a partner and without company. " Solitude is not loneliness. See 1.185; cf. OT467f.'; BPF 115; and Young-Bruel, op. cit., 188.

24. 1,85: "Thinking is `out of order' not merely because it stops all other activities sonecessary for the business of living and staying alive, but because it inverts all ordinaryrelationships: what is near and appears directly to our senses in now far away andwhat is distant is actually present."

25. Arendt immediately qualifies this statement even further-"not only distancesbut also time and space themselves are abolished in the process" (1.86).


which can be successfully projected upon common sense, because inthe very process, one has returned to the very world from whichthinking has withdrawn. At that moment, thinking ceases, All at-tempts to project a knowledge of the thinking activity are undercutby the simple fact that one is no longer thinking. 2e It is this inabilitywhich produces the "warfare between thought and common sense,"the former being an activity apart from the spatial and temporalconstraints of phenomenal life, the latter incapable of entertainingsuch a withdrawal. 27

Faced with such a situation, there emerges a temptation to pro-vide thinking with the same foundation of knowing accorded the in-tellect and its goal-cognition. Reason becomes transformed into in-tellect. The metaphysical difficulties of conveying thinking inspatial and temporal terms unfold, and with them, the principalmetaphysical fallacy of the modern age. For that which, of its verynature, admits of no spatial or temporal distance, cannot be ac-tualized without radically skewing it altogether. Hegel, who sought,more than any other modern thinker, to provide thinking with thesame firm sense-perception foundation as common sense, proceededto commit the very metaphysical error Arendt counsels against (see1.89-91). He attempted to transform philosophy into science(1.91). 28

A similar situation confronts the relationship between thought

26.Cf. HC79: "Thinking, however, which is presumably the activity of the head,though it is in some way like laboring-also a process which probably comes to an endonly with life itself-is even less `productive' than labor; if labor leaves no permanenttrace, thinking leaves nothing tangible at all. By itself, thinking never materializes intoany objects. Whenever the intellectual worker wishes to manifest his thoughts, he mustuse his hands and acquire manual skills just like any other worker. In other words,thinking and working are two different activities which never quite coincide; thethinker who wants the world to know the `content' of his thoughts must first of all stopthinking and remember his thoughts."

27. It is in this sense that the withdrawal of thinking has a likeness to the "ejection"of the animal laborans from the world. See ibid., 103.

28. Curiously, Arendt maintains that, while thinking is placed in conflict withcommon sense, willing and judging are not-they deal with "particulars," having "anestablished home in the appearing world" (1.92). They are still, however, "dependenton thought's preliminary reflection upon their objects" (ibid.,). This very"dependence," is likewise a dependence on thought-images rather than phenomenalobjects. May not, therefore, the prior position of thinking to both willing and judgingproduce a revision of one's regard for the object, thereby producing a conception of theobject which places either willing or judging at variance with common sense?

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S LIFE OF THE MIND 201

and action. 29 The spectator (one who withdraws from thephenomenal world) may "understand the `truth' of what the spec-tacle is about;" but the price one has to pay by so doing is"withdrawal from participating in it" (1.93) . 30 It is "not through ac-ting but through contemplating31 that the `something else,' namely,the meaning of the whole, is revealed. The spectator, not the actor,holds the clue to the meaning of human affairs" (1.96).

But if it is the spectator, rather than the spectacle or the actor,who conveys meaning, upon what basis is the process of viewing ac-tion to be predicated? Stated simply, what is the proper region ofmental activity? Withdrawal necessarily implies a withdrawal tosomewhere. Yet it is precisely this "direction" of thinking which,aside from whatever insight is derived about physical action,precludes a coincidence of mental activity and the spectacle towhich it is addressed. To attempt an assimilation of spectator andspectacle, of thinking and doing, however, is to bring forth the con-tention that thinking should in some way address cogni-tion-truth-rather than the purpose of thinking-to arrive atmeaning. Once a coincidence between thinking and doing is enter-tained, once meaning is confused with truth, the way is open to themetaphysical abyss ushered in by Hegel's "philosophy as science."

32

The difficulty experienced in equating the life of the mind withthe life of the senses is clearly demonstrated by language. (cf. HC81-82; Kateb 156f) "Mental activities, invisible themselves and oc-cupied with the invisible, become manifest only through speech"(1.98). Words convey meaning. There is, therefore, certainly aresemblance between speech and thought (1.99). Speech gives ac-count; it appropriates and disalienates the world (1.100).

Despite this connection between speaking and thinking, speech

29. Part II of volume 1 (Thinking and Doing: The Spectator") comprises the onlyspecific treatment of this relationship in the volume. This distinction is interesting fromthe standpoint of what it does not include within the discussion-the entire range ofpolitical action which had so animated Arendt's previous works.

30. Cf. Arendt's comments on Gotthold Lessing's "retreat into thought and its rela-tionship to freedom and action." MD 9ff.

31. That is, "looking upon something from the outside, from a position implying aview that is hidden from those who take part in the spectacle and actualize it" (1.93).

32. One must recognize that Hegelian premises on this subject, once accepted, maywell produce a concerted movement toward the belief that thought is a process of do-ing. Giovanni Gentile's The Theory of Mind as Pure Act is, after all, founded upon pa-tent Hegelian premises.


has a basic deficiency. "No language has a ready-made vocabularyfor the needs of mental activity; they all borrow their vocabularyfrom words originally meant to correspond either to sense ex-perience or to other experiences of everyday life" (1.102). Languageis meant to convey abstractions based up concepts or examplesgarnered from the world of common sense (1.103).

The metaphor becomes the primary vehicle for all philosophicalterms (1.104). The metaphor bridges "the abyss between inwardand invisible mental activities and the world ofappearances..."(1.105)

33"Speaking and thinking spring from the

same source," (1.109), yet because of the appearance-based develop-ment of language, any attempt to communicate thought throughspeech remains problematic. 34 Both bring the "not-visible" into therealm of appearances. Metaphor is singularly capable of effectingsuch a transformation. Metaphor, however, in its very application,"indicates in its own manner the absolute primacy of the world ofappearances and this provides additional evidence of the extraor-dinary quality of thinking, of its being always out of order" (ibid.).Thinking, therefore, when considered as the source of communica-tions about ideas, is never totally apart from the world of ap-pearance, since when one chooses to express what it is that thinkingthinks, one can do so in no other way than through metaphor-andmetaphor immediately draws the thinking activity back into prox-imity with appearance.

Language is "the only medium in which the invisible can becomemanifest in the world of appearance," but "is by no means as ade-

33. The metaphor, however, "is poetic rather than philosophical in origin" (1.105).In a purely applicative mode, therefore, we have the basis for the competition betweenphilosophy and poetry, and, at the same time, the corresponding identity in the imagesand expressions conveyed by both. Cf. OV 26-27; MDT 166; HC 82 (metaphor and lifeprocess), 85 (Platonic metaphor); and OR 43, 102 (metaphor and revolution). See alsoEric Heller, "Hannah Arendt as a Critic of Literature, " Social Research 44 (1977),57-59.

34. This is not the case with ideology: "The tremendous power of persuasion in-herent in the main ideologies of our time is not accidental. Persuasion is not possiblewithout appeal to either experiences or desires, in other words to immediate politicalneeds....Every full fledged ideology has been created, continued and improved as apolitical weapon and not as a theoretical doctrine" (OT 159). Ideology "is the logic ofan idea." Ibid., 469. See also ibid., 468 (the scientific notion of ideology), 470-471. Cf.BPF 93: "Authority...is incompatible with persuasion....Where arguments are used,authority is left in abeyance."


quate for that function as our senses are for their business of copingwith the perceptible world..." (1.112). Metaphor stands as the onlycure to this defect of speech (ibid.)

.36Even with metaphor, however,

there exists a thrusting of appearances upon the thinking ego. Ormore precisely, once the result of thinking is communicated, it is cir-cumscribed by the appearances of the phenomenal world into whichit is thrust. Metaphorical speech is circular-without either pro-viding an adequate appearance upon the mind or an adequate pro-jection of the mind's activity upon appearance. Metaphor, asspeech, seeks an indentification of itself with some end outside ofitself. "Thinking is out of order because the quest for meaning pro-duces no end result that will survive the activity, that which makessense after the activity has come to an end" (1.123). Thinking, thus,when it is expressed, is an attempt to express the ineffable.

