ABSTRACT
Thinking, willing, and judging are 'three basic mental activities that cannot be derived from each other'. Arendt's epigram reminds that absentmindedness is absent-mindedness. Arendt undercuts dualism by describing the phenomena of mind and thought that make the dualist fallacy stand out on theory's horizon, even while those descriptions resist reduction. Arendt associates thinking with withdrawal from the 'world', willing with a withdrawal from the immediacy of desire and judging with a withdrawal from the arena of involvement to the ringside seat of the spectator of what people are doing. Before The Life of the Mind, Arendt had located judgment within social and political life. To mind is prior to the mind. This re-ordering makes more sense of negativity and absence as central issues of mind. As a thing, mind would be invested, rather, with positivity, a substance, as Rene Descartes said in constructing his dualism of mind and body.
