The Life of the Mind

by Hannah Arendt

  The reason Hegel could construe the World-Historical movement in terms of an ascending line, traced by the "cunning of Reason" behind the backs of acting men, is to be found, in my opinion, in his never-questioned assumption that the dialectical process itself starts from Being, takes Being for granted (in contradistinction to a Creatio ex nihilo) in its march toward Not-Being and Becoming. The initial Being lends all further transitions their reality, their existential character, and prevents them from falling into the abyss of Not-Being. It is only because it follows on Being that "Not-Being contains [its] relation to Being; both Being and its negation are simultaneously asserted, and this assertion is Nothing as it exists in Becoming." Hegel justifies his starting-point by invoking Parmenides and the beginning of philosophy (that is, by "identifying logic and history"), thus tacitly rejecting "Christian metaphysics," but one needs only to experiment with the thought of a dialectical movement starting from Not-Being in order to become aware that no Becoming could ever arise from it; the Not-Being at the beginning would annihilate everything generated. Hegel is quite aware of this; he knows that his apodictic proposition that "neither in heaven nor on earth is there anything not containing both Being and Nothing" rests on the solid assumption of the primacy of Being, which in turn simply corresponds to the fact that sheer nothingness, that is, a negation that does not negate something specific and particular, is unthinkable. All we can think is "a Nothing from which Something is to proceed; so that Being is already contained in the Beginning."123

  II. The Discovery of the Inner Man

  Quaestio mihi factus sum

  7. The faculty of choice: proairesis, the forerunner of the Will

  In my discussion of Thinking, I used the term "metaphysical fallacies," but without trying to refute them as though they were the simple result of logical or scientific error. Instead, I sought to demonstrate their authenticity by deriving them from the actual experiences of the thinking ego in its conflict with the world of appearances. As we saw, the thinking ego withdraws temporarily from that world without ever being able wholly to leave it, because of being incorporated in a bodily self, an appearance among appearances. The difficulties besetting any discussion of the Will have an obvious resemblance to what we found to be true of these fallacies, that is, they are likely to be caused by the nature of the faculty itself. However, while the discovery of reason and its peculiarities coincided with the discovery of the mind and the beginning of philosophy, the faculty of the Will became manifest much later. Our guiding question therefore will be: What experiences caused men to become aware of the fact that they were capable of forming volitions?

  Tracing the history of a faculty can easily be mistaken for an effort to follow the history of an idea—as though here, for instance, we were concerned with the history of Freedom, or as though we mistook the Will for a mere "idea," which then indeed could turn out to be an "artificial concept" (Ryle) invented to solve artificial problems.1 Ideas are thought-things, mental artifacts presupposing the identity of an artificer, and to assume that there is a history of the mind's faculties, as distinguished from the mind's products, seems like assuming that the human body, which is a toolmaker's and tool-user's body—the primordial tool being the human hand-is just as subject to change through the invention of new tools and implements as is the environment our hands continue to reshape. We know this is not the case. Could it be different with our mental faculties? Could the mind acquire new faculties in the course of history?

  The fallacy underlying these questions rests on an almost matter-of-course identification of the mind with the brain. It is the mind that decides the existence of both use-objects and thought-things, and as the mind of the maker of use-objects is a toolmaker's mind, that is, the mind of a body endowed with hands, so the mind that originates thoughts and reifies them into thought-things or ideas is the mind of a creature endowed with a human brain and brain power. The brain, the tool of the mind, is indeed no more subject to change through the development of new mental faculties than the human hand is changed by the invention of new implements or by the enormous tangible change they effect in our environment. But the mind of man, its concerns and its faculties, is affected both by changes in the world, whose meaningfulness it examines, and, perhaps even more decisively, by its own activities. All of these are of a reflexive nature—none more so, as we shall see, than the activities of the willing ego—and yet they could never function properly without the never-changing tool of brain power, the most precious gift with which the body has endowed the human animal.

  The problem we are confronted with is well known in art history, where it is called "the riddle of style," namely, the simple fact "that different ages and different nations have represented the visible world in such different ways." It is surprising that this could come about in the absence of any physical differences and perhaps even more surprising that we do not have the slightest difficulty in recognizing the realities they point to even when the "conventions" of representation adopted by us are altogether different.2 In other words, what changes throughout the centuries is the human mind, and although these changes are very pronounced, so much so that we can date the products according to style and national origin with great precision, they are also strictly limited by the unchanging nature of the instruments with which the human body is endowed.

  In the line of these reflections, we shall begin by asking ourselves how Greek philosophy dealt with phenomena and data of human experience that our post-classical "conventions" have been accustomed to ascribe to the Will as the mainspring of action. For the purpose, we turn to Aristode, and that for two reasons. There is, first, the simple historical fact of the decisive influence that the Aristotelian analyses of the soul exerted on all philosophies of the Will—except in the case of Paul, who, as we shall see, was content with sheer descriptions and refused to "philosophize" about his experiences. There is, second, the no less indubitable fact that no other Greek philosopher came so close to recognizing the strange lacuna we have spoken of in Greek language and thought and therefore can serve as a prime example of how certain psychological problems could be solved before the Will was discovered as a separate faculty of the mind.