Arendt has laid the foundation in the first two chapters of volume1 for the basic question "What makes us think?" Not "Why wethink," but "What makes us think," is the title of chapter 3, com-prising parts 14 through 18. Now two observations must be made atthis point. The first concerns the fact that Arendt has exchanged"what" for "why." Thinking is not to be regarded in terms of objec-tives, but in terms of obligations. Much as one cannot discussAristotelian causality without likewise discussing the concepts of ef-ficiency and finality, however, we are led to expect that a considera-tion of the "what" will also produce a concomitant concern with the"why "36

Secondly, we wonder what has become of the central question ofthe volume-which is neither expressed by "what" or "why" but by

35. Arendt's distinction between metaphors of sight and metaphors of hearing neednot concern us here, although her application of such metaphors to Jewish tradition, inwhich hearing is claimed to be preponderant, is difficult to justify. The implication,however, is clearly brought into focus: "The chief difficulty...for thinkingitself-whose language is entirely metaphorical, which bridges the gulf between thevisible and the invisible, the world of appearance and the thinking ego-[is that] thereexists no metaphor that could plausibly illuminate the special activity of the mind, inwhich something invisible within us deals with the invisible of the world. Allmetaphors drawn from the senses are essentially cognitive,... if understood as activities,[our senses] have an end outside themselves..." (1.123-italics added).

36. Arendt says as much in the last lines of chapter 2 (1.125). See also 1.136: "...theimmortal and divine part within man does not exist unless it is actualized and focusedon the divine outside; in other words, the object of our thoughts bestows immortalityon thinking itself."


"where," that is, "Where are we when we think?" Since this is, infact, the title of the fourth and final chapter of volume 1 (parts 19and 20), we assume that the proper positioning of thinking is con-tingent in some way upon the obligations placed upon thinking-inother words, until we come to understand the necessity inherent inthinking we shall be unable to ascertain its position.

Four specific answers are provided to the question "What makesus think?"-each from the classical world, with one part of thechapter being devoted to each: (1) the pre-philosophical assump-tions of Greek philosophy; (2) Plato's answer; (3) the Romananswer; and (4) the answer of Socrates. These four parts comprise aclear ascent, if not one which is strictly diachronic, certainly onewhich is thematic.

The pre-philosophic assumptions of Greek philosophy surroundedthe relationship of man to the gods. It was, however, because thegods, while deathless, were not eternal (1.134), that "Being, birth-less as well as deathless, replaced for the philosophers the meredeathlessness of the Olympian gods" (1.135). Philosophy became theachievement of immortality (cf. OV 68) which operated in twostages- "contemplation of the everlasting" and "the attempt totranslate the vision into words" (1.137). Thinking, in the earlyGreek sense, was introduced to fill the deficiencies of religiouspiety. 37

Plato, however, saw the "origin of philosophy [as] Wonder"(1.141). 38 "What sets men wondering is something familiar and yetnormally invisible, and something men are forced to admire. Thewonder that is the starting-point of thinking is neither puzzlementnor surprise nor perplexity; it is an admiring wonder" (1.143). Thiswonder, further, is not a "concern with particulars but is alwaysaroused by the whole..." (1.144) . 30 For Plato, thinking is occasionedby the awe which compels one to direct one's mind toward the im-mortal ground of Being.

The Roman answer involves the arising of thinking "out of the

37. "If Being replaced the Olympian gods, then philosophy replaced religion.Philosophy became the only possible `way' of piety..." (1.135).

38. As Arendt adds-"an answer which in my opinion has lost nothing of itsplausability" (1.141). On wonder, see BPF 214-215.

39. It is the wonder why there is anything at all rather than nothing which Heideg-ger calls "the basic question of metaphysics" in concluding "What is Metaphysics?" See1.124 and 1.145.

HANNAH ARENDT ' S LIFE OF THE MIND 205

disintegration of reality and the resulting disunity of the man andworld, from which springs the need for another world, more har-monious and more meaningful" (1.153). Now it was the Romanswho "discovered" common sense. It was also the Roman experiencewhich produced the "radical withdrawal from reality" demandedby Epictetus (1.155). The seeds of the transformation of "thinking-as-wonder" to "thinking-as-sense" is not to be found, Arendt con-tends, until its "expression in conceptual language" beginning withLucretius and Cicero. They "transformed Greek philosophy intosomething essentially Roman-which meant, among other things,something essentially practical" (1.153-154).

"If thinking is normally the faculty of making present what is ab-sent," Epictetus' "faculty of dealing with impressions aright consistsin conjuring away and making absent what actually is present"(1.153) .40

If wonder was the hallmark of Plato's answer to "What makes usthink?", fear is the hallmark of the Roman answer-epitomized inthe radical dismissal of reality contained in Epictetian philosophy.These two sources "are different to the point of being opposites. Onthe one hand, admiring wonder at the spectacle in which man isborn and for whose appreciation he is so well equipped in mind andbody; on the other, the awful extremity of having been thrown intoa world whose hostility is overwhelming, where fear is predominantand from which man tries his utmost to escape" (1.162). There is,however, a common connection between these two apparent op-posites. Each posits a thinking ego which "leaves the world of ap-pearances. Only because thinking implies withdrawal can it be usedas an instrument of escape" (ibid.).

It is the answer personified by the life of Socrates, however,which conveys the most important classical answer for Arendt. It isonly at this point that Arendt leaves the general tenor of thepreceding discussion-that is, the statement of a particular resolu-tion of the "what makes us think" question-to consider a model ofthe thinking man (1.167). The model is Socrates, the thinking manpar excellence, but not a professional thinker (not a philosopher, in

40. Arendt, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, questions the possibility of such a totaldismissing of reality: "I still doubt that there ever was anybody who remained masterof his `impressions' when roasted in the Phalarian Bull" (1.157).


other words, who fits Kant's definition).41

"Socrates, gadfly, midwife, electric ray, is not a philosopher (heteaches nothing and has nothing to teach) and he is not a sophist, forhe does not claim to make men wise. He only points out to them thatthey are not wise..." (1.173; cf. CR 62). The three similes-gadfly,midwife, and electric ray-are all applied to Socrates, as readers ofPlato's dialogues well know, in the course of his dialectical discus-sions with others (the former two are applied to Socrates by Socrateshimself). They are indicative of the three basic dimensions of hismethod-to sting others from slumber; to bring about thinking inothers; and to remain steadfast, paralyzed, by the perplexities of thethinking process.

Thinking, as personified by Socrates' life, is indistinguishablefrom the necessary condition of being fully alive. "Thinking accom-panies living and concerns itself with the concepts of life as they areexpressed in language" (1.178). It is in the figure of Socrates that wehave the collision of two distinct thematic elements found in the firstvolume of The Life of the Mind. First, the consideration of thinkingas it relates to the world of appearance, the relationship betweenthinking and doing, the function of speech, and especiallymetaphor,42 and the ineffability of the thinking activity all comprisecomponents of the Socratic figure. Socrates, when viewed in thisperspective, is the quintessential personification of the "appearance"

of thought. His way of life provides us with the personified responseto the volume's initial question-"What does it mean to think?""The meaning of what Socrates was doing lay in the activity itself"(ibid.).

Second, the question "What makes us think?", which constitutesthe shaft with which the entire third chapter of volume 1 is trans-fixed, becomes, with Socrates, the coincidence of "what" with theunderstanding of "why." One thinks because one lives-to think is

41. Arendt notes the difficulty of coming to grips with the historical Socrates, aman who left no written legacy, and is known to us primarily through the dialogues ofPlato and Xenophon. She chooses, however, to "ignore" the "great deal ofcontroversy...of learned contention" (1.168).

42. The three similes ascribed to Socrates are, after all, metaphorical. Socrates is tobe distinguished from others in the history of thought, we seem obliged to concludefrom the manner in which Arendt treats him, because he is the personification of themetaphorical function. Socrates is both the model of the thinking man and the veryembodiment of the vehicle whereby the results of thinking are expressed.


to live truly. In addressing the question "What makes us think?",Arendt, in Socrates, has found the answer to the question "Why dowe think?" as well.

The chapter concludes with a consideration of the duality of thethinking process and the unity whereby that duality is expressed.The gravamen of Arendt's argument here is expressed in the follow-ing passage:

What is...transferred..is the experience of the thinking ego to things themselves.For nothing can be itself and at the same time for itself but the two-in-one thatSocrates discovered as the essence of thought and Plato translated into concep-tual language as the soundless dialogue eme emauta--between me andmyself" (1.185)." .

It is not, however, "the thinking activity that constitute the unity,unifies the two-in-one; on the contrary, the two-in-one becomes Oneagain when the outside world intrudes upon the thinker..." (ibid.)

44

This intrusion collapses the two-in-one-the distinction between thethinking ego ("out of order" thinking) and the existential ego (the"in order" being)-into the One of existence in the phenomenalworld, where the individual is made aware of the radical unity ofexistence vis-a-vis other existing objects and persons. The very act ofbeing a spectator in the world of appearances makes the individualconscious of his being apart from that world. Consciousness,however,

is not the same thing as thinking; acts of consciousness have in common withsense experiences the fact that they are 'intentional' and therefore cognitive acts,whereas the thinking ego does not think something but about something, andthis act is dialectical: it proceeds in the form of a silent dialogue" (1.187).

