The Life of the Mind

by Hannah Arendt

  67. For the "proof' of contingency, Scotus invokes the authority of Avicenna, quoting from his Metaphysics: "Those who deny the first principle [i.e., "Some being is contingent"] should be flogged or burned until they admit that it is not the same thing to be burned and not burned, or whipped and not whipped." See Arthur Hyman and James J. Walsh, Philosophy in the Middle Ages, New York, 1967, p. 592.

  68. Anybody who is acquainted with the medieval disputations between the schools is still struck by their contentious spirit, a kind of "contentious learning" (Francis Bacon) that aimed at an ephemeral victory rather than at anything else. Erasmus' and Rabelais' satires as well as Francis Bacon's attacks testify to an atmosphere in the schools that must have been quite annoying to those who were doing philosophy in earnest. For Scotus, see Saint-Maurice in Ryan and Bonansea, op. cit., pp. 354–358.

  69. Quoted from Hyman and Walsh, op. cit., p. 597.

  70. Bonansea, op. cit., p. 109, n. 90.

  71. Hoeres, op. cit., p. 121.

  72. Bonansea, op. cit., p. 89.

  73. Stadter, op. cit., p. 193.

  74. Ibid.

  75. Wolter, op. cit., p. 80.

  76. Aristotle, Physics, 256bl0.

  77. Auer, op. cit., p. 169.

  78. For the theory of "concurring causes," see Bonansea, op. cit., pp. 109–110. The quotations are chiefly from P. Ch. Balie, "Une question inédite de J. Duns Scots sur la volonté," in Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, vol. 3, 1931.

  79. Wolter, op. cit., p. 55.

  80. Cf. Bergson's insight cited in chap. I of this volume, p. 31.

  81. Quoted from Hoeres, op. cit., p. Ill, who unfortunately does not give any Latin original for the sentence: "Denn elles Vergangene ist schlechthin notwendig."

  82. See Bonansea, op. cit., p. 95.

  83. Quoted from Hyman and Walsh, op. cit., p. 596.

  84. See Vogt, op. cit., p. 29.

  85. Auer, op. cit., p. 152.

  86. Bettoni, Duns Scotus, p. 158.

  87. Wolter, op. cit., pp. 57 and 177.

  88. Hoeres, op. cit., p. 191.

  89. Stadter, op. cit., pp. 288–289.

  90. Quoted in Heidegger, Was Heisst Denken?, Tübingen, 1954, p. 41.

  91. Quoted from Vogt, op. cit., p. 93.

  92. Hoeres, op. cit., p. 197.

  93. Bettoni, Duns Scotus, p. 122.

  94. Bonansea, op. cit., p. 120.

  95. Ibid., p. 119.

  96. Ibid., p. 120.

  97. On the Trinity, bk. X, chap, viii, 11.

  98. Bettoni, Duns Scotus, p. 40.

  99. I have used for my interpretation the following Latin text from the Opus Oxoniense IV, dist. 49, qu. 4, nn. 5–9: "Si enim accipiatur quietatio pro ... conséquente operationem perfectam, concedo quod illam quietationem praecedit perfecta consecutio finis; si autem accipiatur quietatio pro actu quietativo in fine, dico quod actus amandi, qui naturaliter praecedit delectationem, quietat iRo modo, quia potentia operativa non quietatur in obiecto, nisi per operationem perfectam, per quam attingit obiectum."

  I propose the following translation: "For if quietude is accepted as following upon the perfect operation, I admit that a perfect attainment of the end precedes this quietude; if, however, quietude is accepted for an act resting in its end, I say that the act of loving, which naturally precedes delight, brings quiet in such a way that the acting faculty does not come to rest in the object except through the perfect operation by which it attains the object."

  100. B643-B645, Smith trans., pp. 515–516.

  Chapter IV

  1. Lewis White Beck, op. cit., p. 41.

  2. For Pascal, see Pensées, no. 81, Pantheon ed.; no. 438 [257], Pléiade ed.; and "Sayings Attributed to Pascal" in Pensées, Penguin ed., p. 356. For Donne, see "An Anatomy of the World; The First Anniversary."

