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 Arendt disclaims being a philosopher or "professional thinker". The relationships between thinking, willing, and judging are set forth early in the first volume. And like a profoundly risky move in chess, the disallowance of any inter-translatability between the three categories drastically weakens the work. Bridling the will is no small matter. Its subjugation to reason is more than an indication that in the hierarchy of thinking, willing, and judging, willing comes in a distant third. Arendt suffered a dialectical passion, or at least a commitment to the reality of reification: the warfare between thought and common sense, the gap between the past and the future, thinking and doing, the active life and the contemplative life, the impotence of the will versus the omnipotence of the will.
