ABSTRACT
Human beings sometimes think. What is thinking? Difficult as it is to answer this question neurophysiologically, we all know from experience what it is like. Thinking is a special kind of activity; and as with the proper exercising of any organ, when we think well we have the pleasant sensation of being alive and in touch with the real. On the other hand, thinking is also de-sensing: it dematerializes the world around us. The ordinary person’s suspicion of the thinker is captured by the expression, ‘He has taken leave of his senses.’ He is out of touch with his immediate environment. Hannah Arendt writes: ‘While thinking, I am not where I actually am; I am surrounded not by sense-objects but by images that are invisible to everybody else.’ Thus thinking produces a paradoxical effect: the near is far away (that is, out of mind) and the far away is brought near.2
