The Life of the Mind was published posthumously by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1978, three years after Arendt’s death. She had conceived the project as a companion to The Human Condition: where that book had examined the vita activa (labor, work, action), this one would examine the vita contemplativa (thinking, willing, judging). She completed the first two volumes — “Thinking” and “Willing” — but died of a heart attack in December 1975 with only the title page of “Judging” in her typewriter.
The work originated in Arendt’s reflections on the Eichmann trial. Eichmann’s most striking characteristic, she had observed, was his inability to think — not a lack of intelligence, but a refusal to examine his own actions from any perspective other than the bureaucratic. This observation raised the philosophical question: what is thinking, and what is its relationship to moral judgment? Can the failure to think — mere thoughtlessness — produce evil?
“Thinking” examines the nature of thought itself: its withdrawal from the world of appearances into an inner dialogue with oneself, its destructive effect on accepted opinions and received ideas, its lack of productive results. Thinking, Arendt argues, does not produce truth or knowledge; it produces meaning — the capacity to understand what one is doing and why.
“Willing” examines the human capacity to begin something new — the mental faculty corresponding to action in the political realm. Arendt traces the history of the concept of the will from its emergence in late antiquity (it is notably absent from Greek philosophy) through Augustine, Aquinas, Scotus, and Nietzsche, arguing that the will is the mental organ of freedom.
Collecting The Life of the Mind
First edition (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1978): Two volumes, cloth binding. Published posthumously.
Market values:
- First edition, two volumes, in dust jackets: $80–$250
- Without jackets: $20–$50
- One-volume paperback: $10–$20