Consciousness is also not coterminous with conscience for Arendt.Conscience, "before it became the lumen naturale of Kant's prac-tical reason,-was the voice of God" (1.190). Consciousness is theactuality of the duality with thought, producing "conscience as aby-product" (1.193). "The manifestation of the wind of thought is

43. See the Socrates/Hippias example mentioned at the outset of this paper.44. "It is the duality of myself with myself that makes thinking a true activity, in

which I am both the one who asks and the one who answers" (1.185). It is in this sense,I would suggest, that one can entertain the notion that The Life of the Mind comprisesArendt's dialogues with herself. Cf. OR 98-99; BPF 158; and Canovan, op. cit., 3.


not knowledge; it is the ability to tell right from wrong, beautifulfrom ugly. 45 And this, at the rare moments when the stakes are onthe table, may indeed prevent catastrophes, at least for the self"(ibid.) . 46

The final chapter of volume 1, encompassing parts 19 and 20, isdirected at the question "Where ,are we when we think?" Whatbecomes meaningful during thinking "are distillations, products ofde-sensing" (1.199)-that is, essence. These "essences cannot belocalized. Human thought that gets hold of them leaves the world ofthe particular and goes out in search of something generally mean-ing ful... " (ibid.). Thinking, therefore, cannot be spatially located,and while Arendt has already informed us that thinking is not tem-porally limited either, we are now provided with the thinking ego asthat which exhibits the "gap between past and future...only inreflection" (1.206). 47

Arendt suggests a "time metaphor" to explain the position ofthinking-one which comprises a diagonal line stretching from thepresent toward the infinite (1.208). The origin of the line is found in

45. It is a collapse in thinking, and a corollary collapse in the ability to distinguishgood from evil, which comprises the bedrock of the "banality of evil" with whichEichmann in Jerusalem, Rep. Ed. (New York, 1964) is sub-titled. Much of the workconcerns Eichmann's inability to remember and the corresponding condition of hisconscience. It was the collapse of thinking that was so well testified to in Himmler'sslogan coined for the S.S. (derived from a speech by Hitler to the S.S. in 1931): "MyHonor is my Loyalty" (see ibid., 105; OT 324-325, n. 38). Cf. Himmler's definition of"the S.S. member as a new type of man who under no circumstances will ever do 'athing for its own sake."' See ibid., 322, also 322-323, n. 33. It was, likewise, a collapsein thinking, and the corresponding concern with the conscience, that allowedEichmann to respond "Not quilty in the sense of the indictment" to each of the chargesbrought against him in Jerusalem. See Eichmann, 21. Cf., however, Kateb, op. cit.,,164f., 170-171. See also 1.4-5, 1.177; and MDT 18ff.

46. As Arendt observes in CR, however, "arguments raised in defense of individualconscience or individual acts, that is, moral imperatives and appeals to a `higher law,'be it secular or transcendent, are inadequate when applied to civil disobedience." CR56-57. Cf. also, ibid., 60, 62 (where it is states that "the counsels of conscience are notonly unpolitical, they are always expressed in purely subjective statements. " ), and 64( "The rules of conscience hinge on interest in the self."). Cf. OT 462-463-the iden-tification of man and law has nothing to do with conscience. See also Kateb, op. cit.,162.

47. The point of departure for this discussion is Kafka's parable of the two an-tagonists of HE-one pressing from behind, the other limiting the road ahead (Gesam-melte Schriften [New York, 1946], V, 287). Cf. BPF 7-8, 10-13.


the intersection of past and future in the present. 48 Thought providesfor the awareness of past and future, and at the same time makes oneaware of the former's infinite regression and the latter's infinite pro-gression. The essential common point for all three-thinking, past,and future-is the present, to which the past proceeds, from whichthe future departs, and against which thinking withdraws. 49 Thereis, however, a second intersection of all three-infinity-admittingby its very conceptualization an intersection which admits of neitherspatial nor temporal constraints.

Nonetheless, this figure is a metaphor and, as such, shares thesame inadequacies in explaining the ineffable as metaphor ingeneral. Thought can be given a "temporal" dimension only throughmetaphor. However, "each new generation, every new human be-ing, as he becomes conscious of being inserted between an infinitepast and an infinite future, must discover and ploddingly pave anewthe path of thought" (1.210). 6 ° By ascribing past and future "asdirected, as it were, at themselves-as their predecessors and suc-cessors." great works of the mind establish "a present for themselves,a kind of timeless time..." (1.211). This metaphorical "timelesstime" is where we are when we are thinking. To prove its existence isas likely to be successful as the correct projection of the thinking egoupon the plane of the phenomenal world.

II.

The second volume of The Life of the Mind considers the facultyof willing. Unlike thinking, which has been recognized almost fromthe beginning, willing is, according to Arendt, a later concept. 61

48. This same "parallelogram of forces" is employed at BPF 12. See also ibid., 75.49. On the "commonality of the present" in the contemporary world, see MDT 83,

See also ibid., 85, on the implications of universal communication occasioned by thissituation.

50. The presences of a past and a future also constrain human proclivities forchange through action. See CR 78-79.

51. In the "Introduction" to volume 2, Arendt states: "The faculty of the Will wasunknown to Greek antiquity and was discovered as a result of experiences about whichwe hear next to nothing before the first century of the Christian era" (2.3). Arendt ac-cepts the notion that the Will "was indeed 'discovered' and can be dated. In brief, Ishall analyze the Will in terms of its history, and this in itself has its difficulties" (2.5).

If willing was "discovered" later that the recognition of thinking, judging was"discovered" later still-by Kant. See 2.129-130.


Rather than a consideration of the mental faculty's domain, themanner whereby thinking had been addressed, volume 2 proceeds interms of how willing has been regarded by philosophers. This ap-proach is explained by the fact that willing, as an independent facul-ty, was the construction of the very processes of philosophy from themedieval age forward. It is "discovered," therefore, in terms of howphilosophers have addressed it.

The Will "is as obviously our mental organ for the future asmemory 62 is our mental organ for the past" (2.13). Willing,however, while it shares with thinking the ability to produce thingsin the mind which are absent to the senses, has another dimen-sion-it considers things, "visible and invisible," which are notsimply absent from the senses, but which "have never existed at all"(ibid.). Once "we turn our mind to the future, we are no longer con-cerned with `objects' but with projects... " (2.13-14) (cf. Kateb 153).The connection between willing and doing is much more emphaticthan the relationship between thinking and doing. 63

Additionally, the rise in the recognition of the Will parallels a risein the recognition of freedom as a concept to be articulated. "A willthat is not free is a contradiction in terms-unless one understandsthe faculty of volition as a mere auxiliary executive organ forwhatever either desire or reason had proposed" (2.14). So long asreality is viewed as having been preceded by a potentiality, thefuture is nothing but a consequence of the past..." (2.15). The Will,therefore, had to await the rise in the belief of time as linear, the risein the belief that man in addressing projects in the future rather thanobjects, constitutes the freely acting beginning of such projects (cf.CR 5-6).

The difficulty in articulating the relationship between the Willand freedom in the pre-Christian era is that "whatever may be themerits of post-antiquity assumptions about the location of human

52. On memory, see 1.85, 1.156; also HC 149; and BPF 43.53. See BPF 9 (where the "metaphorical approximation" of the mind in the twen-

tieth century revolves in full circle-first "an escape from thought into action, andthen again when action, or rather having acted, forced [one] back into thought."), and25 ("Our tradition of political thought began when Plato discovered that it is somehowinherent in the philosophical experience to turn away from the common world ofhuman affairs; it ended when nothing was left of this experience but the opposition ofthinking and acting, which, depriving thought of reality and action of sense, makesboth meaningless."). Cf. Vollrath, op. cit., 167; and Nelson, op. cit., 292.

HANNAH ARENDT' S LIFE OF THE MIND 211

freedom in the I-will, it is certain that in the frame of pre-Christianthought freedom was located in the I-can; freedom was an objectivestate of the body, not a datum of consciousness or of the mind"(2.19) (cf. BPF 158-159. 165).

It is the medieval age of thought to which one must turn to findthe recognition of the faculty of willing. It is, however, the Will inthe modern age of philosophy which is addressed for the remainderof chapter 1 in volume 2. Before proceeding to a concerted discus-sion of the Will as it is reflected in the period which gave rise to therecognition of the concept, Arendt directs our attention to the veryclosing period of modern philosophy, in which the faculty of willingis met with severe metaphysical questions.

