Judgement in the Life of the Mind
Many social and political philosophers extensively study and attempt to identify the ways by which people make judgments. Prior to interpreting and further analyzing conclusions of judgment as noted by any significant philosopher, one must first obtain an understanding of the background and culture said philosopher was surrounded by. Our minds are malleable; opinions and values are most often shaped by societal norms, political structures, and retrospective assessment of past experiences. This paper will examine judgment as studied by Hannah Arendt while delving into the political afflictions that likely shaped her conclusions. Hannah Arendt, born 1906, was a prominent political philosopher of her time. Born in Germany and ultimately landing in New York after making a lengthy stop in Paris, she surrounded herself with other intellectuals, those working to expand their minds and question norms. Arendt extensively studied Nazi regime and specifically addresses the political superiority and hierarchy within them in her last popular work, The Life of the Mind. Arendt evolves her discussion by identifying three ways by which people contemplate: thinking, willing, and judging. Moving forward we will focus on thinking and judging, and the connection between the two. Less relevant to this paper but worth mentioning is Arendt’s two-model theory. Arendt focuses on this theory of judgment largely in her previous works, but builds on it in The Life of the Mind. She focuses on two specific models from two different points of view, that of the doer and that of the watcher. She notes that the two opposing views often contradict each other. Moving from judgment as a political focus, Arendt migrates to judgment in terms applicable function, claiming that it exists in the life of the mind. Furthermore, we attribute meaning to the past only to reconvene with the present.
Arendt witnessed the abundant pain and suffering resulting from Nazism. Instead of justifying by exemplary historical events or categorizing the Nazi regime as an inevitable tragedy, Arendt wanted to examine Nazism. She recognizes that often people classify special cases as common ones, and once this unreasonable distinction occurs, it provides the means to rationalize horrific behavior. Arendt notes that our innate structure for judgment deteriorates “as soon as we try to apply it honestly to the central political experiences of our own time” (Understanding and Politics in Essays and Understanding 379). Moreover, Arendt sees understanding and judgment as codependent. If our framework for making judgment isn’t secure, we have no ability to understand. Arendt notes that understanding is “so closely related to and interrelated with judging that one must describe both as the assumption of something particular under a universal rule” (UP 383). An inability to understand preceding an inability to judge resolves to a loss of commonplace categories by which we classify events. Furthermore, humans need to rationalize tragedy is tested when we lose sight of our putative categories for ethical and political understanding. However, Arendt recognizes that humans are distinct in their ability to surpass the restrictions of judgments or norms. Humans have the innate capacity to start fresh, change perspective, and adjust their views. Furthermore, humans can supersede old categories and framework for judgment by creating new criterions, further altering the meaning of judgment and understanding for greater society.
For Arendt, this is where imagination comes in to play. Imagination allows humans to remove themselves from situations enough to make neutral judgments, while remaining involved enough to assess the situation and more importantly, understand it. By using the imagination, humans can effectively combine judgment and understanding without concluding both using the same source of evidence.
A pivotal event in Arendt’s life and study of judgment was her involvement in the Eichmann trial of the 1960’s. Adolf Eichmann played a large role in the Nazi regime, stripping Jews of their citizenship, belongings, rights, and most crucial, dignity. Arendt hears horror stories from witnesses, sees awful images, and was overwhelmed with the realness of the tragedies that occurred. Even still, Arendt found herself contemplating the reasoning behind Eichmann’s cruelty. She claims that the lack of thinking on Eichmann’s part, his “thoughtlessness,” is what led him to do such horrific things. Because of his thoughtlessness, Eichmann could not judge. Arendt says, “It was the absence of thinking that awakened my interest. Is evil-doing possible in default of not just ‘base motives’ but of any motives? Might the problem of good and evil, our faculty for telling right from wrong, be connected without faculty of thought?” (The Life of the Mind, vol. I, 4-5). Arendt questions the connection between thoughtlessness and evil, asking if evil is by-product of thoughtlessness. If one is simply following orders without actively considering possible repercussions or addressing the moral standpoint behind them (Eichmann, in this case), is that person innately evil, or simply not thinking?
Arendt then connects thought with judgment. Thought, which she defines as an internal dialogue with oneself, clears one’s mind of social and political norms, making way for judgment without falling back on ideals. Thought does not necessarily lead to new framework for judgment, but it does unclench the fist of what is widely accepted. Therefore, with thought, one can pass judgment based on a combination of imagination and what we already know to be true. Of course, this sparks a controversy. Arendt is fully confronting the norms people use to easily categorize events without really having to think. By breaking down these norms, by questioning them, Arendt is pushing us to question ourselves. Perhaps we shouldn’t always believe what we think we know.
Arendt further connects thought with judgment by explaining that the internal dialogue she previously refers to creates conscience. However, this form of conscience, which may be helpful to visualize as the good and bad angels on your shoulders, isn’t an almighty voice that tells you the best option or the right path to take. The internal dialogue that produces this conscience only aids by showing us the unfavorable option, or which path we shouldn’t take. It teaches us what not to do when interacting with others, and what we shouldn’t have done in the past. Arendt connects back to Socrates’ famous words “It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.” The correlation here is that we have internal dialogue, what some may call an inner Id, and we confer with this internal spirit or voice to validate and record our actions. Arendt goes on to claim that what humans are most frightened of is the very inner being itself, for it knows us all too well.