  3. The Will to Power, no. 487, p. 269.

  4. Ibid., no. 419, p. 225.

  5. Heidegger, in "Überwindung der Metaphysik," op. cit., p. 83.

  6. For this and the following, see especially Edgar Zilsel, "The Genesis of the Concept of Scientific Progress," in Journal of the History of Ideas, 1945, vol. VI, p. 3.

  7. Zilsel thus finds the genesis of the Progress concept in the experience and "intellectual attitude" of "superior artisans."

  8. Préface pour le Traité du Vide, Pléiade ed., p. 310.

  9. VII, 803c.

  10. See Kant, Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784), Introduction, in Kant on History, ed. Lewis White Beck, Library of Liberal Arts, Indianapolis, New York, 1963, pp. 11–12.

  11. Ibid., Third Thesis. Author's translation.

  12. Schelling, Of Human Freedom, p. 351.

  13. Ibid., p. 350.

  14. Trans. F. D. Wieck and J. G. Gray, New York, Evanston, London, 1968, p. 91.

  15. Vorträge und Aufsätze, p. 89.

  16. The Will to Power, no. 419, pp. 225–226.

  17. Critique of Pure Reason, B478.

  18. Human All Too Human, no. 2, in The Portable Nietzsche, p. 51.

  19. The Will to Power, no. 90, p. 55.

  20. Ibid., no. 1041, p. 536.

  21."An Anatomy of the World; The First Anniversary."

  22. The Will to Power, no. 95, p. 59.

  23. Ibid., no. 84, p. 52.

  24. Ibid., no. 668, p. 353. Author's translation.

  25. Nietzsche, vol. I, p. 70.

  26. No. 19.

  27. Ibid. Italics added.

  28. The Will to Power, no. 693, p. 369.

  29. Ibid., no. 417, p. 224.

  30. See chap. Ill, p. 142.

  31. In Aufzeichnung zum IV, Teil von "Also Sprach Zarathustra," quoted from Heidegger, Was Heisst Denken?, p. 46.

  32. The Will to Power, no. 667, p. 352. Author's translation.

  33. The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, Vintage Books, New York, 1974, bk. IV, no. 310, pp. 247–248.

  34. See Thinking, chap. II, pp. 98–110.

  35. Toward a Genealogy of Morals, no. 28.

  36. The Will to Power, no. 689, p. 368.

  37. The Gay Science, bk. IV, no. 341, pp. 273–274.

  38. The Will to Power, no. 664, p. 350.

  39. Ibid., no. 666, pp. 351–352. Author's translation.

  40. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pt. II, "On Self-Overcoming," in The Portable Nietzsche, p. 227.

  41. The Will to Power, no. 660, p. 349.

  42. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pt. II, "On Redemption," in The Portable Nietzsche, p. 251.

  43. The Will to Power, no. 585 A, pp. 316–319.

  44. The Gay Science, bk. IV, no. 324. Author's translation.

  45. See chap. II, pp. 73–84.

  46. The Will to Power, no. 585 A, p. 318.

  47. See Twilight of the Idols, especially "The Four Great Errors," in The Portable Nietzsche, pp. 500–501.

  48. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pt. II, in The Portable Nietzsche, p. 252.

  49. The Will to Power, no. 708, pp. 377–378.

  50. The Gay Science, bk. IV, no. 276, p. 223.

  51. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pt. Ill, "Before Sunrise," also "The Seven Seals (or: The Yes and Amen Song)," in The Portable Nietzsche, pp. 276–279 and 340–343.