While one might expect the modern age to exhibit a great concernfor the Will, owing to the notion of progress (2.19) 54 which likewiseaddresses the future, "it was not until the last stage of the modernage that the Will began to be substituted for Reason as man's highestmental faculty" (2.20) . After Kant, "it became fashionable to equateWilling and Being" (ibid.). Still, this concern with the Will is hardlyshared by all in this later period. While it is true that the likes ofSchiller, Schopenhauer, and Hegel, provided a pre-eminence to theWill unlike that seen in Kant, the difficulty of equating willing andfreedom persisted, until it reached its final expression in Nietzsche'sphilosophy-which centered upon the "Will to Power," and"testif[ied] to an outspoken hostility toward the theory of `freedomof the Will'..." (2.20-21).

Three main objections to the Will surfaced in post-medievalphilosophy: (1) , the "disbelief in the very existence of the faculty"(2.23); (2) the distrust of the Will-occasioned by its "connectionwith freedom" (2.26); and (3) the "curse of contingency" (2.27)which human affairs exhibits and, by implication, is exhibited bywilling. Skewed of a relationship with everlasting Being, as hadbeen experienced in the classical age, and subject to the advancingsecularization of the modern age, (cf. BPF, 69) thereby being

54, Cf. OV 25-31, and 86; "The progresses made by science have nothing to dowith the I-will; they follow their own inexorable laws, compelling us to do whateverwe can, regardless of consequences. Have the I-will and the I-can parted company?"See also BPF 96: "Generally speaking, it has been quite typical of liberal theorists tostart from the assumption that `the contrary of progress...in the direction of organizedand assured freedom is the characteristic fact of modern history..."' [citing Lord Ac-ton's "Inaugural Lecture of the `Study of History"']. See also ibid., 97.


severed from the solace of the divine providence which hadanimated the medieval period, "men of thought [were exposed] tothe contingency of all things human more radically and more mer-cilously than ever before" (2.28). 55 The denial of Will's existence,the denial of its freedom, and the contingent manner in which it isexposed (one can will not to will) produced a tension between theapplication of willing and the existence of thinldng.

The clash here is between two mental faculties that seem unable to co-exist.When we form a volition, that is, when we focus our attention on some futureproject, we have no less withdrawn from the world of appearances than whenwe are following a train of thought. Thinking and willing are antagonists onlyinsofar as they affect our psychic states; both, it is true, make present to ourmind what is actually absent, but thinking draws into its enduring present whateither is or at least has been, whereas willing, stretching out into the future,moves in a region where no such certainties exist (2.35).

"Not the future as such but the future as the Will's project (seeKateb 153) negates the given" (2.36). The Will, as Nietzschereminds us, "cannot will backwards" (see 2.140, 2.168-169). Itsfocus stretches into the future, while the focus of thinking stretchesinto the past. 60 Since "the will always wills to do something," it "im-plicitly holds in contempt sheer thinking, whose whole activitydepends on `doing nothing (2.37).5 7 There emerges an oppositionin what Arendt calls the "`tonality' of mental activities" (ibid.).Since "the willing ego look[s] forward and not backward, [it] deal[s]with things which are in our power but whose accomplishment is byno means certain" (2.37-38). The tonality of willing is tension, S"whereas the tonality of thinking is serenity (2.38). "The tension can,

55. Cf. CR 12, See also Nelson, op. cit., 282ff.56. Cf., however, CR 11-12: "The historian, as well as the politician, deals with

human affairs that owe their existence to man's capacity for action, and the means toman's relative freedom from things as they are. Men who act, to the extent that theyfeel themselves to be the masters of their own future, will forever be tempted to makethemselves masters of the past, too."

57. Cf., however, BPF 152: "Action insofar as it is free is neither under theguidance of the intellect nor under the dictate of the will-although it needs both forthe execution of any particular goal-but springs from something altogether differentwhich (following Montesquieu's famous analysis of forms of government) I shall callprinciple."

58. See HC 197 of the "exasperation" produced by the " frustration" of activity. Seealso Canovan, op. cit., 64-65.


be overcome only by doing, that is, by giving up the mental activityaltogether; 59 a switch from willing to thinking, produces no morethan a temporary paralysis of the will, just as a switch from willingto thinking, produces no more than a temporary paralysis of thewill, just as a switch from thinking to willing is felt by the thinkingego to be a temporary paralysis of the thinking activity" (ibid.) •60

Arendt turns to Hegel, whose treatment of the willing ego's clashwith the thinking ego knows no equivalent in the history of thought(2.39). Arendt considers Hegel's discussion of time to be the essentialfoundation of his approach to the clash between thinking and will-ing. 81 "`Time finds its truth in the future since it is the future thatwill finish and accomplish Being. But Being, finished and ac-complished, belongs as such to the Past.' This reversal of the or-dinary time sequence-past-present-future-is caused by man's de-nying his present: `he says no to his Now' and thus creates his ownfuture" (2.41). 82 The coincidence of willing and thinking occurs inthe anticipation of death, in which "the will's projects take on theappearance of an anticipated past and as such can become the objectof reflection..." (2.43.).°

3

This "anticipated past" leads one to consider Hegel's "sequentialhistory of philosophy," which, Arendt argues, "actually broke withthe tradition [of philosophy], because [Hegel] was the first greatthinker to take history seriously, that is, as yielding truth" (2.45). If"World History" thus becomes "a single succession of events whoseeventual outcome would be the moment when the `Spiritual

59. Change is intended by the very "tonality of willing." "Change is constant, in-herent in the human condition" (CR 78). Arendt adds, however, that "the velocity ofchange is not." Ibid.

60.Cf. BPF 162-163. See also OT 502-503, n.18, where Arendt suggests that ter-rorism also "paralyzes and sterilizes thought even more effectively than action. If onedoes not mind risking one's life, it is easier to act than to think under conditions of ter-ror. And the spell cast by terror over man's mind can be broken only by freedom, notby mere thought."

61. Despite that fact that "Hegel does not mention the Will in this context, nor doesKoyre,...it seems obvious...that the faculty behind the Mind's negation is not thinking,but willing, and that Hegel's description of experienced human time relates to the timesequence approach of the willing ego" (2.41). Koyre refers to Alexandre Koyre's Hegela Lena Paris, 1934-included in Etudes d'Histoire de la Pensee Philosophique [Paris,1961], upon which much of Arendt's analysis is founded.

62. Internal quotations are from Koyre, op. cit., 77 and 185, note.63. 2.44: "That there exists such a thing as the Life of the mind is due to the mind's

organ for the future and its resulting 'restlessness'; that there exists such a thing as thelife of the Mind is due to death, which, foreseen as an absolute end, halts the will andtransforms the future into an anticipated past, the will's projects into objects ofthought, and the soul's expectation into an anticipated remembrance."


Kingdom...manifests itself in outward existence,' becomes ' em-bodied' in `secular life,'B4 then the course of history would no longerbe haphazard and the realm of human affairs no longer devoid ofmeaning" (2.46). This "Spiritual Kingdom" is identified with the"Kingdom of the Will" (ibid.). Precisely because Hegel denied theability of time to be arrested, however, the objective truth of his ap-proach could be entertained "only on condition that history werefactually at an end, that mankind had no future..." (2.47). 05

This apparent opposition of the willing faculty to the very prov-ince of willing, which Hegel certainly seems to be authoring, wouldnot, according to Arendt, have been accepted by Hegel. All toobriefly (2.48-51), Arendt puts forth the idea that what Hegel intend-ed was a combination of the cyclical nature of thinking's approachto time and the rectilinear nature of willing's approach to time. Theresulting "spiral is grounded on the experience of neither the think-ing ego nor the willing ego; it is the non-experienced movement ofthe World Spirit that constitutes Hegel's Geisterreich....No doubtthis is a most ingenious solution of the problem of the Will and itsreconciliation with sheer thought, but it is won at the expense ofboth-the thinking ego's insistence on the primacy of an enduringpresent and the willing ego's insistence on the primacy of the future.In other words, it is no more than a hypothesis" (2.48).

Still this hypothesis has no rival in the attempt to integrate willingand thinking. At the close of chapter 1, Arendt presents her opinionof the basis of both Hegel's "spiral solution" and the deficiencies itcontains-"his never-questioned assumption that the dialecticalprocess itself starts from Being....The initial Being lends all furthertransitions their reality" (2.50). It is to the relationship of Being andthe mental faculties, as might be `expected from prior comments onthe subject in the first chapter, that Arendt will return in the finalchapter of volume 2.

The second chapter of volume 2, encompassing parts 7 through10, begins with a discussion of proairesis, the faculty of choice, coin-ed, Arendt asserts, by Aristotle to indicate "preference betweenalternatives" (2.60). This constitutes a "forerunner" of the concept

64. Internal quotations are from Hegel's The Philosophy of History (Sibree transla-tion [New York, 1956], 442).

65. Cf. the pursuit of an "Archimedian point" discussed in HC 234ff. See alsoCanovan, op. cit., 10.


of willing, which, as Arendt has observed, was totally lacking inGreek philosophy. The second chapter ends with a discussion ofAugustine, "the first philosopher of the Will."

