The mind, the soul, and action

For not being a philosopher, Arendt has a rather comprehensive philosophy involving the mind-body connection.  Arendt says the soul is essentially the inner workings of the body that can be expressed through emotions.  She also says that thought and speech are interconnected, yet thought has no outward expression.  She clearly uses many metaphors to explain thought, but none of them seem to back up the other one.  The mind and soul are connected, as well as mind and action, but they are not dependent on it.  I am curious to see what she says to bring all these concepts together.  Thoughtlessness may be the cause of evil, but it is not quite clear how.  If thought is connected to speech and the soul, you would think they would both be disrupted by thoughtlessness instead of functioning perfectly.  The one consolation we have so far is that maybe the emotions brought about by the soul may be affected to keep someone who is thoughtless from feeling remorse or sympathy.  Regardless, there just seems to be more questions than answers.

Perception and its Connection to the Mind

Something that I have found rather interesting about Arendt's concept of the life of the mind is that it is that, while the activities take place outside of the world of perception, it is dependent on those perceptions in order to exist. If there was nothing to perceive, then there would be nothing to think about, or, at least, not in the way that we would understand considering our perception based thinking. Which raises the interesting question of how the thinking of individuals who's perceptions of the world differ from ours. What does the thought process of a blind person look like? That of a person with a brain injury that alters how they see the world? That of a mentally ill person, who suffers from hallucinations? Of a person who has synesthesia, who perceive different sense in the context of others, like seeing sounds or smelling sights? What's more, it raises the question of what does it mean of our thoughts if the very thing they are concerned with, the reality we perceive, isn't what is truly there. All we know is that our surroundings look like what we perceive. It is entirely possible that what we see is fundamentally wrong, and yet, because it is what we as a species can perceive, it is what we take to be real. It is entirely possible that, as the Matrix says, "There is no spoon."  But that's a bit over my head to really begin to comment about. I just find it interesting to contemplate how our perceptions of reality affects how we think, and how the perceptions of others does the same to them.

The Thinking Ego

Arendt explains the thinking ego as activity that is ageless, sexless, without qualities, and without a life story (Arendt 43). She sees the thinking ego as distinct from the self. For example, if a person says "I think the sky is blue", they eradicate the notion that thought is part of the human mind because they determine their existence with the statement "I think". They are denoting ownership of their thought to their body/mind which the exact opposite of what Hannah Arendt tries to dictate to her readers. The example she uses in her book are dreams. When a person dreams at night or even day-dreams they are someplace separate than their own bodies. She determines this as the reasoning for thoughts occuring outside and separate from the body.

A Body-Bound Soul

I found it interesting that Arendt finds the soul to be "body-bound" (Arendt 32), as most people before her time found the soul to a be a separate entity from the body. She interprets the soul as emotions with somatic experiences such as when your heart aches when you grieve or how love and joy can simply overwhelm a person. The language of the soul expresses itself through thought and is not simply an untouchable, imaginable idea as it had been thought of previously. The soul is understood as something that is bottomless and unlimited, and is expressed through the body as a pair that cannot function one without the other. Overall, her interpreation of the body and soul is very profound.

Importance of Reason

One distinction Arendt makes and stresses is the difference between intellect and reason. She quotes Kant saying, "the intellect (Verstand) desires to grasp what is given to the senses, but reason (Vernunft) wishes to understand its meaning" (pg 57). I think that this corresponds with her discussion on common sense and intellect. As she points out and as many people are aware, raw intelligence does not indicate common sense. Sometimes the most "book smart" people don't have an inkling of "street smarts."  Arendt says that "it is the sixth sense's [common sense's] function to fit us into the world of appearances  and make us at home in the world given by our five senses" (pg 59). She is merely emphasizing that it is thinking (which Kant called reason) that allows human beings to function properly.

The many influences on Arendt

Arendt is good at giving a history of philosophy to help explain the background of her thought and where it develops from. In this section talking about Kant's reevaluation of metaphysics, it is clear that reason, thinking, and truth will all come together to show the banality of evil. We are beginning to discuss absentmindedness and see how "thinking" and "not thinking" can go on simultaneously until someone who is intelligent could also be considered thoughtless. The types of truth that also come from different types of thinking could also have an impact. As I begin to read "What is Called Thinking," it becomes clear what influence he has had as well. His first lecture in the series dives right into why and what we think. All of these influences contribute a piece to the puzzle Arendt is systematically laying out in "The Life of the Mind".

The Perception of Society

In Arendt's chapter on Body and soul; soul and mind she says "In addition to the urge toward self display by which living things fit themselves into a world of appearances, men also present themselves in deed and word and thus indicate how they wish to appear, what in their opinion is fit to be seen and what is not." I feel like everyone since the beginning of time has done this. It's like our mind only wants to satisfy what the rest of society perceives as 'right'. We will change what we want to be what everyone else wants, and even then, it's not good enough for the perception of society. Why is our mind set to care about what others think? Or is that our soul?

