The Life of the Mind

by Hannah Arendt

  Unfortunately, this common-sense solution does not meet all contingencies. Unless the text cited was in her library, in English, we have no idea of what translation, if any, she used for reference. In the absence of further clues, I have assumed that she made her own translation and have felt free to alter it slightly, in the interests of English idiom or grammar, just as I would with her own text. (Once in a while, I have retranslated from the original myself. But I have lacked the effrontery to try that much with Heidegger, though I have dared with Master Eckhart.) In the case of classical authors, there is such a wealth of translations to choose among that one could hardly hope to find the one she might have been drawing on—a needle in a haystack. Once, by luck, I happened on a translation of Virgil which—it was apparent in a flash—she had used. My pencil moved (Eureka!) to indicate editor, date, and so on, in a footnote; then I looked again—no. Here, as so often, she had used a translation but had not stuck to it. And it is impossible to show in a footnote in which spots she diverged and which not.

  Eventually we arrived at a policy, which has been to cite a translation only when it has been followed to the letter. Where no translator is named, it means that the version used is entirely or largely the author's or that we could not find the translation she drew on, if one exists. Yet even that policy requires qualification. The reader should know that some standard translations (McKeon, Kemp Smith, Kaufmann, the Hamilton-Cairns miscellany), even where not specifically mentioned, have served grosso modo as the author's guides.

  The Bible has been a special problem. It seemed hard to tell at first whether she was using the King James version, the Revised Standard version, the Douai version, a German version which she then translated into English, or a mixture of all these. I even amused myself with the fond hypothesis that she had gone back to St. Jerome's Vulgate and done her own rendering from the Latin. My inclination was to use the King James version; aside from personal preference, there was the argument that the "thou shalt"s in the author's voice that appear repeatedly in the "Willing" volume should be matched by Biblical "thou" and "thee"s of the older version—otherwise it would sound peculiar. But Roberta Leighton has demonstrated to me that careful comparison shows that the manuscript is closest to the Revised Standard version; hence, that has been used, with a few exceptions, where the beauty of the King James language proved irresistible to us, as it evidently had to our author. At any rate, sticking on the whole to the Revised Standard has done away with one difficulty: the fact that the old version translates "love" (agape) as "charity." Since for modern ears, the word has a mainly tax-deductible connotation, or refers to "taking a charitable view" of something, it would have had to be changed to "love," in surrounding brackets, each time it occurred, which would have made awkward reading.

  Such preoccupations with consistency and mirror-fidelity of reference will seem curious to the general reader. They are an occupational infirmity of editors and academics. Or they are the game-rules that scholarly writing agrees to and by their ›ery strictness they add to the zest of the pursuit—a zest that cannot be shared by non-players. Hunting-the-slipper in the guise of an elusive footnote must be taken with dead seriousness, like any absorbing sport or game. Yet if it matters only to a few, mainly those engaged in it, where is the sense? What difference does it make whether God is "He" on one page and "he" on the next? Maybe the author just changed her attitude, which is her right. Why seek to divine her underlying preference and lock her, a free spirit, into a uniform "He" or "he"? Well, it is "He." And the will is "Will" when it is a concept and "will" when it is acting in a human subject.

  I apologize to the general reader for mentioning these details of footnotes, capitalization, brackets, and so on, as devoid of interest to an outsider as a sportsman's pondered choice of trout-fly when a worm will catch the fish. That the fish is the point tends to be lost sight of by specialists, as Hannah Arendt would be the first to agree. She cared for the general reader, who for her remained a student in adult form. That was why she especially loved Socrates. Still, being a teacher and scholar, she knew about the game-rules and by and large accepted them, though more in the spirit of tolerance one brings to children's pastimes than with the zeal of a true participant. Anyhow, in the course of these months with the manuscript, my well-sharpened pencils have turned into stubs. And now I have talked enough shop-talk. It is time to leave the manuscript to itself.

  Appendix / Judging

  Excerpts from Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy

  ...We know from Kant's own testimony that the turning-point of his life was the discovery of the human mind's cognitive faculties and their limitations (in 1770), which took him more than 10 years to elaborate and publish as Critique of Pure Reason. We also know from his letters what this immense labor of so many years signified for his other plans and ideas. He writes of this "main subject" that it kept back and obstructed like "a dam" all the other matters which he had hoped to finish and publish, that it was like "a stone in his way" on which he could only proceed after its removal.... Prior to the event of 1770, he had intended to write and publish soon the Metaphysics of Morals which was then written and published nearly 30 years later. But at this early date, the book was announced under the title of Critique of Moral Taste. When Kant turned finally to the third Critique, he still called it to begin with Critique of Taste. Thus two things happened: Behind taste, a favored topic of the whole eighteenth century, he had discovered an entirely new human faculty, namely, judgment. But at the same time, he withdrew moral propositions from the competence of the new faculty. In other words: It now is more than taste that will decide about the beautiful and the ugly; but the [moral] question of right and wrong is to be decided neither by taste nor judgment but by reason alone.

