Abstract

This chapter brings together some of Arendt's key ideas on thinking and judging. With the exception of system building, they all play a part in constituting the attention that grows out of and focuses political worry; and some play a part in perfecting the will to resist. Her implication is that political theorists and historians as well as poets, novelists, and moral essayists should and often do aim to perfect these operations of remedial intellect. But it is precisely the scarcity of these mental traits in the population at large that produces the bulk of events in life; and these events are the stuff that necessitates and often joyously entangles thinkers and scholars in the project of understanding.