Read The Life of the Mind Online

Authors: Hannah Arendt

Tags: #Non-Fiction, #Philosophy, #Psychology, #Politics

The Life of the Mind (33 page)

50.
The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason,
London, 1966, p. 249.

51.
The Visible and the Invisible,
pp. 28 ff.

52.
The Human Condition,
pp. 252 ff.

53.
Le Discours de la Méthode,
3ème partie, in
Descartes: Oeuvres et Lettres,
pp. 111, 112; see, for first quotation,
The Philosophical Works of Descartes,
trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross, Cambridge, 1972, vol. I, p. 99.

54. Plato,
Philebus,
67b, 52b.

55.
Ibid.,
33b, 28c.

56.
Le Discours de la Méthode,
4ème partie, in
Descartes: Oeuvres et Lettres,
p. 114;
The Philosophical Works,
vol. I, p. 101.

57.
The Visible and the Invisible,
pp. 36–37.

58. "Anthropologie," no. 24,
Werke,
vol. VI, p. 465.

59. Heidegger rightly points out: "Descartes himself stresses that the sentence
[cogito ergo sum]
is not a syllogism. The I-am is not a consequence of the I-think but, on the contrary, the
fundamentum,
the ground for it." Heidegger mentions the form the syllogism would have to take; it would read as follows:
Id quod cogitat est; cogito; ergo sum. Die Frage nach dem Ding,
Tübingen, 1962, p. 81.

60.
Tractatus,
5.62; 6.431; 6.4311. Cf.
Notebooks 1914–1918,
New York, 1969, p. 75e.

61. Thomas Aquinas,
Summa Theologica,
pt. 1, qu. 1, 3 ad 2.

62. It seems that Gottsched was the first to speak of the common sense (
sensus communis
) as a "sixth sense." In
Versuch einer Kritischen Dichtkunst für die Deutschen,
1730. Cf. Cicero,
De Oratore,
III, 50.

63. Quoted from Thomas Landon Thorson,
Biopolitics,
New York, 1970, p. 91.

64.
Summa Theologica,
pt. I, qu. 78,4 ad 1.

65.
Op. cit., loc, cit.

66.
Ibid.

67.
Notebooks 1914–1916,
pp. 48, 48e.

68.
Politics,
1324al6.

69.
The Visible and the Invisible,
p. 40.

70.
Philebus,
25–26.

71.
Ibid.,
31a.

72. Thomas S. Kuhn,
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,
Chicago, 1962, p. 163.

73.
Critique of Pure Reason,
B367.

74.
De Interpretation,
17al–4.

75. 980a22 ff.

76.
Mcmadology,
no. 33.

77.
Physics,
188b30. Thomas Aquinas echoes the Aristotelian phrase: "
quasi ab ipsa veritate coacti'
(as though forced by truth itself), in his commentary on
De Anima,
I, 2,43.

78. The
Dictionnaire de VAcadémie
wrote in the same vein: "
La force de la vérité, pour dire le pouvoir que la vérité a sur Vesprit des hommes.
"

79. W. H. Auden, "Talking to Myself,"
Collected Poems,
New York, 1976, p. 653.

80.
Philosophie der Weltgeschichte,
Lasson ed., Leipzig, 1920, pt. I, pp. 61–62.

81. Notes on metaphysics, Akademie Ausgabe, vol. XVIII, 4849.

82.
Critique of Pure Reason,
A19, B33.

83. The only Kant interpretation I know of which could be quoted in support of my own understanding of Kant's distinction between reason and intellect is Eric Weil's consummate analysis of the
Critique of Pure Reason, "Penser et Connaître, La Foi et la Chose-en-soi,
" in
Problèmes Kantiens,
2nd ed., Paris, 1970. According to Weil, it is inevitable "
d'affirmer que Kant, qui dénie à la raison pure la possibilité de
connaître
et de développer une
science,
lui reconnaît, en revanche, celle d'acquérir un
savior
qui, au lieu de connaître,
pense" (p. 23). It must be admitted, however, that Weil's conclusions remain closer to Kant's own understanding of himself. Weil is chiefly interested in the interconnection of Pure and Practical reason and hence states that "
le fondement dernier de la philosophie kantienne doit être cherché dans sa théorie de l'homme, dans l'anihropologie philosophique, non dans une 'théorie de la connaissance' ...
" (p. 33), whereas my chief reservations about Kant's philosophy concern precisely his moral philosophy, that is, the
Critique of Practical Reason,
although
I
agree of course that those who read the
Critique of Pure Reason
as a kind of epistemology seem to ignore completely the concluding chapters of the book (p. 34).