  ***

  The links between [the] two parts [of The Critique of Judgment] ...are closer connected with the political than with anything in the other Critiques. The most important of these links are first that in neither of the two parts Kant speaks of man as an intelligible or cognitive being. The word truth does not occur. The first part speaks of men in the plural ... as they live in societies, the second speaks of the human species.... The most decisive difference between the Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of Judgment is that the moral laws of the former are valid for all intelligible beings whereas the rules of the latter are strictly limited in their validity to human beings on earth. And the 2nd link lies in that the faculty of judgment deals with particulars which "as such, contain something contingent in respect to the universal" which normally is what thought is dealing with. These particulars ... are of two lands; the first part of the Critique of Judgment deals with objects of judgment properly speaking, such as an object which we call "beautiful" without being able to subsume it under a general category. (If you say, What a beautiful rose! you don't arrive at this judgment by first saying, all roses are beautiful, this flower is a rose, hence it is beautiful. ) The other land, dealt with in the second part, is the impossibility to derive any particular product of nature from general causes: "Absolutely no human reason (in fact no finite reason like ours in quality, however much it may surpass it in degree) can hope to understand the production of even a blade of grass by mere mechanical causes." (Mechanical in Kant's terminology means natural causes; its opposite is "technical," by which he means artificial, i.e. something fabricated with a purpose.) The accent here is on "understand": How can I understand (and not just explain) why there is grass at all and then this particular blade of grass.

  ***

  Judgment of the particular—this is beautiful, this is ugly, this is right, this is wrong—has no place in Kant's moral philosophy. Judgment is not practical reason; practical reason "reasons" and tells me what to do and what not to do; it lays down the law and is identical with the will, and the will utters commands; it speaks in imperatives. Judgment, on the contrary, arises from "a merely contemplative pleasure or inactive delight [untätiges Wohlgefallen]." This "feeling of con
templative pleasure is called taste," and the Critique of Judgment was originally called Critique of Taste. "If practical philosophy speaks of contemplative pleasure at all it mentions it only in passing, and not as if the concept were indigenous to it." Doesn't that sound plausible? How could "contemplative pleasure and inactive delight" have anything to do with practice? Doesn't that conclusively prove that Kant ... had de cided that his concern with the particular and the contingent was a thing of the past and had been a somewhat marginal affair? And yet, we shall see that his final position on the French Revolution, an event which played a central role in his old age when he waited with great impatience every day for the newspapers, was decided by this attitude of the mere spectators, of those "who are not engaged in the game themselves," only follow it with "wishful," "passionate participation," which ... arose from mere "contemplative pleasure and inactive delight."

  ***

  The "enlargement of the mind" plays a crucial role in the Critique of Judgment. It is accomplished by "comparing our judgment with the possible rather than the actual judgment of others, and by putting ourselves in the place of any other man." The faculty which makes this possible is called imagination.... Critical thinking is possible only where the standpoints of all others are open to inspection. Hence, critical thinking while still a solitary business has not cut itself off from "all others."...[By] force of imagination it makes the others present and thus moves potentially in a space which is public, open to all sides; in other words, it adopts the position of Kant's world citizen. To think with the enlarged mentality—that means you train your imagination to go visiting....

  I must warn you here of a very common and easy misunderstanding. The trick of critical thinking does not consist in an enormously enlarged empathy through which I could know what actually goes on in the mind of all others. To think, according to Kant's understanding of enlightenment, means Selbstdenken, to think for oneself, "which is the maxim of a never-passive reason. To be given to such passivity is called prejudice," and enlightenment is first of all liberation from prejudice. To accept what goes on in the minds of those whose "standpoint" (actually, the place where they stand, the conditions they are subject to, always different from one individual to the next, one class or group as compared to another) is not my own would mean no more than to accept passively their thought, that is, to exchange their prejudices for the prejudices proper to my own station. "Enlarged thought" is the result of first "abstracting from the limitations which contingently attach to our own judgment," of "disregarding its private subjective conditions ... by which so many are limited," that is, of disregarding what we usually call self-interest and which according to Kant is not enlightened or capable of enlightenment but is in fact limiting.... [The] larger the realm in which the enlightened individual is able to move, from standpoint to standpoint, the more "general" will be his thinking.... This generality, however, is not the generality of concept—of the concept "house" under which you then can subsume all concrete buildings. It is on the contrary closely connected with particulars, the particular conditions of the standpoints you have to go through in order to arrive at your own "general standpoint." This general standpoint we mentioned before as impartiality; it is a viewpoint from which to look upon, to watch, to form judgments, or, as Kant himself says, to reflect upon human affairs. It does not tell you how to act....

  In Kant himself this perplexity comes to the fore in the seemingly contradictory attitude in his last years of almost boundless admiration for the French Revolution, on one side, and his equally almost boundless opposition to any revolutionary undertaking from the side of the citizens, on the other....

  Kant's reaction at first and even at second glance is by no means equivocal....He never wavered in his estimation of the grandeur of what he called the "recent event," and he hardly ever wavered in his condemnation of all those who prepare such an event.

