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Arendt denies being a Philosopher and lays claim to be a political theorist as if one could be the one without being the other: as if she to some extent agreed with the indictment, conviction, and sentence of Socrates on the grounds that the polis does not need Philosophy. The suggestion is that with the death of Socrates, Philosophy and Politics went their separate ways. She is, however, prone to referring to Socrates in ethical contexts, claiming, for example, that he was a classical “thinker” because of his moral attitude towards murder. Socrates, as we know maintained that he would be unable to commit the act of murder because in doing such an act he would become a murderer, and then he, Socrates, would have to acknowledge the fact that he, Socrates, was a murderer. This would not be possible because if thinking means talking to oneself(to the self one is with forever) then there would be the Socrates that committed this heinous act and there would be the Socrates that was judging the act and the question that arises is whether these two could live together in the same private space.
Socrates shared with Aristotle a belief in the idea of Noêsis, an idea that contains no logical space for a private space. This latter statement appears therefore to be incompatible with the above account of private thinking and noësis. We need perhaps in order to understand this incompatibility, turn to Platonic theory where it is claimed that there are parts of the soul. One part of the soul, for example, may have desired vengeance for a perceived wrong. Another part of the mind, picks up a Socratic thread of thought that the above thinking process obeys the principle that it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. This latter process for both Plato and Aristotle would be the rational part of the soul. This in turn suggests that the popular Greek view of thinking as talking to oneself is not embraced by Socrates and talk of a private space harbouring two voices is at best a metaphor for thought being regulated by a principle. Aristotle does not directly use the tripartite view of the soul we find in Plato, preferring instead to speak of the rational and irrational parts of the soul. At first sight, with the absence of the spirited part of the soul, it rather looks as if the Platonic account of the soul is more complex than that we find in Aristotle. This is, however, not the case if one takes into consideration the totality of the Aristotelian framework from which experience and thought is accounted for in all its forms. Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory also respects the infinite continuity of the material and physical world insofar as it is known and understood. The theory explains how forms or principles regulate the infinite character of change and how a human being with his repertoire of powers plays a central role in describing, explaining, and justifying this change. These powers are elements or parts of the soul.
There is, in other words, contained in Aristotle’s canon of the sciences, an embedded theoretical and practical understanding of the soul that is characterised in his definition: “rational animal capable of discourse”. Aristotle’s Metaphysics is a “first principle” philosophy in which we encounter 4 kinds of change, three principles of change and 4 causes(aitia–kinds of explanation). This theory is as comfortable in defining human being as it is in defining the being of animals through experimental and observational activity. Experiments conducted by Aristotle included dissection of these animals in order to examine organ systems, laying thereby the foundation of later evolutionary theory and the discipline of Biology. This preoccupation with matter and the various forms it can take was the main distinguishing feature of Aristotle’s philosophy when compared with Platonic mathematically inspired dualism. What is in common to both positions is the appeal to principles(arché). The focus on matter may have been the reason why religious scholars have preferred Platonic principles where it was possible for the soul to detach itself from its material host and continue some form of imagined existence. It is important to note, however, that the Aristotelian focus on material was not a reaction against the forms of dualism(including Pythagoreanism and Orphism) that were present in academic and poetic discussion of the time. Aristotle’s use of principles or forms transcended the way in which Plato used these ideas and served to synthesise ideas from different sources(including religion). He did this in accordance with a definition of Philosophy that has been described by Jonathan Lear in his work “Aristotle:the Desire to Understand”:–a systematic understanding of the world. Aristotelian scholars in general are agreed that the Aristotelian architectonic to this day contains many of the elements we need to understand the principles of the various sciences in general and Psychology in particular. In the theoretical sciences the activities of observation and experimentation occur both in the contexts of exploration/discovery and in the contexts of explanation/justification(where observations and experiments are conducted in accordance with first principles(arché)). The practical sciences, of which Psychology is a part, includes an account of the desire to understand in terms of practical principles( e.g. areté). At issue in all of these sciences is a justification of the definition of man as a rational animal capable of discourse. The Aristotelian architectonic importantly distinguishes between two kinds of forms operating in relation to psuche (living beings): accidental forms that apply to the individual transitorily, e.g. Socrates having a sun tan in the summer and being pale during the winter, and Socrates’ substantial forms that are responsible for Socrates being Socrates(that define the being of Socrates), e.g. his being human. When Socrates dies his being human is no longer the case (so being alive is another essence specifying characteristic). Socrates himself believed this, as is evidenced by his remarks in the Phaedo, in response to one of his friends questions inquiring into what should be done after his death. Socrates humorously responds by challenging his friends to find him after his death(implying on one reading that this would be impossible) and adding that they could do what they liked with his body. We drew attention in volume one to the problem of distinguishing between the real Socrates and Plato’s “mouthpiece”. We should also recall in the context of this discussion that Socrates turned his back upon his earlier investigations into the physical nature of the world ,but in proposing the thesis that the soul has parts we find Socrates uses the Aristotelian principle of noncontradiction(the same soul cannot both want to drink and want not to drink, therefore the soul must have parts). In discussions relating to the search for essence specifying definitions, Socrates also uses the Aristotelian principle of sufficient reason(in engaging in a conversation about what a definition or sufficient reason is, Socrates rejects the strategy of ostensive definition–pointing for example, to different kinds of bee in response to the request for a definition of a bee). These resemblances with Aristotle are more than superficial, as is witnessed by their common position on the meaning of areté or virtue, in which they both agree that the central active meaning of this term relates to action, to doing the right thing in the right way at the right time. The exact nature of the resemblance between their respective positions is however somewhat obscured by Plato and the introduction of his “Platonic” Socrates into for example “The Republic”. If we are correct in our supposition of this resemblance then this would mean that Socrates would actually have rejected the thesis that the form of the good could be separated from its acts in the same way in which the mathematical formula for the perfect circle could be separated from any physical “imperfect” instantiation.