Arendt has a scientific account for the soul rather than the classical transcendental view.  She brings the soul back to the here and now and lets it account for things like emotions and other parts of the 'inner life'.  This is important when discussing thought and the banality of evil because the soul is what connects the mind and the body.  If thoughtlessness is the cause of evil, then the link between the soul and the mind could be the key to how the person becomes thoughtless.  It also might be explained by the link between thought and speech.  If the 'evil-doers' were not thinking about what they were doing, then they wouldn't try to speak out against it or refuse to do his/her duties.  Regardless, the links Arendt draws in the first few chapters of her book, help to set the stage for the link between thoughtlessness and evil.

Thought v.s. the Soul

Something that interested me greatly in the chapter of, "Body and soul; soul and mind," was the relationship that Arendt draws between the mind and the soul. Specifically in the way that we express the reactions of both in our daily lives. Arendt makes the distinction between the presentation of an emotion, which would be the mind thinking upon the experience and then producing the appearance that if feels is appropriate to said experience, and the actual emotion, which she argues is the domain of the soul, and can no more be displayed in an unadulterated form than our internal organs. The emotions of the soul are first considered and thought upon by the mind, and when they have been transformed by this process, then and only then are they displayed by the body. This, in turn, connects to the idea of self-presentation, or how we want to present ourselves to those around us. When we feel something in our soul, we first consider it, then, depending on the situation or the people that we are in contact with, we can either act on it and display it, or we can ignore it and internalize that feeling. In this, Arendt makes a strong case for her argument that the soul and the mind are not separate from the body.

The Banality of Heroism

Banality of Heroism (19:15)

This is a link to a video on TED.com which discusses a theory of evil that is psychological.  However, the social psychologist concludes that society needs to address and encourage the idea that it is not evil that is banal, but heroism.  The discussion of heroism starts at 18:30 but before that, Philip Zimbardo discusses the Stanford prison experiment and the shock experiment we talked about in class.

The Thought of God

In Arendt's introduction chapter, she reflects on theology, philosophy, metaphysics and ultimately the notion and thought of God. She discusses the existence of God and how the dynamics of understanding God are "no longer convincing" (Arendt 10). After enduring and witnessing life-altering events such as World War I, World War II, and the Holocaust she emphasizes that the traditional thought of the existence of God can no longer be used and is otherwise "dead". For example, in Medieval times, people looked for the explanation of the Black Plague as from God and that in some way or another the person deserved this suffering to atone for one's sins. She is merely explaining to her readers that this reality of God can no longer be assumed and people can no longer view the world in this manner. Overall, I feel that her explanation of this notion of God is not unrealistic after undergoing what the people of this time period had witnessed and experienced.

The Banality of Evil

One of the subjects that Arendt discusses in this chapter that interested me a great deal was her description of brand of evil she witnessed in during the Eichmann trail in Israel. Specifically the term "banality of evil". In her description of Eichmann, we are denied the villain we believe we should be treated to, and are instead given a man who seems almost pathetic in his inability to connect his actions to the evil that they caused. What's more, though he seems to be completely incapable of personal thought or actions. Arendt says that, "In the setting of Israeli court and prison procedures he functioned as well as he had functioned under the Nazi regime but, when confronted with situations for which such routine procedures did not exist, he was helpless," (Page 4). To me, this speaks of the two kinds of evil in this world. The first, and most familiar, are the deliberate and oftentimes intelligent acts of cruelty performed by human beings. Which can range from murder to wholesale genocide. The second kind is this sort of banal evil, in which people facilitate it, but deliberately separate themselves from it. Though they may not commit the acts, they are involved in them at the very least indirectly. Eichmann was not responsible for the murders committed in the concentration camps, but he was responsible for the logistics that allowed those people to get there, and so by extension somewhat culpable in the crime. What's more, though he had knowledge of what was going to occur during the Holocaust, he, like many other Germans, made no attempt to prevent it. This, to me, is the hallmark of the second, and ever increasing, kind of evil. Where people, good or bad, ignore the evil acts of others and in turn become involved in those acts. I'll end this with a quote, which I think fits in with this particular kind of evil, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing," (Edmund Burke).

Seeing is Believing

One of the points that Arendt makes is that there is an end to not God, but the thought of God. She also writes "The fact that our mind is not capable of certain and verifiable knowledge regarding matters and questions that it nevertheless cannot help thinking about, and for him such matters, that is, those with which mere thought is concerned, were restricted to what we now often call the 'ultimate question' of God, freedom, and immortality." I just wanted to share my thoughts behind this. I feel like a lot of people question God because they can not see him. It is known that 'seeing is believing', and I feel that is the biggest issue with people who question the presence of the Catholic/Christian God. 

Meaning vs. Truth

One thing I found puzzling in the introduction is Arendt's statement that "The need of reason is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning. And truth and meaning are not the same" (Arendt 15). To me, it seems nigh impossible to extricate one from the other. The meaning of anything for anyone becomes truth to that person so how can they not be synonymous? The meaning of something, to me, seems to be made true by virtue of the fact that it has been "discovered" at all. If to be true means to to exist in reality, and any meaning is real to certain people, then they must be the same.