  The starting-point of Aristotle's reflections on the subject is the anti-Platonic insight that reason by itself does not move anything.3 Hence the question guiding his examinations is: "What is it in the soul that originates movement?"4 Aristotle admits the Platonic notion that reason gives commands (keleuei) because it knows what one should pursue and what one should avoid, but he denies that these commands are necessarily obeyed. The incontinent man (his paradigmatic example throughout these inquiries) follows his desires regardless of the commands of reason. On the other hand, at the recommendation of reason, these desires can be resisted. Hence they, too, have no obligatory force inherent in them: by themselves they do not originate movement. Here Aristotle is dealing with a phenomenon that later, after the discovery of the Will, appears as the distinction between will and inclination. The distinction becomes the cornerstone of Kantian ethics, but it makes its first appearance in medieval philosophy—for instance, in Master Eckhart's distinction between "the inclination to sin and the will to sin, the inclination being no sin," which leaves the question of the evil deed itself altogether out of account: "If I never did evil but had only the will to evil . . . it is as great a sin as though I had killed all men even though I had done nothing."5

  Still, in Aristotle desire retains a priority in originating movement, which comes about through a playing together of reason and desire. It is desire for an absent object that stimulates reason to step in and calculate the best ways and means to obtain it. This calculating reason he calls "nous praktikos," practical reason, as distinguished from nous theōrētikos, speculative or pure reason, the former being concerned only with what depends exclusively on men (eph' hēmin), with matters in their power and therefore contingent (they can be or not-be), while pure reason is concerned only with matters that are beyon
d human power to change.

  Practical reason is needed to come to the aid of desire under certain conditions. "Desire is influenced by what is just at hand," thus easily obtainable—a suggestion carried by the very word used for appetite or desire, orexis, whose primary meaning, from orego, indicates the stretching out of one's hand to reach for something nearby. Only when the fulfillment of a desire lies in the future and has to take the time factor into account is practical reason needed and stimulated by it. In the case of incontinence, it is the force of desire for what is close at hand that leads to incontinence, and here practical reason will intervene out of concern for future consequences. But men do not only desire what is close at hand; they are able to imagine objects of desire to secure which they need to calculate the appropriate means. It is this future imagined object of desire that stimulates practical reason; as far as the resulting motion, the act itself, is concerned, the desired object is the beginning, while for the calculating process the same object is the end of the movement.

  It appears that Aristotle himself found this outline of the relation between reason and desire unsatisfactory as an adequate explication of human action. It still relies, though with modifications, on Plato's dichotomy of reason and desire. In his early Protreptikos, Aristotle had interpreted it thus: "One part of the soul is Reason. This is the natural ruler and judge of things concerning us. The nature of the other part is to follow it and submit to its rule."6 We shall see later that to issue commands is among the chief characteristics of the Will. In Plato reason could take this function on itself because of the assumption that reason is concerned with truth, and truth indeed is compelling. But reason itself, while it leads to truth, is persuasive, not imperative, in the soundless thinking dialogue between me and myself; only those who are not capable of thinking need to be compelled.

  Within man's soul, reason becomes a "ruling" and commanding principle only because of the desires, which are blind and devoid of reason and therefore supposed to obey blindly. This obedience is necessary for the mind's tranquillity, the undisturbed harmony between the Two-in-One that is guaranteed by the axiom of non-contradiction—do not contradict yourself, remain a friend of yourself: "all friendly feelings toward others are an extension of the friendly feelings a person has for himself."7 In the event that the desires do not submit to the commands of reason, the result in Aristotle is the "base man," who contradicts himself and is "at variance with himself' (diapherein). Wicked men either "run away from life and do away with themselves," unable to bear their own company, or "seek the company of others with whom to spend their days; but they avoid their own company. For when they are by themselves they remember many events that make them uneasy ... but when they are with others they can forget.... Their relations with themselves are not friendly ... their soul is divided against itself ... one part pulls in one direction and the other in another as if to tear the individual to pieces.... Bad people are full of regrets."8

  This description of internal conflict, a conflict between reason and the appetites, may be adequate to explain conduct-in this case the conduct, or, rather, misconduct, of the incontinent man. It does not explain action, the subject matter of Aristotelian ethics, for action is not mere execution of the commands of reason; it is itself a reasonable activity, though an activity not of "theoretical reason" but of what in the treatise On the Soul is called "nous praktikos," practical reason. In the ethical treatises it is called phronēsis, a kind of insight and understanding of matters that are good or bad for men, a sort of sagacity—neither wisdom nor cleverness—needed for human affairs, which Sophocles, following common usage, ascribed to old age9 and which Aristotle conceptualized. Phronēsis is required for any activity involving things within human power to achieve or not to achieve.