  52. See the excellent Index to Heidegger's whole work up to and including Wegmarken (1968) by Hildegard Feick, 2nd ed., Tübingen, 1968. Under "Wille Wollen," the Index refers the reader to "Sorge, Subjekt" and quotes one sentence from Sein und Zeit: "Wollen und Wünschen sind im Dasein als Sorge verwurzelt." I have mentioned that the modern emphasis on the future as the predominant tense showed itself in Heidegger's singling out Care as the dominating existential in his early analyses of human existence. If one rereads the corresponding sections in Sein und Zeit (especially no. 41), it is evident that he later used certain characteristics of Care for his analysis of the Will.

  53. New York, 1971, p. 112.

  54. First edition, Frankfurt, 1949, p. 17.

  55. Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universität
(The Self-Assertion of the German University).

  56. Mehta, op. cit., p. 43.

  57. "Brief über den 'Humanismus,'" Piatons Lehre von der Wahrheit, Bern, 1947, p. 57; translation quoted from Mehta, op. cit., p. 114.

  58. "Brief über den 'Humanismus,'" p. 47.

  59. Vol. II, p. 468.

  60. "Brief über den 'Humanismus,'" p. 53; translation quoted from Mehta, op. cit., p. 114.

  61. "Brief über den 'Humanismus,'" pp. 46–47.

  62. Nietzsche, vol. I, p. 624.

  63. The Will to Power, no. 708. Author's translation.

  64. Nietzsche, vol. II, p. 272. In Mehta, op. cit., p. 179.

  65. Nietzsche, vol. I, pp. 63–64.

  66. Ibid., p. 161.

  67. Ibid., vol. II, p. 462.

  68. Ibid., p. 265.

  69. Ibid., p. 267.

  70. Pp. 92–93. Author's translation.

  71. Gelassenheit, p. 33; Discourse on Thinking, p. 60.

  72. Laws, I, 644.

  73. The Will to Power, no. 90, p. 55.

  74. Die Technik und die Kehre, Pfullingen, 1962, p. 40.

  75. Quoted from Jean Beaufret, Dialogue avec Heidegger, Paris, 1974, vol. Ill, p. 204.

  76. Valéry, Tel quel, in Oeuvres de Paul Valéry, Pléiade ed., Dijon, 1960, vol. II, p. 560.

  77. Sein und Zeit, no. 57, pp. 276–277.

  78. Ibid., no. 53, p. 261.

  79. Vorträge und Aufsätze, pp. 177 and 256.

  80. No. 54, p. 267.

  81. Ibid., no. 41, p. 187, and no. 53, p. 263.

  82. Bergson, Time and Free Will, pp. 128–130, 133.

  83. Ibid., pp. 138–143; cf. p. 183.

  84. Bergson, Creative Mind, trans. Mabelle L. Andison, New York,. 1946, pp. 27 and 22.

  85. Pp. 63–64.

  86. No. 34, p. 162.

  87. Pp. 329 and 470–471.

  88. Nos. 54–59. See especially pp. 268 ff.

  89. Ibid., no. 58, p. 287.

  90. Ibid., p. 284.

  91. Ibid., nos. 59–60, pp. 294–295.

  92. Ibid., no. 60, p. 300.

  93. Ibid., no. 34, p. 163.

  94. Ibid., no. 59, p. 294.

  95. Ibid., nos. 59–60, p. 295.

  96. I use and quote throughout David Farrell Krells translation, first published in Arion, New Series, vol. 1, no. 4, 1975, pp. 580–581.

  97. The whole citation, from which I quote, in my own translation, reads as follows: "Wir leben ... als ob wir pochend vor den Toren ständen, die noch geschlossen sind. Bis heute geschieht vielleicht im ganz Intimen, was so noch keine Welt begründet, sondern nur dem Einzelnen sich schenkt, was aber vielleicht eine Welt begründen wird, wenn es aus der Zerstreuung sich begegnet." I suppose that the speech at Geneva was published in the magazine Wandlung, but have drawn on the preface to Sechs Essays, Heidelberg, 1948, a collection of essays I wrote during the nineteen-forties.

  98. "The Anaximander Fragment," Arion, p. 584.