Between the pillars of Aristotle on choice and Augustine on theWill, Arendt considers St. Paul on the impotence of the Will andEpictetus on the onmipotence of the Will. The basic tension which isprogressively brought forward during these discussions concerns therelationship between, once again, willing and freedom. "Freedombecomes a problem, and the Will as an independent autonomousfaculty is discovered, only when men begin to doubt the coincidenceof the Thou-shalt and the I-can, when the question arises: Are thingsthat concern only me within my power?" (2.63). For Paul, "the willis impotent not because of something outside that prevents willingfrom succeeding but because the will hinders itself" (2.70). This"self-hindrance" is found in the "conflict between flesh and spirit"(ibid.), a conflict which cannot be resolved by human action.

Epictetus, on the other hand, views the will as all-producing. "Ineach, the actual content of inwardness is described exclusively interms of the promptings of the Will, which Paul believed to be impo-tent and Epictetus declared to be almighty" (2.74). As Epictetusdeclares in the Discourse: 'Where lies the good? In the will. Wherelies evil? In the will. Where lies neither? In what is not within thewill's control"' (ibid.)."

It is the final part of chapter 2, entitled "Augustine, the FirstPhilosopher of the Will," which comprises the longest part in thechapter. Arendt's concern with Augustine, as the title indicates, isoccasioned by his treatment of the Will as a subject of philosophicalinvestigation. Augustine was "the first man of thought who turnedto religion because of philosophical perplexities" (2.84). He sought,essentially, to articulate "the striving for eternal life as the summumbonum and the interpretation of eternal death the summummalum" through an investigation "of an inward life" (2.85).07 The

66. Discourses 2.16. "`Philosophy means little else but this-to search how it ispracticable to exercise the will to get and the will to avoid without hindrance"'(2.78-Epictetus, Manual 1). Man ' s judgment, rather than what is done to him, pro-duces the problems of existence. "'You will be harmed only when you think you areharmed. No one can harm you without your consent"' (2.79-ibid., 30). "In short, inorder 'to live well' it is not enough to 'ask not that events should happen as you will';you must 'let your will be that events should happen as they do"' (2.81-ibid., 8).

67. Cf. Arendt's discussion of Broch's recognition of death as the the summummalum (MDT 127).


problem was not, as Paul had suggested, a tension between flesh andspirit; "it was to be found in the faculty of the Will itself" (2.93).The will speaks imperatively (2.94), but there always exists twodistinct activities within the Will-one which wills toward the crea-tion of new realities through action, and one which will nullify whatalready exists (ibid.). This "split within the Will is a conflict, andnot a dialogue" (2.95).

Arendt further suggests that Augustine located the reflection ofthe Trinity within human nature in the triad of being, knowing, andwilling (2.99). And while "these three faculties are equal in rank,their Oneness is due to the Will" (ibid.). "The Will, by virtue of at-tention, first unites our sense organs with the real world in a mean-ingful way, and then drags, as it were, this outside world intoourselves and prepares it for further mental operations..." (2.100)."The will decides how to use memory and intellect, that is, it `refersthem to something else'..." (2.103). 88 The tension between willingsomething and willing nothing, that is, between creating andnegating, is ultimately resolved for Augustine by the presence ofLove.

89

Similarly, according to Arendt, it is Love which constitutes forAugustine the transformation of the faculties of memory, intellect,and will into an understanding of the Mind as a whole (2.104)."There is no greater assertion of something or somebody than to loveit, that is to say: I will that you be..." (ibid.). To the extent that lovebecomes the controlling direction of the Mind, the tension betweencreating and willing is lessened, since Love, of its very nature, is apositive rather than a negative assertion.

This very approach to the tension of the Will, however, containsit own deficiency. For, if willing unites the other mental faculties,and if, further, willing is expressed in its most vibrant way throughthe concept of Love, Augustine does not escape the problem of time.By extrapolating the present into the past (Will's activity uponmemory) or the present into the future (Will's activity upon intellectfrom the standpoint of creating something new), the present isgraphically expressed as beyond human creation-aside from"jump[ing] out of temporal order," (2.105) man does not solve the

68. Internal quotation is from Augustine's On the Trinity 11.17.69. It is Love, and not divine grace, which produces "the healing of the will" for

Augustine (2.95).

HANNAH ARENDT' S LIFE OF THE MIND 217

contingent concept of willing. Augustine, therefore, brings the Willinto serious focus. At the same time, however, he squarely presentsits most unsettling property."

The equation between willing and freedom comprises the essen-tial confines of this difficulty. "The freedom of spontaneity is partand parcel of the human condition. 71 Its mental organ is the Will"(2.110). Augustine succeeds in paralleling the creation entertainedby willing with the creation of man by God. "With man, created inGod's own image, a being came into the world that, because it was abeginning running toward an end, could be endowed with thecapacity of willing and nilling" (2.109). 72 Precisely because the"spontaneous" creation of the human will is not co-terminous withdivine will, man never has sufficient control of the temporal se-quence in which he is located. Willing cannot be, therefore, ap-proached apart from the radical contingency inherent in the humanchoice either to act or not to act. By considering the Will as thatmental activity which produces the unity of the life of the mind,Augustine succeeds in laying down the principal distinction betweenknowing and willing, between intellect and volition.

It is to this distinction that chapter 3 of volume 2 is ad-dressed-part 11 considers Aquinas on the primacy of the intellect,while part 12 considers Duns Scotus on the primacy of the Will. ForAquinas, "`if Intellect or Will be compared with one another accord-ing to the universality of their respective objects, then...the Intellectis absolutely higher and nobler than the Will"' (2.121). 73 Intellect,for Aquinas, seeks first principles (2.117). Intellect is distinguishedfrom reason by virtue of the self-evident results of intellect as

70. It is at this point that Arendt is no longer commenting upon Augustine'steaching on the Will per se, but, rather, is herself extrapolating certain inevitable con-clusions which set the stage for later philosophical attempts to wrestle with the Will'smanifestations.

71. Arendt employs the phrase "the human condition" on several occasions involume 2, but only once in volume 1-where the pursuits of thinking are viewed asoften having been believed to be un-natural, and thinkers being regarded as "engagedin an activity contrary to the human condition" (1.78). In this regard, it is useful torecall the distinction between "the human condition" and "human nature" whichArendt had drawn in HC: "To avoid misunderstanding: the human condition is notthe same as human nature, and the sum total of human activities and capabilitieswhich correspond to the human condition does not constitute anything like humannature " (HC 11).

72. Cf. Augustine, The City of God 13.10.73. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, question 82, article 4, reply to objection 1.


distinguished from the deliberative results of reason." Further,while both intellect and reason seek truth, they have corresponding-ly different appetitive faculties-will as the appetitive faculty of in-tellect, free choice as the appetitive faculty of reason. (2.116).Truth, however, is sought by the intellect, whereas what "appearsgood and desirable" is sought by the Will (2.120). "The Intellect...isassured of its primacy over the Will not only because it `presents anobject to the appetite,' and hence is prior to it, but also because itsurvives the Will, which is extinguished, as it were, when the objecthas been obtained" (2.123).

"If Thomas had argued that the Will is an executive organ,...amerely `subservient' faculty," Duns Scotus contended that "the In-tellect serves the Will by providing it with its objects as well as withthe necessary knowledge i.e., the Intellect in its turn becomes amerely subservient faculty. It needs the Will to direct its attentionand can function properly only when its object is `confirmed' by theWill. Without this confirmation the Intellect ceases to function"(2.126). For Scotus, "free will" is distinguished from free choice inthat free will "freely designs ends that are pursued for their ownsake, and of this pursuance only the Will is capable..." (2.132).

Freedom, once again, produces the difficulty of contingency."Scotus," however, "is the only thinker for whom the word 'con-tingent' has no derogatory association.... ' Rather contingency is apositive mode of Being..." (2.134-135). 75 "The Will's freedom doesnot consist in the selection of means for a pre-determinedend...precisely because this end is already given by human nature; itconsists in freely affirming or negating or hating whatever confrontsit. 76 It is this freedom of the will mentally to take a position that setsman apart from the rest of creation... " (2.136).

74. "The distinction would be that truth, perceived by the intellect only, is revealedto and compels the mind without any activity on the mind's part, whereas in thediscursive reasoning process the mind compels itself" (2.116).

75. Internal quotation from Arthur Hyman and James J. Walsh, Philosophy in theMiddle Ages (New York, 1987), 597. Thus, "the primacy of the Intellect over the Willmust be rejected `because it cannot save freedom in any way... "' (2.135). Internalquotation from Bernadine M. Bonansea, " Duns Scotus' Voluntarism, " in John K. Ryanand Bernadine M. Bonansea, John Duns Scotus, 1265-1965 (Washington, 1965), 109,n. 90.

76. This trilogy of affirmation, negation, and hate comprises the equivalent of theattraction, aversion, indifference trilogy found in later thought. The concept of indif-ference (contempt), of course, is often seen in medieval thought.