  Such practical sense also guides production and the arts, but these have "an end other than themselves," whereas "action is itself an end."10 (The distinction is the difference between the flute-player, for whom the playing is an end itself, and the flute-maker, whose activity is only a means and has come to an end when the flute is produced.) There is such a thing as eupraxia, action well done, and the doing of something well, regardless of its consequences, is then counted among the aretai, the Aristotelian excellences (or virtues). Actions of this sort are also moved not by reason but by desire, but the desire is not for an object, a "what" that I can grasp, seize, and use again as a means to another end; the desire is for a "how," a way of performing, excellence of appearance in the community—the proper realm of human affairs. Much later but quite in the Aristotelian spirit, Plotinus had this to say, as paraphrased by a recent interpreter: "What actually is in man's power in the sense that it depends entirely upon him ... is the quality of his conduct, to kalōs"; man, if compelled to fight, is still free to fight bravely or in a cowardly way."11

  Action in the sense of how men want to appear needs a deliberate planning ahead, for which Aristotle coins a new term, proairesis, choice in the sense of preference between alternatives—one rather than another. The archai, beginnings and principles, of this choice are desire and logos: logos provides us with the purpose for the sake of which we act; choice becomes the starting-point of the actions themselves.12 Choice is a median faculty, inserted, as it were, into the earlier dichotomy of reason and desire, and its main function is to mediate between them.

  The opposite of deliberate choice or preference is pathos, passion or emotion, as we would say, in the sense that we are motivated by something we suffer. (Thus a man may commit adultery out of passion and not because he has deliberately preferred adultery to chastity; he "may have stolen but not be a thief."13 ) The faculty of choice is necessary whenever men act for a puipose (heneka tinos), insofar as means have to be chosen, but the purpose itself, the ultimate end of the act for the sake of which it was embarked on in the first place, is not open to choice. The ultimate end of human acts is eudaimonia, happiness in the sense of "living well," which all men desire; all acts are but different means chosen to arrive at it. (The relationship between means and ends, whether in action or in fabrication, is that all means are equally justifiable by their ends; the specifically moral problem of the means-end relationship—whether all means can be justified by ends—is never even mentioned by Aristotle.) The element of reason in choice is called "deliberation," and we never deliberate about ends but about the means to attain them.14 "No one chooses to be happy but to make money or run risks for the purpose of being happy."15

  It is in the Eudemian Ethics that Aristotle explains in a more concrete way why he found it necessary to insert a new faculty into the old dichotomy and thus settle the old quarrel between reason and desire. He gives the example of incontinence: all men agree that incontinence is bad and not something to be desired; moderation or sō-phrosynē—that which saves (sōzein) practical reason (phronēsis)—is the naturally given criterion of all acts. If a man follows his desires, which are blind to future consequences, and thus indulges in incontinence, it is as though "the same man were to act at the same time both voluntarily [that is, intentionally] and involuntarily [that is, contrary to his intentions]," and this, Aristotie remarks, "is impossible."16

  Proairesis is the way out of the contradiction. If reason and desire remained without mediation, in their crude natural antagonism, we would have to conclude that man, beset by the conflicting urges of both faculties, "forces himself away from his desire" when he remains continent and "forces himself away from his reason" when desire overwhelms him. But no such being-forced occurs in either case; both acts are done intentionally, and "when the principle is from within, there is no force."17 What actually happens is that, reason and desire being in conflict, the decision between them is a matter of "preference," of deliberate choice. What intervenes is reason, not nous, which is concerned with things that are forever and cannot be otherwise than they are, but dianoia or phronēsis, which deal with things in our power, as distinguished from desires and imaginations that may stretch out to things we can never
achieve, as when we wish to be gods or immortal.

  Proairesis, the faculty of choice, one is tempted to conclude, is the precursor of the Will. It opens up a first, small restricted space for the human mind, which without it was delivered to two opposed compelling forces: the force of self-evident truth, with which we are not free to agree or disagree, on one side; on the other, the force of passions and appetites, in which it is as though nature overwhelms us unless reason "forces" us away. But the space left to freedom is very small. We deliberate only about means to an end that we take for granted, that we cannot choose. Nobody deliberates and chooses health or happiness as his aim, though we may think about them; ends are inherent in human nature and the same for all.18 As to the means, "sometimes we have to find what [they] are, and sometimes how they are to be used or through whom they can be acquired."19 Hence, the means, too, not just the ends, are given, and our free choice concerns only a "rational" selection between them; proairesis is the arbiter between several possibilities.

  In Latin, Aristotle's faculty of choice is liberum arbitrium. Whenever we come upon it in medieval discussions of the Will, we are not dealing with a spontaneous power of beginning something new, nor with an autonomous faculty, determined by its own nature and obeying its own laws. The most grotesque example of it is Buridan's ass: the poor beast would have starved to death between two equidistant, equally nice-smelling bundles of hay, as no deliberation would give him a reason for preferring one to the other, and he only survived because he was smart enough to forgo free choice, trust his desire, and grasp what lay within reach.