  99. Ibid., p. 596.

  100. "Brief über den 'Humanismus,'" now in Wegmarken, Frankfurt, 1967, p. 191.

  101. "The Anaximander Fragment," Arion, p. 595.

  102. Frag. 123.

  103. P. 591.

  104. Ibid., p. 596.

  105. Ibid., p. 591.

  106. Ibid., p. 618.

  107. Ibid., p. 591.

  108. Ibid., p. 592.

  109. Ibid., p. 609.

  110. Ibid., p. 626.

  111. Unpublished poem, written around 1950.

  112. P. 611.

  113. Ibid., p. 609.

  114. To avoid misunderstandings: both quotations are so well known that they are part of the German language. Every German-speaking person will spontaneously think along these lines without necessarily having been influenced by Goethe.

  115. P. 623.

  116. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, no. 57.

  117. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, 1962, p. 172.

  118. The Lives of a Cell, New York, 1974.

  119. See Newsweek, June 24, 1974, p. 89.

  120. Ibid.

  121. Esprit des Lois, bk. XII, chap. 2.

  122. Ibid., bk. XI, chap. 6.

  123. Quoted from Franz Neumann's introduction to Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws, trans. Thomas Nugent, New York, 1949, p. xl.

  124. Esprit des Lois, bk. XI, chap. 3.

  125. Ibid., bk. I, chap. 1, bk. XXVI, chaps. 1 and 2.

  126. See, for instance, R. W. B. Lewis, "Homer and Virgil—The Double Themes," Furioso, Spring, 1950, p. 24; "The recurrent explicit references to the Iliad in those books [of the Aeneid] are there not in way of parallel, but in the way of reversal."

  127. Critique of Pure Reason, B478.

  128. Aeneid, bk. Ill, 1–12, in Virgil's Works, trans. William C. McDermott, Modern Library, New York, 1950, p. 44.

  129. The Fourth Eclogue.

  130. I borrowed this felicitous term for communities from the highly instructive essay "The Character of the Modern European State" in Michael Oakeshott's On Human Conduct, Oxford, 1975, p. 199.

  131. De Republica, I, 7.

  132. Oeuvres, ed. Laponneraye, 1840, vol. Ill, p. 623; The Works of lohn Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, Boston, 1850–1856, vol. VI, 1851, p. 281.

  133. VI, 790–794.

  134. The Fourth Eclogue.

  135. There exists an enormous literature on this subject; quite instructive is Die Aeneis und Homer by Georg Nikolaus Knauer, Göttingen, 1964. Virgil's "Homerauffassung scheint mir von der spezifisch römischen Denkform persönlicher Verpflichtung geprägt zu sein, die dem Römer auferlegte, nach dem aus der Vergangenheit überkommenen Vorbild der Ahnen Ruhm und Glanz der eigenen Familie und des Staates durch Verwirklichung im Heute für die Zukunft der Nachfahren zu bewahren," p. 357.

  136. Aeneid, bk. VII, 206.

  137. Quoted from George Steiner, After Babel, New York and London, 1975, p. 132.

  138. R. J. E. Clausius (1822–1888), German mathematical physicist, who enunciated the second law of thermodynamics, introduced the entropy concept (energy unavailable for useful work in a thermodynamic system, represented by the symbol φ). "Postulating that the entropy of the universe is increasing continuously, he predicted that it would expire of "heat death' when everything within it attained the same temperature." Columbia Encyclopedia, 3rd ed. (Ed.)

  139. De Civitate Dei, bk. XII, chap. xx.

  Editor's Postface

  Hannah Arendt died suddenly on December 4, 1975. It was a Thursday evening; she was entertaining friends. The Saturday before, she had finished "Willing," the second section of The Life of the Mind. Like The Human Condition, its forerunner, the work was conceived in three parts. Where The Human Condition, subtitled The Vita Activa, had been divided into Labor, Work, and Action, The Life of the Mind, as planned, was divided into Thinking, Willing, and Judging, the three basic activities, as she saw it, of mental life. The distinction made by the Middle Ages between the active life of man in the world and the solitary vita contemplativa was of course present to her thought, although her own thinker, wilier, and judger was not a contemplative, set apart by a monkish vocation, but everyman insofar as he exercised his specifically human capacity to withdraw from time to time into the invisible region of the mind.