Now contingency implies a concern with necessity, since thatwhich is caused necessarily cannot be the product of man's freewill. 77 Scotus recognized the problem, but argued that contingencyand necessity are separate modes of Being (2.134-135). At basis hereis the "law of causality" which "apparently spoke against the Will'sfreedom..." (2.137). It is, however, "precisely the causative elementin human affairs which condemns them to contingency and un-predictability" (2.138). Scotus resolves the problem by ascribingnecessity to "everything that is past," and considers such necessity as"absolutely necessary" (2.139). This is required to save the ability ofthe mind to perceive itself in a "unilinear sequence of events"(2.140), and while Scotus "cheerfully admitted that `there is no realanswer to the question as to the way in which freedom and necessitycan be reconciled'" 78 (ibid.), he believed "no such reconciliation wasneeded, for freedom and necessity were two altogether differentdimensions of the mind; if there was a conflict between the willingand the thinking ego, a conflict in which the will directs the intellectand makes man ask the question: Why?....The questionWhy?-what is the causeP-is suggested by the will because the willexperiences itself as a causative agent" (ibid.).

"The decisive opposites" for Scotus are not "freedom and necessi-ty, but freedom and nature....Like the Intellect, the Will is natural-ly inclined to necessity, except that the Will, unlike the Intellect,can successfully resist the inclination" (2.140-141). Scotus' concep-tion of the Will, therefore, places its activity within itself, a place-ment, Arendt contends, which is "without precedent or sequel in thehistory of Western thought..." (2.145).

In the final chapter of volume 2, curiously entitled "Conclusions,"Arendt sketches the difficulties which willing, as mental activity,has experienced in the modern age. This final chapter parallels thevolume's first chapter in which many of the themes addressed to themodern age were first advanced.

Arendt begins her treatment of the modern period by considering

77. On necessity, see OR 109, iii; and BPF 117-118. See also Martin Bormann's "thelaws of nature are subject to an unchangeable will that cannot be influenced. Hence itis necessary to recognize these laws. " OT 346, n. 10. On causality and the phenomenonof the world, see Vollrath, op. cit., 171.

78. Internal quotation from Bonansea, op. cit., 95.


post-Kantian's German Idealism, B ° a consideration noticeably ab-sent from chapter 1. "The rise and decline of the modern age [is] afactual event that can be dated"-it is connected to the rise and fallof modern science (2.149-150). 81 What distinguishes GermanIdealism is the belief "that we do not possess the truth" (2.151), andnot until "the end of the nineteenth century did the conviction of notpossessing the truth become the common opinion of the educatedclasses" (ibid.). Casting doubt upon the adequacy of sensualknowledge produced a concomitant "immense optimism as to whatman can know and learn" (2.153). Philosophy's fascination withprogress unfolded. This was, however, applied to the concept ofmankind-a collective expression-not to the individual's facultiesof mental activity. Mankind became the model. B2 "The concept wasnot a metaphor, properly speaking; it was a full-fledged personifica-tion....In other words, Progress became the project of mankind"(ibid.). Largely due to the French Revolution and its aftermath, (cf.

OR 40-52) "philosophers were converted to a faith in the progressnot only of knowledge, but also of human affairs generally" (2.154),"and as the revolution encouraged them to transfer the notion ofProgress from scientific advancement to the realm of human affairsand understand it as the progress of History, it was only natural thattheir attention should be directed toward the Will as the spring ofaction and the organ of the Future. The result was that `the thoughtof making freedom the sum and substance of philosophy eman-cipated the human spirit in all its relationships,' emancipated thethinking ego for free speculation...whose ultimate goal was to`prove... that not only is Ego all, but contrariwise too, all is Ego"'

79. Kant is not considered because his concept of Will is "not a special mentalcapability distinct from thinking, but practical reason....Kant's Will is neitherfreedom of choice nor its own cause....Kant's Will is delegated by reason to be its ex-ecutive organ in all matters of conduct" (2.149). Cf. BPF 144-145.

80. Cf. Arendt's discussion of the rise to social status by German Intellectuals (OT168f.). See also Gray, op. cit., 50-51.

81. See, however, Arendt's distinction between "the modern age" and "the modernworld" (HC 6). Cf. OT 54; and BPF 26-27.

82. See Arendt's distinction between a "philosophy of mankind' and a "philosophyof men " ( MDT 90-91). See also OT 465: "Terror is the realization of the law of move-ment; its chief aim is to make it possible for the force of nature or of history to racefreely through mankind, unhindered by an spontaneous human action. As such, terrorseeks to 'stabilize' men in order to liberate the forces of nature or history." It fabricatesa mankind, therefore, by eliminating individuals.


(2.155-156) .83

According to German Idealism, the Will made its appearance on-ly in speculation (2.156). Arendt specifically addresses why it is thatGerman Idealism had not been previously considered in the volumeand, in the process of this comment, reveals a good deal of her ownperspective:

This, then, is my justification for having omitted from our consideration thebody of thought, German Idealism, in which sheer speculation in the realm ofmetaphysics perhaps reached its climax together with its end....I do not believein a world, be it a past world or a future world, in which man's mind, equippedfor withdrawing from the world of appearances, could or should ever be com-fortably at home" (2.157-158).

German Idealism cast the Will as a metaphysical category. ForNietzsche and Heidegger, to whom the next two parts of chapter 4are addressed, "it was precisely a confrontation with the Will as ahuman faculty and not as an ontological category that promptedthem first to repudiate the faculty and then turn around to put theirconfidence in...personified concepts [resulting from] the thinking,as opposed to the willing, ego" (2.158).

Nietzsche rejected the equivalence of Progress and mankind. Pro-gress' optimistic overtone implies "lack of historical sense,...theoriginal error of all philosophers" (ibid.).

84 Concerning "Progress'correlate, the idea of mankind," Nietzsche proclaimed that"`Mankind does not advance; it does not even exist"' (2.159).

85

The inherent essence of willing is command for Nietzsche (2.611).There are, however, two conceptions of the ego implicit in com-mand-the "I" commanding and the "I" obeying.

88Arendt argues

that Nietzsche "detected in the `consciousness' of the struggle a kindof trick of the `I' that enables it to escape the conflict by identifyingitself with the commanding part and to overlook, as it were, theunpleasant, paralyzing, sentiments of being coerced and hence

83. Internal quotation is from Schelling's Of Human Freedom (Gutmann transla-tion [Chicago, 1936] 351).

84. Internal quotation from Nietzsche's Human All Too Human, no. 2 (Kaufmanntranslation, The Portable Nietzsche [New York, 1954], 51).

85. Internal quotation from Nietzsche's The Will to Power, no. 90 (Kaufmanntranslation [New York, 1968]. 55).

86. Cf. Arendt's discussion of the authoritarian relationship between commandingand obeying (BPF 93).


always on the point of resisting" (2.161-162). Nietzsche "shifts fromthe I-will to the anticipated I-can...[based] on an elevation of Lifeas experienced outside all mental activities to the rank of supremevalue by which everything else is to be evaluated" (2.163). 87 Thevery rise of Life as the standard of reference carries with it certainproblems for the Will. For Nietzsche, the fact that "the Will cannotwill backward" (2.168) produces a feeling of impotence, while will-ing future events is, of its very nature, a potency.' In either situa-tion, however, "the Will...transcends the sheer giveness of theworld" (2.169).

Stated in this manner, Nietzsche's view of the Will, if "developedinto a systematic philosophy,... would have fashioned a kind ofgreatly enriched Epictetian doctrine..." (2.170). However, Nietz-sche also "embarked on a construction of the given world that wouldmake sense..." (ibid.), which would "be a fitting abode for acreature whose `strength of will [is great enough] to do withoutmeaning in things...[who] can endure to live in a meaninglessworld"' (ibid.). This comprises the essential construct of Nietzsche'sidea of "Eternal Recurrence" 89 in which Becoming assumes the pre-eminent condition of willing. 90 This idea is "Nietzsche's term for theBeing of Being, through which time's transient nature is eliminatedand Becoming, the medium of the will-to-power's purposiveness,receives the seal of Being" (2.175).

Being becomes existence for which no causal sequence can belegitimately inferred. Becoming, therefore, is seen in a way whicheliminates intent and purpose. With causality eliminated, 81

"`Becoming does not aim at a final state, does not flow into "being"....Becoming is of [equal value at] every moment...in other words, ithas no value at all, for anything against which to measure it...is

87. See the comparison of Nietzsche's "yes to life" and Bertolt Brecht's "GegenVerftthrung' (MDT 233). On Brecht, see also Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Ber-tolt Brecht: Zwet Essays ( Munich, 1971), 63-107; and Heller, op. cit., 148-157.

