Introduction

Hannah Arendt describes thinking, willing and judging as within historical events and moral pressures. Arendt finds writing about thinking awesome, and the title The Life of the Mind 'presumptuous' in its promise to reveal the nature of thought and the mind. In The Life of the Mind Arendt writes philosophy so as to displace metaphysical theories of mind. In 'dismantling' metaphysics, Arendt understands the impulses towards dualism, and treats her predecessors generously. Arendt finds the origins of her questions in classical Greek philosophy, along with the medievals' development of that tradition. The Second World War, and Arendt's role in it as a Jewish intellectual forced to escape from Germany during the 1930s, resulted in a break with the principal philosopher in Germany, her teacher, colleague and sometime lover, Martin Heidegger. Arendt develops a line of thought that makes an allegory of Immanuel Kant's association of thought with phenomenon and will with noumenon.