  Whether or not the life of the mind is superior to the so-called active life (as antiquity and the Middle Ages had considered) was an issue she never pronounced on in so many words. Yet it would not be too much to say that the last years of her life were consecrated to this work, which she treated as a task laid on her as a vigorously thinking being—the highest she had been called to. In the midst of her multifarious teaching and lecture commitments, her service on various round tables and panels and consultative boards (she was a constant recruit to the vita activa of the citizen and public figure, though seldom a volunteer), she remained immersed in The Life of the Mind, as though its completion would acquit her not so much of an obligation, which sounds too onerous, as of a compac
t she had entered into. All roads, however secondary, on which chance or intention put her in her daily and professional existence, led back to that

  When an invitation came, in June 1972, to give the Gilford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen, she chose to use the occasion for a kind of try-out of the volumes already in preparation. The Gifford Lectures also served as a stimulus. Endowed in 1885 by Adam Gifford, a leading Scottish justice and law lord, "for the purpose of establishing in each of the four cities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and St. Andrews ... a Chair ... of Natural Theology, in the widest sense of that term," they had been given by Josiah Royce, William James, Bergson, J. G. Frazer, Whitehead, Eddington, John Dewey, Werner Jaeger, Karl Barth, Etienne Gilson, Gabriel Marcel, among others—an honor roll to which she was quite proud to accede. If she was normally superstitious, she must have seen them too as a porta-fortuna: The Varieties of Religious Experience, Whitehead's Process and Reality, Dewey's The Quest for Certainty, Marcel's The Mystery of Being, Gilson's The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy had first seen the light as Gifford Lectures.... Having accepted, she drove herself harder perhaps than she ought to have to get hers ready in the time available; she delivered the first series, on Thinking, in the spring of 1973. In the spring of 1974, she returned for the second series, on Willing, and was interrupted by a heart attack after she had given her first lecture. She was intending to go back, in the spring of 1976, to finish the series; meanwhile she had given most of Thinking and Willing to her classes at the New School for Social Research in New York. Judging, she had not started, though she had used material on Judgment in courses she gave at the University of Chicago and at the New School on Kant's political philosophy. After her death, a sheet of paper was found in her typewriter, blank except for the heading "Judging" and two epigraphs. Some time between the Saturday of finishing "Willing" and the Thursday of her death, she must have sat down to confront the final section.

  Her plan was for a work in two volumes. Thinking, the longest, was to occupy the first, and the second was to contain Willing and Judging. As she told friends, she counted on Judgment to be much shorter than the other two. She also used to say that she expected it to be the easiest to handle. The hardest had been the Will. The reason she gave for counting on Judgment to be short was the lack of source material: only Kant had written on the faculty, which before him had been unnoticed by philosophers except in the field of aesthetics, where it had been named Taste. As for ease, she no doubt felt that her lectures on Kant's political philosophy, with their careful analysis of The Critique of Judgment, had pretty well prepared the ground to be covered. Still, one can guess that Judging might have surprised her and ended by taking up a whole volume to itself. In any case, to give the reader some notion of what would have been in the concluding section, an appendix has been joined to the second volume containing extracts from her classroom lectures. Aside from a seminar paper, not included here, on the Imagination, which touches briefly on its role in the judging process, this is all we now have of her thoughts on the subject (though something further may turn up in her correspondence, when that is edited). Mournful that there is not more; anyone familiar with her mind will feel sure that the contents of the appendix do not exhaust the ideas that must already have been stirring in her head as she inserted the fresh page in her typewriter.