88. Internal quotation is from The Will to Power, no. 585A (Kaufmann transla-tion, 318).

89. 1.175: "`Eternal Recurrence' is the most affirmative thought because it is thenegation of the negation. In that perspective, the will-to-power is no more than abiological urge that keeps the wheel rolling and is transcended by a Will that goesbeyond the mere life instinct in saying `Yes' to Life."

90.Cf. HC 221 on Nietzsche and the "meaning of the Will. "

91. See Canovan, op. cit., 44.


lacking. The total value of the world cannot be evaluated"'(2.171-172). 92 Nietzsche's "superman" becomes one who can "over-come [the] fallacies" inherent in the "internal experiences" of theWill which have "misled thinking men into assuming that there aresuch things as cause and effect, intention and goal, in reality"(2.172). According to Arendt's interpretation, Nietzsche's "will-to-power" eventually produces his "repudiation of the Will and thewilling ego" (ibid.).

Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche comprises, for Arendt, themoment of his famous "reversal" (Kehre) on the will which, againaccording to Arendt,9

3is seen in the change of perspective between

volumes 1 and 2 of Heidegger's work entitled Nietzsche, containinglectures delivered between 1936 and 1940.

The essential difference in emphasis between the two volumes is adecisive "shift...from the thought of `Eternal Recurrence' to an in-terpretation of the Will as almost exclusively will-to-power, in thespecific sense of a will to rule and dominate..." (2.176-177). ForHeidegger, "the last word...concerns the Will'sdestructiveness...manifest[ed] in the Will's obsession with thefuture, which forces men into oblivion. In order to will the future inthe sense of being the future's master, men must forget and finallydestroy the past....[S]ince everything that is real has `become,' thatis, incorporates a past, this destructiveness ultimately relates toeverything that is" (2.177-178).

To all of this is added the opposition of willing and thinking, arecognition of the "enigmatic" being of man which Heideggershared with Nietzsche (2.179). Heidegger, however, also presentsthe idea of a "History of Being, and this History determines whethermen respond to Being in terms of willing or in terms of thinking"(ibid.). Unlike the general theme in the history of thought whichposits a connection between willing and acting, but not betweenthinking and acting, "for Heidegger, it is Being itself that, foreverchanging, manifests itself in the thinking of the actor so that actingand thinking coincide" (2.180). This coincidence, Arendt suggests,

92. Internal quotation is from The Will to Power, no. 708 (Kaufmann translation,377-378). At 2.175-176, however, Arendt chooses to translate a section from the samepassage herself.

93. See also J.L. Mehta's The Philosophy of Martin Heidegger (New York, 1971),112, to which Arendt refers (2.173).


prompts Heidegger to reject the destructiveness of the Will and opt,rather for "the letting be, and letting-be as an activity is thinkingthat obeys the call of Being. The mood pervading the letting-be ofthought is the opposite of the mood of purposiveness in willing,...acalmness...that `prepares us' for 'a thinking that is not willing"(2.178). 94 "The serenity of `letting be"' produces "the paradoxical`Will-not-to-will'," 95 a mood, Arendt contends, which is no less aradical reversal than that which occurred between the two volumesof Heidegger's commentary on Nietzsche (2.188).

The impact of this "second reversal" is advanced by Arendt in thefollowing passage: "Becoming, the law that rules beings [i.e., ex-istences external to the thinking ego], is now the opposite of Being[i.e., the withdrawn, internalized, awareness of being by the think-ing ego], when, in passing away, becoming ceases, it changes againinto that Being [internalized awareness] from whose sheltering, con-cealing darkness it originally emerged... .It is through withdrawalthat `being [internalized awareness] holds to its truth' and shieldsit....This leads to the seemingly paradoxical statement `As [Being(internalized awareness)] provides the unconcealment of beings [ex-ternal existences], it [establishes] the concealment of Being [inter-nalized awareness]"' (2.191)

.96The withdrawn, internalized, Being

remains distinct from the various beings found in existence. Inter-nalized Being seeks truth, B7 while it is the propensity of external be-ings to produce error. Internalized Being seeks refuge in itself, andthinking, rather than willing, constitutes its proper mental faculty.The coincidence of thinking and acting, however, occurs in "thetransitional moment from one epoch to the next, from destiny todestiny, when Being qua Truth breaks into the continuum of error,when the `epochal essense of Being lays claim to the ecstatic nature

94. Internal quotation is from Martin Heidegger, Gelassenheit (Pfullignen, 1959),33 (English translation by John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund, Discourse onThinking [New York, 1966], 60).

95. See Martin Heidegger Sein and Zeit (Tubingen, 1949), 329.96. Bracketed passages added. This statement is found in Heidegger's "Der Spruch

des Aniximander, " written in 1946. Arendt is here quoting from the English transla-tion by David Farrell Krell, "The Aniximander Fragment," Arion 1 (1975), 591.Arendt's entire suggestion concerning the "second reversal" is derived from this essay.

97. As Heidegger remarks in the Introduction to "What is Metaphysics? "- "Mean-ing of Being" and "Truth of Being" say the same" (1.15).


of Da-sein [i.e., "existence"]"' (2.192). 98 This pushing outward ofInternalized Being, at the pivotal moment, produces a meaningfulBecoming-the product, however, of thinking, not willing.

In the final part of the final chapter of the second, and owing toher death, the final volume of The Life of the Mind, we return to thequestion of freedom and take up, for the only time in either volumethe question of political life as well. What is here attempted,however, is an examination of the political notion of freedom in thehope of overcoming the perplexities inherent in the philosophicalconcept of freedom.

"Philosophical freedom," Arendt writes, "the freedom of the will,is relevant only to people who live outside political communities, assolitary individuals" (2.199). B9 "Political freedom is distinct fromphilosophic freedom in being clearly a quality of the I-can and notof the I-will. Political freedom is possible only in the sphere ofhuman plurality, and on the premise that this sphere is not simplyan extension of the dual I'and-myself to a plural We" (2.200).

100

98. Internal quotation is from "The Aniximander Fragment," op. cit., 592. Cf. HC375, n. 76.

99.Cf. OR 227-228 where " the trickiest and the most dangerous of modern concep-tions and misconceptions"-that of the opposition of reason and passion (Arendt is herereferring to Federalist 50) is discussed. This opposition "has the great merit of bypass-ing the faculty of the will."

It is paradoxical, as Arendt observes at the outset of the final chapter of volume 2,"that every philosophy of the Will is conceived and articulated not by men of actionbut by philosophers, Kant's `professional thinkers,' who in one way or another arecommitted to the bios theoretikos and therefore by nature more inclined to `interpretthe world' than to `change it"' (2.195). Cf. 1.166-167: "It is the helplessness of thethinking ego to give an account of itself than has made the philosophers, the profes-sional thinkers, such a difficult tribe to deal with." Cf. Canovan, op. cit., 11.

100. Cf. BPF 246; HC 155-156, 167; and MDT 81-82: "Political concepts are basedon plurality, diversity, and mutual limitations. A citizen is by definition a citizenamong citizens of a country among countries. His rights and duties must be definedand limited, not only by those of his fellow citizens, but also by the boundaries of a ter-ritory. Philosophy may conceive of the earth as the homeland of mankind and of oneunwritten law, eternal and valid for all. Politics deals with men, nationals of manycountries and heirs to many pasts; its laws are the positively established fences whichhedge in, protect, and limit the space in which, freedom is not a concept, but a living,political reality. " Consider, however, BPF 148 ("We first become aware of freedom orits opposite in our intercourse with others, not in the intercourse with ourselves.") and151 ("Freedom as related to politics is not a phenomenon of the will."). See Cooper,op. cit., 145f., 153; Sheldon S. Wolin, "Hannah Arendt and the Ordinance of Time,"Social Research 44 (1977), 95' and Kateb, op. cit., 148.


Since "political power...is always limited power, and since powerand freedom in the sphere of human plurality are in factsynonymous, 101 this means also that political freedom is alwayslimited freedom" (2.201).

102

Arendt proceeds to comment upon limited political freedom, (cf.OR 4, 279; BPF, 146) the freedom experienced by "a group of people[who] came to think of themselves as `We"' (2.202)

.103In the process,

we are confronted with a temporal concern, much as we were metwith a concern for time at the end of volume 1. The collective "We"seeks to articulate itself in terms of its foundation (see OR 160), itscreation, the moment in which becoming and being intersect.

l04

There is, at the founding of a "We," a profound sense of produc-

101.Cf. OV 43 ( "Power, strength, force, authority, violence-these are but wordsto indicate the means by which man rules over man; they are held to be synonymousbecause they have the same function."), and 44 ("Power corresponds to the humanability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an in-dividual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keepstogether."). See the entire discussion of power and violence, ibid., 41-56. Cf. Berns-tein, op. cit., 8-9; and Canovan, op. Cit., 72-73. Coopei maintains that "the emphasison participation is the dominant theme in Hannah Arendt's political philosophy."Cooper, op. cit., 145. See also ibid., 150, on power and violence.

