#13 – 25/05/17: Thinking and Willing

To lose the appetite for meaning we call thinking and cease to ask unanswerable questions [would be to] lose not only the ability to produce those thought-things that we call works of art but also the capacity to ask all the answerable questions upon which every civilization is founded.
Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind

For our penultimate session we will be discussing Arendt's final and lesser-known work, The Life of the Mind.
The Life of the Mind is a challenging text in which Arendt seeks to redefine three mental activities: thinking, willing and judging. Although she doesn't quite manage to explicate the relationship between mental activities and action, The Life of the Mind provides a foundation for later theorists who have (including Julia Kristeva). It also offers important insights into the relationship between the individual mind and reality, answering back to Kant and Hegel.
We will be focusing on a section of the book that achieves all of the above, 'Mental Activities in the World of Appearances', and pairing it with Rei Terada's 'Thinking for Oneself: Realism and Defiance in Arendt'.
Refreshments will be provided.
Where? LHRI Seminar room 1
When? Thursday 25th May, 5-7pm 
Primary reading: H. Arendt, 'Mental Activities in the World of Appearances', from The Life of the Mind. PDF here.
Secondary reading: R. Terada, 'Thinking for Oneself: Realism and Defiance in Arendt'. PDF here.

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