The four essays of Weil's book, by far the most important items in the Kant literature of recent years, are all based on the simple but crucial insight that "
L'opposition
connaître
...et
penser
...est fondamentale pour la compréhension de la pensée kantienne
" (p. 112, n. 2).

84.
Critique of Pure Reason,
A314.

85.
Ibid.,
B868.

86.
Ibid.,
Bxxx.

87.
Ibid.

88.
Ibid.,
B697.

89.
Ibid.,
B699.

90.
Ibid.,
B702.

91.
Ibid.,
B698.

92.
Ibid.,
B714.

93.
Ibid.,
B826.

94.
Ibid.,
B708.

 

Chapter II

1.
De Veritate,
qu. XXII, art. 12.

2.
Critique of Pure Reason,
B171–B174.

3.
Critique of Judgment,
trans. J. H. Bernard, New York, 1951, Introduction, IV.

4.
Science of Logic,
Preface to the Second Edition.

5.
Philosophy of Right,
Preface.

6. Frag. 108.

7. Thucydides, II, 43.

8.
Critique of Pure Reason,
B400.

9.
Ibid.,
B275.

10. See Emst Stadter,
Psychologie und Metaphysik der menschlichen Freiheit,
München, Paderborn, Wien, 1971, p. 195.

11. See the magnificent description of such a dream of "complete loneliness" in Kant's
Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime,
trans. John T. Goldthwait, Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1960, pp. 48–49.

12.
Critique of Pure Reason,
B157. Cf. chap. I of the present volume, pp. 43–45.

13.
Ibid.,
B158 n.

14. "Anthropologie," no. 28,
Werke,
vol. VI, p. 466.

15.
The Trinity,
bk. XI, chap. 3. English translation:
Fathers of the Church
series, Washington, D.C., 1963, vol. 45.

16.
Ibid.

17.
Ibid.,
chap. 8.

18.
Ibid.,
chap. 10.

19.
An Introduction to Metaphysics,
trans. Ralph Manheim, New Haven, 1959, p. 12.

20. "Discours aux Chirurgiens," in
Variété,
Paris, 1957, vol. I, p. 916.

21.
Phaedo,
64.

22. Diogenes Laertius, VII, 2.

23.
Sämmtliche Werke,
Leipzig, n.d., "Ueber den Tod," vol. II, p. 1240.

24.
Phaedo,
64–67.

25. Cf. Valéry,
op. cit., loc. cit.

26. See N. A. Greenberg's analysis, "Socrates' Choice in the
Crito,
" in
Harvard Studies in Classical Philology,
vol. 70, no. 1, 1965.

27. Heraclitus, frags. 104,29.

28.
Republic,
494a and 496d.

29.
Ibid.,
496a ff. Cornford,
The Republic of Plato,
pp. 203–204.

30.
Philebus,
62b.

31.
Laws,
935: In disputes, "all are wont to indulge in ridicule of their opponent." It is impossible "to abuse without seeking to ridicule." Hence, "every writer of comedy or iambic or lyric song shall be strictly forbidden to ridicule any of the citizens ... and if he disobeys he shall be banished from the country." For the passages in the
Republic,
however, in which the fear of ridicule plays hardly any role, see 394 ff. and 606 ff.

32.
Theaetetus,
174a–d.

33. "Träume eines Geistersehers,"
Werke,
vol. I, p. 951.

34.
Phaedo,
64.

35.
Ibid.,
66.

36.
Ibid.,
65.

37.
Protreptikos,
B43, ed. Ingemar Düring, Frankfurt, 1969.

38.
Ibid.,
B110.

39.
Republic,
500c.

40. Letter of March 1638,
Descartes: Oeuvres et Lettres,
p. 780.

41. Editor's note: we have been unable to find this reference.

42. Akademie Ausgabe, vol. XVIII, 5019 and 5036.

43. Plato, in the
Phaedo,
84a, mentions Penelope's web but in the opposite sense. The "soul of the philosopher," set free from the bondage of pleasure and pain, will not act Penelope-like, undoing her own weaving. Once rid (through the
logismos),
of pleasure and pain that "nail" the soul to the body, the soul (Plato's thinking ego) changes its nature and no longer reasons (
logizesthai
) but looks upon (
theāsthai
) "the true and the divine" and abides there forever.

