The Life of the Mind

by Hannah Arendt

  We have difficulty realizing how paradoxical the first statement must have sounded when it was made; after thousands of years of use and misuse, it reads like cheap moralizing. And the best demonstration of how difficult it is for modern readers to understand the thrust of the second is the fact that its key words, "Being one" (preceding "it would be worse for me to be at odds with myself than in disagreement with multitudes of men"), are frequently left out in translation. As to the first, it is a subjective statement; it means: it is better for me to suffer wrong than to do wrong. And in the dialogue where it occurs, it is simply countered by the opposite equally subjective statement, which, of course, sounds much more plausible. What becomes apparent is that Callicles and Socrates are talking about a different I: What is good for one is bad for the other.

  If, on the other hand, we look at the proposition from the point of view of the world, as distinguished from those of the two speakers, we would have to say: What counts is that a wrong has been done; and for this, it is irrelevant who is better off, the wrong-doer or the wrong-sufferer. As citizens, we must prevent wrong-doing because the world in which we all live, wrong-doer, wrong-sufferer, and spectator, is at stake; the City has been wronged. Our law codes, with their distinction between crimes where indictment is mandatory and transgressions that pertain only to the private affairs of individuals who may or may not want to sue, take this into account. We could almost define a crime as that transgression of the law that demands punishment regardless of the one who has been wronged; the wronged one may feel like forgiving and forgetting, and there may be no danger for others if it can be assumed that the wrong-doer is altogether unlikely to do wrong again. Still, the law of the land permits no option because it is the community as a whole that has been violated.

  In other words, Socrates is not talking here in the person of the citizen, who is supposed to be more concerned with the world than with his self; he talks as the man chiefly devoted to thinking. It is as though he said to Callicles: If you were like me, in love with wisdom and in need of thinking about everything and examining, everything, you would know that if the world were as you depict it, divided into the strong and the weak, where "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" (Thucydides), so that no alternative exists but to either do or suffer wrong, then it is better to suffer than to do. But the presupposition is of course: if you are in love with wisdom and philosophizing; if you know what it means to examine.

  To my knowledge there is only one other passage in Greek literature that, in almost the same words, says what Socrates said. "More unfortunate [kakodaimonesteros] than the wronged one is the wrong-doer,"123 reads one of the fragments of Democritus, Parmenides' great adversary, who probably for this reason is never mentioned by Plato. The coincidence seems noteworthy because Democritus, as distinguished from Socrates, was not particularly interested in human affairs but he seems to have been quite interested in the experience of thinking. It looks as though what we are tempted to understand as a purely moral proposition actually arose out of the thinking experience as such.

  And this brings us to the second statement, which in fact is the prerequisite for the first one. It, too, is highly paradoxical. Socrates talks of being one and therefore not being able to risk getting out of harmony with himself. But nothing that is identical with itself, truly and absolutely One, as A is A, can be either in or out of harmony with itself; you always need at least two tones to produce a harmonious sound. Certainly when I appear and am seen by others, I am one; otherwise I would be unrecognizable. And so long as I am together with others, barely conscious of myself, I am as I appear to others. We call consciousness (literally, as we have seen, "to know with myself) the curious fact that in a sense I also am for myself, though I hardly appear to me, which indicates that the Socratic "being one" is not so unproblematic as it seems; I am not only for others but for myself, and in this latter case, I clearly am not just one. A difference is inserted into my Oneness.

  We know of this difference in other respects. Everything that exists among a plurality of things is not simply what it is, in its identity, but it is also different from others; this being different belongs to its very nature. When we try to get hold of it in thought, wanting to define it, we must take this otherness (altereitas) or difference into account. When we say what a thing is, we must say what it is not or we would speak in tautologies: every determination is negation, as Spinoza has it. Touching on this matter, the problem of identity and difference, there is a curious passage in Plato's Sophist that Heidegger has pointed to. The Stranger in the dialogue states that of two things—for instance, rest and motion—"each one is different [from the other], but itself for itself the same" (hekaston heauto tauton).124 In interpreting the sentence, Heidegger puts the emphasis on the dative, heauto, for Plato does not say, as we would expect, hekaston auto tauton, "each one itself [taken out of context] is the same," in the sense of the tautological A is A, where difference arises out of the plurality of things. According to Heidegger, this dative means that "each thing itself is returned to itself, each itself is the same for itself [because it is] with itself.... Sameness implies the relation of with/ that is, a mediation, a connection, a synthesis: the unification into a unity."125

  The passage Heidegger is examining occurs in the Sophist's final section about the koinonia, the "community," the fitting and blending together, of the Ideas, and especially about the possible community of Difference and Identity, which seem to be contraries. "What is different is always so called with reference to other things" (pros alia),126 but their opposites, things "that are what they are in themselves" (kath' hauta), partake in the "Idea" of difference insofar as they "refer back to themselves"—they are the same with or for themselves, so that each eidos is different from the rest, "not by virtue of its own nature, but because it partakes of the character of Difference,"127 that is, not because it has a relation to something else from which it is different (pros ti), but because it exists among a plurality of Ideas, and "every entity qua entity harbors the possibility of being looked upon as different from something."128 In our terms, wherever there is a plurality—of living beings, of things, of Ideas—there is difference, and this difference does not arise from the outside but is inherent in every entity in the form of duality, from which comes unity as unification.

  This construction—Plato's implication as well as Heidegger's interpretation—seems to me erroneous. To take a mere thing out of its context with other things and to look on it only in its "relation" to itself (kath' hauto), that is, in its identity, reveals no difference, no otherness; along with its relation to something it is not, it loses its reality and acquires a curious kind of eeriness. In that way, it often appears in works of art, especially in Kafka's early prose pieces or in some paintings of van Gogh where a single object, a chair, a pair of shoes, is represented. But these art works are thought-things, and what gives them their meaning—as though they were not just themselves but for themselves—is precisely the transformation they have undergone when thinking took possession of them.

  In other words, what is being transferred here 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 that Socrates discovered as the essence of thought and Plato translated into conceptual language as the soundless dialogue eme emauto— between me and myself.129 But, again, it is not the thinking activity that constitutes the unity, unifies the two-in-one; on the contrary, the two-in-one become One again when the outside world intrudes upon the thinker and cuts short the thinking process. Then, when he is called by his name back into the world of appearances, where he is always One, it is as though the two into which the thinking process had split him clapped together again. Thinking, existentially speaking, is a solitary but not a lonely business; solitude is that human situation in which I keep myself company. Loneliness comes about when I am alone without being able to split up into the two-in-one, without being able to k
eep myself company, when, as Jaspers used to say, "I am in default of myself" (ich bleibe mir aus), or, to put it differently, when I am one and without company.

  Nothing perhaps indicates more strongly that man exists essentially in the plural than that his solitude actualizes his merely being conscious of himself, which we probably share with the higher animals, into a duality during the thinking activity. It is this 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. Thinking can become dialectical and critical because it goes through this questioning and answering process, through the dialogue of dialegesthai, which actually is a "traveling through words," a poreuesthai dia ton logon,130 whereby we constantly raise the basic Socratic question: What do you mean when you say ...? except that this legein, saying, is soundless and therefore so swift that its dialogical structure is somewhat difficult to detect.

  The criterion of the mental dialogue is no longer truth, which would compel answers to the questions I raise with myself, either in the mode of Intuition, which compels with the force of sense evidence, or as necessary conclusions of reckoning with consequences in mathematical or logical reasoning, which rely on the structure of our brain and compel with its natural power. The only criterion of Socratic thinking is agreement, to be consistent with oneself, homologein autos heautō:131 its opposite, to be in contradiction with oneself, enantia legein autos heautd,132 actually means becoming one's own adversary. Hence Aristode, in his earliest formulation of the famous axiom of contradiction, says explicitly that this is axiomatic: "we must necessarily believe it because ... it is addressed not to the outward word [exo logos, that is, to the spoken word addressed to someone else, an interlocutor who may be either friend or adversary] but to the discourse within the soul, and though we can always raise objections to the outward word, to the inward discourse we cannot always object," because here the partner is oneself, and I cannot possibly want to become my own adversary.133 (In this instance, we can watch how such an insight, won from the factual experience of the thinking ego, gets lost when it is generalized into a philosophical doctrine—"A cannot be both B and A under the same conditions and at the same time"—for we find the transformation being achieved by Aristode himself when he discusses the same matter in his Metaphysics.134 )

  A close reading of the Organon, the "Instrument," as the collection of Aristotle's early logical treatises has been called since the sixth century, clearly shows that what we now call 'logic" was by no means originally meant as an "instrument of thought," of the inward discourse carried on "within the soul," but was designed as the science of correct talking and arguing when we are trying to convince others or give an account of what we state, always starting, as Socrates did, with premises most likely to be agreed on by most men or by most of those generally believed to be the wisest. In the early treatises, the axiom of non-contradiction, decisive only for the inward dialogue of thinking, has not yet been established as the most basic rule for discourse in general. Only after this special case had become the guiding example for all thought could Kant, who in his Anthropology had defined thinking as "talking with oneself ... hence also inwardly listening,"135 count the injunction "Always think consistendy, in agreement with yourself" ("Jederzeit mit sich selbst einstimmig denken") among the maxims that must be regarded as "unchangeable commandments for the class of thinkers."136

  In brief, the specifically human actualization of consciousness in the thinking dialogue between me and myself suggests that difference and otherness, which are such outstanding characteristics of the world of appearances as it is given to man for his habitat among a plurality of things, are the very conditions for the existence of man's mental ego as well, for this ego actually exists only in duality. And this ego—the I-am-I—experiences difference in identity precisely when it is not related to the things that appear but only related to itself. (This original duality, incidentally, explains the futility of the fashionable search for identity. Our modern identity crisis could be resolved only by never being alone and never trying to think.) Without that original split, Socrates' statement about harmony in a being that to all appearances is One would be meaningless.