Arendt also notes that thought “is not a prerogative of the few but an ever-present faculty in everybody; by the same token, inability to think is not a failing of the many who lack brain power, but an ever-present possibility for everybody” (LM vol. I 191). When we do participate in thought, the conscience makes way. We already established that the conscience is an innate product of thought, a by-product of thinking. Therefore, the two are simultaneously present. Considering the conscience as the internal angel (the good and bad), which we refer to justify our actions, then judgment is considered the seeable expression of one’s thought capacity. Moreover, if we have thought and conscience, then our concluded judgments directly stem from the combined forces. Conscience is confined to the being itself; it is personal only to you. Judgment is outward, a manifestation of the internal thought process, one that can be seen and interpreted by society. Arendt calls this “the manifestation of the wind of thought” (LM vol. I 193).
Free will is recognized as a necessary condition for all moral claims about human action and the ground of moral responsibility. Arendt's account of moral judgment is structured to accommodate the implications of the will's freedom. Human freedom and moral judgment operate only within the context of human temporality, which is fraught with complex tensions between past, present, and future. These tensions are essential to understanding the contingency of the will's freedom and the related contingency of all moral judgments. Arendt would defend the intersubjectivity of moral judgment as well as its independence from any immanent consensus of the socio-political order.
For Arendt, it is impossible to be completely neutral or objective towards political life and action, as though human interaction could be studied like the rest of nature. If judgment had cognitive standards, we would need to deny the basic distinction between truth and meaning in relation to morality. This distinction safeguards human plurality and freedom. In the realm of truth or objectivity, plurality and freedom are obstacles to be eliminated. Objectivity is inhuman, demanding that we conform our opinions to what is universal. For Arendt, the intersubjective criteria of judgment trumps in existential importance the oft-presumed objectivity of traditional philosophy and of science. Judgment operates in the in- between of human relationships, and it acknowledges the human condition of plurality. Philosophy cannot be neutral or objective toward human life without giving up on the meaningfulness of moral phenomena. Abstaining from judging particulars is still an act of judging the realm of human affairs and human freedom: it rejects the human world and defines one's place in it. In Arendt's historical treatment of willing, the refusal to judge communicated a disdain for human plurality and human finitude, and a despair about human history.
Our moral judgments can be generally valid, but we can never achieve an absolute moral standard. Judging needs to mediate between the various ethical systems and perspectives, but is not compelled to accept any of them as absolute. Ethical systems can be helpful insofar as they allow us to think through concepts and practice judging by dealing with examples. Each system can illuminate certain aspects of a moral situation but none of them can be taken as rules to be applied without judgment. Furthermore, every ethical system or perspective must enter public discourse in order to exhibit its limited validity.
Arendt's philosophical approach gives up the traditional metaphysical projects and treats its subjects as matters of meaning and not truth per se. Her investigation of the mind is a search for meaning, and Arendt treats the history of philosophy as a collection of insights to be negotiated through thinking and judging. Arendt explicitly aims for intersubjective persuasion on these issues by bringing historical and contemporary thinkers' perspectives into her thought process.
Arendt makes certain choices about what ideas to preserve in the tradition and what to try to re- envision or re-thematize. These choices are made by appeals to factual experiences and to the choices of examples that ground the relevant concepts and distinctions. The tradition is not authoritative: it does not dictate what we should think about or how we should think about it. In reference to Jaspers, but in perfect agreement with him, Arendt wrote: "it was essential above all to abandon the chronological order hallowed by tradition."117 Our minds can move freely in relation to the past; we are not chained to our historical position, nor are we subservient to the origin of any school or movement of thought. The insights of the past are available for us, and we must choose our philosophical company.
This book may sound forbidding, but I wouldn’t be repelled by that, because it is an impressive work of deep humility and earnestness, and imagination. Hannah Arendt uses the history of ideas to argue the necessity of thinking and willing. Thinking does not itself create morality or grasp truth or knowledge, but it induces the self-consciousness that makes them possible. Therefore, thinking is the indispensable source of meaning, and philosophers who ignore this "mistake the need to think with the urge to know" and dismiss all thought that cannot produce scientific truths. Kant alone saw the decisive difference between reason-thinking-essences-meaning and cognition-knowledge-appearances-truth; and Socrates had set the moral precedent; the thoughtless life has no meaning. Although she advocates thinking and free will, Arendt sheds no tears over the tough secularity of modern thought.
Arendt's often claimed not to be a philosopher, but a political theorist. This claim was based on a traditional understanding of what "philosophy" is and does. Her departure from the tradition is well motivated, but it is not essential that we concede "philosophy" in the process. Arendt's arguments against the traditional practice could just as well help us to begin doing philosophy in a new way. Life of the Mind is a collection of historical insights about a way of doing philosophy that is in line with Arendt's commitments. I sat and pondered the title of this book for quite a while. What exactly does Life of the Mind mean? To me it means you think, imagine, learn, speculate, draw conclusions, read, write, all of which involves the mind. Furthermore, I think the phrase means much more than enriched cognitive functioning. Colloquially, at least in the United States, the phrase could refer to taking pleasure in cultural and intellectual stimulation.
In conclusion, Arendt challenges the norms surrounding judgment and the internal framework humans rely on to make them. She recognizes that without thought, we are bound to strictly follow societal norms, because we have no ability to question them. However, with thought and conscience combined, one can form a more personal and valid judgment, one that can be expressed to society without always conforming to it. For Arendt, thinking and imagination are key components of forming judgments. Without them, hasty judgments are drawn without room for question or more importantly, intellectual expansion. Arendt's moral philosophy asks us to be willing to operate in a dimension of depth and diversity in our mental life, to take on tensions of thinking, willing and judging without jettisoning any of the mental activities. In Life of the Mind, we find a deep commitment to the contingency of judgment. No guarantees can be given that can eliminate that contingency. General or universal agreement is a hope, but it cannot be guaranteed. We choose our community, our examples, and we make our judgments without an ultimate justification. Contingency is the price of freedom: we cannot overcome the contingency of our actions or the contingency of our judgments.