Consider also OR 148-149: "It was precisely because Montesquieu-unique in thisrespect among the sources from which the founders drew their political wisdom-hadmaintained that power and freedom belong together, that conceptually speaking,political freedom did not result in the I-will but in the I-can, and that therefore thepolitical realm must be contrasted and constituted in a way in which power andfreedom would be combined, that we find his name invoked in practically all debateson constitution."

102. On power and appearance, see HC 178ff. On power and authority in themodern world, cf. CR 205, 223-224. On power and the nation-state, see OT 38, also139ff. On power and totalitarianism, see ibid., 418. Cf. Habermas, op. cit., (especially20).

103. This recognition of "We " requires community among citizens. A state inwhich no such communality exists, "where each man thinks only his own thoughts, isby definition a tyranny" (BPF 164). On the implications of consent in this experience,see CR 84ff. The "equality" of this condition is reflected in isonomy-"equality withinthe range of law,...not equality of condition" (OR 22). Cf. OT 234, and Kateb, op.cit., 155. See also Peter Fuchs, "Hannah Arendt's Conception of PoliticalCommunity," Idealistic Studies 3 (1973), 252-265.

104. The "public sphere" mapped out by the "We" encompasses as well the"spiritual realm" in which humanitas is acquired. See MDT 73-74. On the modernsubstitution of "social" for "political," see HC 24, 51; and Canovan, op. cit., 2. On the"perversion" inherent in the notion of nationalism, see OT 231.


ing a new order.105

Owing to the "manifest limitations inherent inthe human condition" (ibid.), however, that sense can only begrasped through legend. Arendt turns to the two eminent "foundinglegends" of Western civilization-Rome and Exodus (2.203f.).

loe

Both exhibit "the freedom that comes from being liberated" and"the freedom that arises from the spontaneity of beginningsomething new" (2.203). These two founding legends "have acted asguides for Western political thought" (2.203-204). In each case, thefounding legend produces "a hiatus between disaster and salvation,between liberation from the old order and the new freedom, em-bodies a novus ordo seclorum..." (2.204; cf., OR 171ff). This "legen-dary hiatus between a no-more and a not-yet clearly indicated thatfreedom would not be the automatic result of liberation, that theend of the old is not necessarily the beginning of the new, that thenotion of an all-powerful time continuum is an illusion" (ibid.).

All "foundation legends, with their hiatus between liberation andthe constitution of freedom, indicate the problem without solving it.They point to the abyss of nothingness that opens up before any deedthat cannot be accounted for by a whole chain of cause andeffect....In the normal time continuum every effect immediatelyturns into a cause of future developments, but when the causal chainis broken-which occurs after liberation has been achieved, becauseliberation, though it may be freedom's conditio sine qua non, isnever the conditio per quam that causes freedom 107-there isnothing left for the `beginner' to hold on to. The thought of an ab-solute beginning:creatio ex nihilo-abolishes the sequence of tem-porality no less than does the thought of an absolute end, now right-ly referred to as `thinking the unthinkable" (2.207-208).

108

Lacking any experience in "creating from nothing," founders turnto history for guidance. 109 What initially is viewed as an absolutely

105.Cf. HC 201 on the "pre-determined identity of ruling and beginning [which]had the consequence that all beginning was understood as the legitimation of rulinguntil, finally, the element of beginning disappeared altogether from the concept ofrulership. With it the most elementary and authentic understanding of humanfreedom disappeared from political philosophy."

106. See OR 206. Consider as well the "Great Game" (as portrayed by Kipling inKim) as a foundation legend (OT 216ff.).

107.Cf. ibid., 22, 58, 301, n.1; and Bernstein, op. cit., 6. Kateb, op. cit., is in-dispensable on this point.

108. On the factors contributing to "total war," see OR 5-7.109.Cf., however, HC 372, n.62: "Each time the modern age had reason to hope

for a new political philosophy, it received a philosophy of history instead."


new beginning is re-defined into a "creating something anew," thatis, the re-creation of a prior event. 11° It is the "re-founding" of Romewhich has attracted the attention of men-indicating why antiqui-ty, especially Roman antiquity, had such a pervasive hold upon the"re-birth[s] or renaissance[s], from the fifteenth and sixteenth cen-turies onwards... .It was not until the Age of Enlightenment-thatis, in a new completely secularized world-that the revival of anti-quity ceased to be a matter of erudition and responded to highlypractical political purposes" (2.211)." '

The founding of "Rome anew" occasions Arendt's treatment ofVirgin (2.211-215). 12 Any founding is beset by "the perplexity in-herent in the task of foundation" (2.211), that is, how to createsomething new-to found a political enterprise which has not ex-isted and whose future is highly contingent. The relationshipsamong political action, founding, and freedom do not provide theresolution of the willing/freedom problem Arendt had sought tolocate there. "When we directed our attention to men of action," shewrites, "hoping to find in them a notion of freedom purged of theperplexities caused for men's mind by the reflecting of mental ac-tivities-the inevitable recoil on itself of the willing ego-we hopedfor more than we finally achieved. The abyss of pure spontaneity,which in the foundation legends is bridged by the hiatus betweenliberation and the constitution of freedom, was covered up by thedevice...of understanding the new as an improved re-statement ofthe old" (2.216) . 13

Political action, thus, does not provide the resolution of the dif-ficulties inherent in willing as it relates to freedom. An impasseseems to have arisen between the idea of "man as beginning" andman "doomed to be free by virtue of being born" (2.217)-whetherman likes or abhors the condition, whether man seeks to embrace it

110.Cf. CR5: " A characteristic of human action is that it always begins somethingnew, and this does not mean that it is ever permitted to start ab nova, to create exnihilo." Cf. OT 473.

111. Arendt adds: "For that enterprise the only predecessor has been the lonelyfigure, Machiavelli" (2.211). Cf. BPF 136-149; and OR 28-32.

112.Cf. 2.214 with OR 212. See Judith N. Shklar, "Rethinking the Past," SocialResearch 44 (1977), 83f.

113.Cf. MDT 11: "In the political realm restoration is never a substitute for a newfoundation but will be at best an emergency measure that becomes inevitable when theact of foundation, which is called revolution, has failed."


or reject it altogether through fatalism (ibid.). 114 This impasse, con-stituting as it does the essence of freedom, can be "opened orsolved," Arendt suggests, only "by an appeal to another mentalfaculty-the faculty of Judgment, an analysis of which at least maytell us what is involved in our pleasures and our displeasures"(ibid.).

So ends The Life of the Mind as we have it.

III

Since Arendt strictly counsels in both volumes that she is neitherpresenting a systematic treatise, nor that one is likely to find adefinitive resolution of the enduring problems produced by mentalliving, and further, specifically rejects the idea that she should pro-vide any all encompassing conclusions garnered from her approach,we are counseled to refrain from doing so here. Arendt, throughoutboth volumes, had been practicing what she considered to be truethought. What is sought is meaning, not cognition. To provide"solutions" to the problems encountered in the study would be tan-tamount to vitiating the entire enterprise.

If philosophy concerns the essence of reality, is, therefore, thestudy concerned with beginnings (1.120), it is directed toward "themeaning of the whole" (1.96). "The spectator, not the actor, holdsthe clue to the meaning of human affairs" (ibid.), and the provinceof political philosophy is reserved for the spectator, not the actor.

Political philosophy, however, requires dialogue. One solitaryspectator, taking his bearings from the desire to know "beginnings,"can never produce a sufficient understanding of human affairs.Kant, for example, could speak of political philosophy only because,and precisely because, these spectators were in the plural (ibid.).

If philosophy has witnessed a decline in the contemporary world,if the metaphysical foundations upon which philosophy has restedhave all turned into fallacies, then the only possibility of continuingthe pursuit of meaning must fall back on the faculties of the humanmind, not on the systems of philosophic schools. Philosophy requiresa re-awakened memory, the one mental ~ faculty of Augustine's

114. Cf. ibid., 4-5. See also Cooper, op. cit., 146, on what he terms the"philosophical anthropology" of Arendt's political philosophy.


trilogy of memory, intellect, and will, which has been lost to themodern world, to the great prejudice of "all strictly politicalphilosophy" (2.117). Hannah Arendt's The Life of the Mind com-prises a grand counsel on the necessity of re-kindling memory, andmemory demands a recognition of the rational faculties of man. It isperhaps in this sense that The Life of the Mind stands as thephilosophical equivalent of The Human Condition. For HannahArendt, if she accomplished nothing else, forces us to remember;and by doing so, compelled us to enter into dialogue with her. A"plurality of spectators" has been achieved.

Duquesne University KENT F. MOORS

modernity and human initiative: the … and human initiative: the structure of hannah arendt's...

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