T h e Life o f the Mind Thie One Copyrighted material BOOKS BY HANNAH ARENDT The Origins ofTotalitarianism Rabel Vamhagen: The Life ofa Jewish Woman The Human Condition Between Past and Future On Revolution Eichmann in Jerusalem Men in Dark Times On Violence Crises of the Republic The Life of the Mind: One/Thinking Two/Willing Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers Correspondence 1926-1969 Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy. 1949-1975 C..opynght8d materi 11 I One Thinking I Two Willing One-volume Edition Copyrighted material Hannah Arendt The · e of the Mind A Harvest Book • Harcourt, Inc. San Diego New York Londcm Copyrighted material Copyright C 1971 by Hannah Arendt Copyright@ 1978, 1977 by Harcourt, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or trnnsmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy. recording. or any information storage and retrieval system, without pennlssion in writing from the pubUsher. Requests for pennission to make copie• of any part of the work should be moiled to the following address: Permissions Department, Harwu.rt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887 ~m. Thinking appeared origiruilly in the New Yorker in somewhat diJTereot form. The quotations from W. H. Auden are from Collected Poems, by W. H. Auden. edited by Edward Mendelson. Copyright@ 1976 by Edward Mendehon, William Meredith, and Monroe K. Spears, Executors of the Estate of W. H. Auden. The quotation from Rainer Maria Hilke is from Duino Flegte., by Rainer Maria Hilke, tr:mslated by J. B. Leishman and Stephen Spender, copyright 1939 by W. w. Norton & Company. Inc., copyright renewed 1967 J. by Stephen Spender and b. LeJshmao, and is reprinted with the pennlsslon ofW. W. Norton&: Company,lnc., and The Hogarth Press. Library of Congress Catal~g-in-Publication Data Arendt, Hannah. The life of the mind. Originally published in two separate volumes with subtitles: Thinking, and Willing. Includes bibliographical refercoces and indexes. I. Philosophy-Collected works. I. Title. B29.A73 1981 110 80-25403 ISBN 0-15-651992-S Printed in the United States of America Y X W V U Copyrighted material Numquam se plus agere quam nihil cum ageret, numquam minus solum esse quam cum solus esset. CATO Every one of us is like a man who sees things in a dream and thinks that he knows them perfectly and then wakes up to find that he knows nothing. Statennan PLATO, Copyrighted material Copyrighted material Contents Editor's Note x!U One / Thinking I ntroducticn 3 lA~ 1 The world's p1umomenal nature 19 2 (True) being and (mere) appearance: the two-world theory :l3 3 The reversal ot the metaphysical hierarchy: the value of the surface :~6 4 Body and soul; soul and mind 30 5 Appearance and semblance 37 6 The thinking ego and the self: Kant 40 7 Reality and the thinking ego: the Cartesian doubt and the sensus communis 45 8 Science and common sense; Kant's distinction between inteUect and reason; truth and meaning 53 Copy!Zghted material