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?