  Consciousness is not the same as thinking; acts of consciousness have in common with sense experience the fact that they are "intentional" and therefore cognitive acts, whereas the thinking ego does not think something but about something, and this act is dialectical: it proceeds in the form of a silent dialogue. Without consciousness in the sense of self-awareness, thinking would not be possible. What thinking actualizes in its unending process is difference, given as a mere raw fact (factum brutum) in consciousness; only in this humanized form does consciousness then become the outstanding characteristic of somebody who is a man and neither a god nor an animal. As the metaphor bridges the gap between the world of appearances and the mental activities going on within it, so the Socratic two-in-one heals the solitariness of thought; its inherent duality points to the infinite plurality which is the law of the earth.

  To Socrates, the duality of the two-in-one meant no more than that if you want to think, you must see to it that the two who carry on the dialogue be in good shape, that the partners be friends. The partner who comes to life when you are alert and alone is the only one from whom you can never get away—except by ceasing to think. It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong, because you can remain the friend of the sufferer; who would want to be the friend of and have to live together with a murderer? Not even another murderer. In the end, it is to this rather simple consideration of the importance of agreement between you and yourself that Kant's Categorical Imperative appeals. Underlying the imperative, "Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law,"137 is the command "Do not contradict yourself." A murderer or a thief cannot will that "Thou shalt kill" and "Thou shalt steal" be general laws, since he naturally fears for his own life and property. If you make yourself an exception, you have contradicted yourself.

  In one of the contested dialogues, the Hippias Major, which even if not by Plato may still give authentic testimony about Socrates, Socrates describes the situation simply and accurately. It is the end of the dialogue, the moment of going home. He tells Hippias, who has shown himself to be an especially thickheaded partner, how "blissfully fortunate" he is in comparison with poor Socrates, who at home is awaited by a very obnoxious fellow who always cross-examines him. "He is a close relative and lives in the same house." When he now will hear Socrates give utterance to Hippias' opinions, he will ask "whether he is not ashamed of talking about a beautiful way of life, when questioning makes it evident that he does not even know the meaning of the word "beauty." "138 When Hippias goes home, he remains one, for, though he lives alone, he does not seek to keep himself company. He certainly does not lose consciousness; he is simply not in the habit of actualizing it. When Socrates goes home, he is not alone, he is by himself. Clearly, with this fellow who awaits him, Socrates has to come to some kind of agreement, because they live under the same roof. Better to be at odds with the whole world than be at odds with the only one you are forced to live together with when you have left company behind.

  What Socrates discovered was that we can have intercourse with ourselves, as well as with others, and that the two kinds of intercourse are somehow interrelated. Aristotle, speaking about friendship, remarked: "The friend is another self"139 —meaning: you can carry on the dialogue of thought with him just as well as with yourself. This is still in the Socratic tradition, except that Socrates would have said: The self, too, is a kind of friend. The guiding experience in these matters is, of course, friendship and not selfhood; I first talk with others before I talk with myself, examining whatever the joint talk may have been about, and then discover that I can conduct a dialogue not only with others but with myself as well. The common point, however, is that the dialogue of thought can be carried out only among friends, and its basic criterion, its sup
reme law, as it were, says: Do not contradict yourself.

  It is characteristic of "base people" to be "at variance with themselves" (diapherontai heautois) and of wicked men to avoid their own company; their soul is in rebellion against itself (stasiazei).140 What kind of dialogue can you conduct with yourself when your soul is not in harmony but at war with itself? Precisely the dialogue we overhear when Shakespeare's Richard III is alone:

  What do I fear? Myself? There's none else by:

  Richard loves Richard: that is, I am I.

  Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am:

  Then fly: what! from myself? Great reason why:

  Lest I revenge. What! myself upon myself?

  Alack! I love myself. Wherefore? For any good

  That I myself have done unto myself?

  O! no: alas! I rather hate myself

  For hateful deeds committed by myself.

  I am a villain. Yet I lie, I am not.

  Fool, of thyself speak well: fool, do not flatter.

  Yet all this looks very different when midnight is past and Richard has escaped his own company to join that of his peers. Then:

  Conscience is but a word that cowards use,

  Devis'd at first to keep the strong in awe....

  Even Socrates, so much in love with the marketplace, has to go home, where he will be alone, in solitude, in order to meet the other fellow.