44. "Ueber das Wesen der Philosophischen Kritik,"
Hegel Studienausgabe,
Frankfurt, 1968, vol. I, p. 103.

45.
Philosophie der Weltgeschichte,
Lasson ed, Leipzig, 1917, pt. II, pp. 4–5.

46.
Reason in History,
trans. Robert S. Hartman, Indianapolis, New York, 1953, p. 89.

47.
Reason in History,
p. 69. Author's translation.

48. Preface to
The Phenomenology of Mind.

49.
Politics,
1269a35, 1334al5; see bk. VII, chap. 15.

50. Paul Weiss, "A Philosophical Definition of Leisure," in
Leisure in America: Blessing or Curse,
ed. J. C. Charlesworth, Philadelphia, 1964, p. 21.

51. VIII, 8.1 follow the translation given in Kirk and Raven, frag. 278.

52.
Timaeus,
34b.

53. "Der Streit der Fakultäten," pt. II, 6 and 7,
Werke,
vol. VI, pp. 357–362.

54. "Ueber den Gemeinspruch,"
Werke,
vol. VI, pp. 166–167.

55. Hegel,
Philosophie der Weltgeschichte,
Introduction.

56.
Sophist, 254.

57.
Republic,
517b, and
Phaedrus,
247c.

58.
Sophist,
254a–b.

59. See chap. I of the present volume, pp. 33–34. In the beginning of
De Interpretation,
Aristotle refers to his
De Anima,
as having dealt with some of the same points, but nothing in
De Anima
seems to correspond to the points raised in
De Interpretation.
If my reading of the text is correct, Aristotle might have thought of the passage used by me in chap. I, that is,
De Anima,
403a5–10.

60.
De Interpretation,
16a4–17a9.

61. "Reflexionen zur Anthropologie," no. 897, Akademie Ausgabe, vol. XV, p. 392.

62.
Monologion.

63. In what follows here, I have relied closely on the first chapter, on "Language and Script," of Marcel Granet's great book
La Pensée Chinoise,
Paris, 1934. I used the new German edition, which has been brought up to date by Manfred Porkert:
Das chinesische Denken—Inhalt, Form, Charakter,
München, 1971.

64. Kant,
Critique of Pure Reason,
B180.

65. B180–181.

66.
Tractatus,
4.016
("Um das Wesen des Satzes zu verstehen, denken wir an die Hieroglyphenschrift, welche die Tatsachen, die sie beschreibt, abbildet. Und aus ihr wurde die Buchsta-benschrift, ohne das Wesentliche der Abbildung zu ver-lieren").

67.
A Defence of Poetry.

68.
Poetics,
1459a5.

69.
Ibid.,
1457bl7 ff.

70.
Critique of Judgment,
no. 59.

71.
Ibid.

72.
Ibid.

73.
Prolegomena to Every Future Metaphysics,
no. 58, trans. Carl J. Friedrich, Modem Library, New York, n.d. Kant himself had been aware of this peculiarity of philosophical language in the pre-critical time: "Our higher rational concepts ... usually take on a physical garment in order to achieve clarity." "Träume eines Geistersehers," p. 948.

74. No. 59. It would be interesting to examine Kant's notion of "analogy" from the early writing to the
Opus Postumum,
for it is striking how early it occurred to him that metaphorical thinking—that is, thinking in analogies—could save speculative thought from its peculiar unrealness. Already in the
Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels,
published in 1755, he writes with respect to the "probability" of God's existence: "I am not so devoted to the consequences of my theory that I should not be ready to acknowledge ... its being undemonstrable. Nevertheless, I expect ... that such a chart of the infinite, comprehending as it does a subject which seems

.. to be forever concealed from human understanding,
will not on that account be at once regarded as a chimera, especially when recourse is had to analogy.
" (Italics added. English translation, by W. Hastie, quoted from
Kant's Cosmogony,
Glasgow, 1900, pp. 146–147.

75. See Francis MacDonald Cornford,
Plato's Theory of Knowledge,
New York, 1957, p. 275.

76. The essay, "The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry," edited by Ezra Pound, in
Instigations,
Freeport, N.Y., 1967, contains a curious plea for the Chinese script: "Its etymology is constantly visible." A phonetic word "does not bear its metaphor on its face. We forget that personality once meant, not the soul, but the soul's mask [through which the soul sounded, as it were—
per-sonare].
This is the sort of thing one can not possibly forget in using the Chinese symbol.... With us, the poet is the one for whom the accumulated treasures of the race-words are real and active" (p. 25).

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