  This event consists neither in momentous deeds nor misdeeds committed by men whereby what was great among men is made small or what was small is made great, nor in ancient splendid political structures which vanish as if by magic while others come forth in their place as if from the depths of the earth. No, nothing of the sort. It is simply the mode of thinking of the spectators which reveals itself publicly in this great game of transformations....

  The revolution of a gifted people which we have seen unfolding in our day may succeed or miscarry; it may be filled with misery and atrocities to the point that a sensible man, were he boldly to hope to execute it successfully the second time, would never resolve to make the experiment at such cost—this revolution, I say, nonetheless finds in the hearts of all spectators (who are not engaged in this game themselves) a wishful participation that borders closely on enthusiasm ... with what exaltation the uninvolved public looking on sympathized then without the least intention of assisting.

  ...Without this sympathetic participation, the "meaning" of the occurrence would be altogether different, or simply non-existent. For this sympathy is what inspires hope:

  the hope that after many revolutions, with all their transforming effects, the highest purpose of nature, a cosmopolitan existence, will at last be realized within which all the original capacities of the human race may be developed.

  From which, however, one should not conclude that Kant sided in the least with future men of revolutions.

  These rights ... always remain an idea which can be fulfilled only on condition that the means employed to do so are compatible with morality. This limiting condition must not be overstepped by the people, who may not therefore pursue their rights by revolution, which is at all times unjust.

  ...And:

  If a violent revolution, engendered by a bad constitution, introduces by illegal means a more legal constitution, to lead the people back to the earlier constitution would not be permitted but, while the revolution lasted, each person who openly or covertly shared in it would have justly incurred the punishment due to those who rebel.

  ...What you see here clearly is the clash between the principle according to which you act and the principle according to which you judge.... Kant more than once stated his opinion on war ... and nowhere more emphatically than in the Critique of Judgment where he discusses the topic, characteristically enough, in the section on the Sublime:

  What is it which is, even to the savage, an object of the greatest admiration? It is a man who shrinks from nothing, who fears nothing, and therefore does not yield to danger.... Even in the most highly civilized state this peculiar veneration for the soldier remains ... because even by these it is recognized that his mind is unsubdued by danger. Hence ... in the comparison of a statesman and a general, the aesthetical judgment decides for the latter. War itself ... has something sublime in it.... On the other hand, a long peace generally brings about a predominant commercial spirit and, along with it, low selfishness, cowardice, and effeminacy, and debases the disposition of the people.

  This is the judgment of the spectator (i.e., aesthetical).... Yet, not only can war, "an unintended enterprise ... stirred up by men's unbridled passions," actually serve because of its very meaninglessness as a preparation for the eventual cosmopolitan peace—eventually sheer exhaustion will impose what neither reason nor good will have been able to achieve—but

  In spite of the dreadful afflictions with which it visits the human race, and the perhaps greater afflictions with which the constant preparation for it in time of peace oppresses them, yet is it ... a motive for developing all talents serviceable for culture to the highest pitch.

  ...These insights of aesthetic and reflective judgment have no practical consequences for action. As far as action is concerned, there is no doubt that

  moral-practical reason within us pronounces the following irresistible veto: There shall he no war. ...Thus it is no longer a question of whether perpetual peace is possible or not, or whether we are not perhaps mistaken in our theoretical judgment if we assume that it is. On the contrary, we must simply act
as if it could really come about ... even if the fulfillment of this pacific intention were forever to remain a pious hope ... for it is our duty to do so.

  But these maxims for action do not nullify the aesthetic and reflective judgment. In other words: Even though Kant would always have acted for peace, he knew and kept in mind his judgment. Had he acted on the knowledge gained as a spectator, he would in his own mind have been a criminal. Had he forgotten because of this "moral duty" his insights as a spectator, he would have become what so many good men, involved and engaged in public affairs, tend to be—an idealistic fool.

  ***

  Since Kant did not write his political philosophy, the best way to find out what he thought about this matter is to turn to his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment where, in discussing the production of art works in their relations to taste which judges and decides about them, he confronts a similar, analogous problem. We ... are inclined to think that in order to judge a spectacle you must first have the spectacle, that the spectator is secondary to the actor—without considering that no one in his right mind would ever put on a spectacle without being sure of having spectators to watch it. Kant is convinced that the world without man would be a desert, and a world without man meant for him: without spectator. In the discussion of aesthetic judgment, the distinction is between genius which is required for the production of art works, while for judging them, and deciding whether or not they are beautiful objects, "no more" (we would say, but not Kant) is required than taste. "For judging of beautiful objects taste is required ... for their production genius is required." Genius according to Kant is a matter of productive imagination and originality, taste a ... matter of judgment. He raises the question, which of the two is the "more noble" faculty, which is the condition sine qua non "to which one has to look in the judging of art as beautiful art?"—assuming of course that though most of the judges of beauty have not the faculty of productive imagination which is called genius, the few endowed with genius, lack not the faculty of taste. And the answer is: