Abstract

Relying primarily on The Human Condition and The Life of the Mind, this study explores the manner in which Hannah Arendt understood the relation between the vita activa, in particular, action, and the vita contemplativa. ;Taking her 'clues' from the tradition, Arendt depicts thinking as a solitary venture which tends to retreat from the particular and contingent realm of action. Classically understood, speculation occurs in solitude, demanding a disappearance from the 'ordinary realm of human affairs,' the realm of praxis. ;On the other hand, political life relies upon our capacity not to withdraw but to appear and this we do by inserting ourselves into the world through our words and deeds. In virtue of this disclosive capacity, there can exist a bios politikos. ;Though the tendency of thinking----is to retreat from active life, the story does not end there. With Socrates as her model, Arendt sees thinking not merely as a withdrawal but as a relentless and critical search for meaning, a search which is discursive and ultimately aporetic, concerned not with final answers, but animated by questions which concern the meaning of what we do and what we suffer. ;Positively understood, thinking is animated by our need to 'reconcile' ourselves to the common world into which we have been born. Insofar as thinking 'results' in the "by-product" of conscience and in the "side-effect" of judgment , it is not simply a withdrawal from the common world but is a condition for one's responsible membership in it. Illustrated in the figure of Socrates, Arendt understands thinking as a self-critical search which has as its 'side-effect' that annoying voice of conscience. Insofar as this critical search for meaning prevents one from thoughtlessly applying rules or principles, prevents one from relying upon abstract stereotypes and empty jargon, thinking becomes a condition for that 'practical insight,' that judgment, which Aristotle called phronesis and which Kant called 'reflective.' Critical thought thus becomes a prelude for judgment, a faculty Arendt deemed to be, like action, profoundly political in character