ABSTRACT
The Life of the Mind represents a culminating philosophic effort—alas not quite complete, but something less than one-third to be guessed at. Even stating the obvious is bound to create some misunderstanding since Hannah Arendt disclaims being a "philosopher" or "professional thinker." Arendt sought to get beyond the atomism which afflicts the social sciences in particular—the search for the magical key word: society for sociology, culture for anthropology, polity for political science, money for economics, and personality for psychology. It is ironic that the author of Eichmann in Jerusalem should also be a supreme devotee of German high culture. For there can be no mistaking that in philosophy, law, and politics, Arendt was a complete product of the German Aufklarung. Judgment is concerned with that "enlargement of mind" that derives from evaluating "something fabricated with a purpose." But far from supporting an elitist vision of aesthetics or culture, Arendt drew precisely the opposite, namely a populist conclusion.