Aristotle in the following illustrates his position in relation to this question:
“Those who believe in the form(eidé) come to this belief because they become convinced of the truth of the Heraclitean view that some perceptible things(ta aesthéta) are always flowing. So that if there is to be explanatory knowledge(epistemé) and wisdom(phronesis) about anything, there must be certain other natures, besides the ones that can be perceived through the senses which are enduring(not changing). For it was claimed that there is no explanatory knowledge of changing things. Socrates had been concerned with ethical virtues and had been the first to search for universal definitions about them….But Socrates was justified, for what something is(the essence), for he was seeking to reason deductively and the starting point(arché) of deductive reasoning is the essence…For there are just two things that one might fairly ascribe to Socrates, namely, inductive arguments and giving universal definition both of which are concerned with the starting point(arché) of explanatory knowledge. But Socrates did not make universals or definitions separate: the Platonists, on the other hand, did make them separate, and such beings(i.e. separate beings) they called “ideas”(forms) (Metaphysics Book XIII 4, 1078B 12-32)
The Socratic and Aristotelian search for explanatory knowledge explores the depths of the awe and wonder we experience in the face of the world and this exploration could not satisfy itself with knowledge of a mass of changing particulars. If we were to be so satisfied it would suffice to relieve our awe and wonder by pointing at the particulars and associated processes of change and perhaps naming them. Language is the tool or techné we use for discourse and it has many functions as the later Wittgenstein pointed out: naming being just one possible use . Aristotle argues that the principled use of language(its logical use) enables us to transcend the perceptual experience of particulars and give an account of them(logos) as part of an answer to the aporetic question “Why?” often raised in philosophical discourse, e.g. “Why do I seek to know?”, “Why do I seek the Good?”, “Why do I hope for eudaimonia?”(a flourishing life) “Why am I the way I am?”. Those familiar with the defining questions of Philosophy proposed by Kant will feel a Kantian presence in these aporetic questions. Now Perception also contributes to the search for answers by discriminating different kinds of change and different kinds of thing, but Perception is a power like the powers of growth, nutrition, and movement that we share with animals who have no desire to understand the world they inhabit : animals have no desire to understand why they are constituted as they are. Their powers are localised to their environments and a set of simpler desires related to their physiological and safety needs. They have no need for discourse. Their communal life(if they have one) is for the purposes of satisfying these physiological and safety needs and this form of life suffices to define their existence, their desire to be and effort to exist. Animals have no need to either point to changing particulars in order to name them or to use language logically in order to say something about something that can be tested in the tribunal of truth. They have no need of a truth conditional relation to reality that relates the truth in turn to principles and eventually after much Philosophy, to first principles that require the use of reasoning (and a power of rationality that will substantially alter our animal powers of perception and action).The growth of an animal is a simple continuous process and animals have no need for understanding the different abstract stages of this growth-process. Aristotle, in contrast to Plato, saw in psuche or life, a phenomenon which he was in awe of. Human psuche he saw had a telos that required epistemé and phronesis. Both of these are in a sense normative achievements requiring the rational power of the mind to operate systematically in an attempt to fulfil the desire to understand the world. The question “Why?” referred to above, according to Aristotle, has teleological aspects connected to other forms of explanation that we find in Hylomorphic theory. W. Wielund, in his article,”The Problem of Teleology” presents an interesting connection of this theory to Language:
“But the truth is that the doctrine of 4 causes does not consist of a recondite theory of fundamental principles which through a lucky dispensation of nature have been given to the human mind as self evident immediately obvious truths, but of something simpler….we are in fact confronted with the results of an analysis of linguistic usage…Cause has several meanings in ordinary usage. Strictly speaking, therefore we are not confronted with four causes but with four senses in which we speak of causes. Here, too, the formal unity of these distinct meanings is established through a functional element, namely through the question “Why?””(Articles on Aristotle: Science, London, Duckworth 1975, P147)
Wielund is basically arguing that we are dealing here with a classification system and a point of view, i.e. the question “Why?” can be categorised into these 4 forms of explanation that can be applied in every instance of explanation/justification. Matter is obviously one cause(Why does the tree burn after being struck by lightning? Because it is made of wood) and it does to some extent stand apart from the other three causes that often come explicitly together in one definition. Matter, however, as conceived naturally in the human mind is also caused by the thought of its telos and formal properties and this is what differentiates the Aristotelian account from pure materialist accounts. A house for example, could never assemble itself from its materials without an idea of the house sustaining the building activity that is in the process of constituting the house. The material of the house for example, could be lying around the building site if the builder dies and eventually be used to build a wall. This material of course itself has a teleological form of appropriately shaped bricks and wood which enables us to refer to it even when it is lying idle on the building site. The idea of a house, however, requires also the effort of the builder(efficient cause) and an algorithm in the builders mind(formal cause) that suffices to build the house. The final cause of the house or the wall connect necessarily therefore to all the other causes including the material cause(in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason). The final cause, that is, is dependent upon other conditions and cannot as Aquinas suggested, exist independently of other conditions.
Wielund points correctly to the mistakes of those scientists that have claimed, for example, that Aristotle’s teleological reasoning attributes to matter some kind of striving to exist. One of the conditions of scientific activity assumed by these scientists is related to their method of atomising holistic activities such as the building of a house into two events, a cause and an effect that are logically independent of each other(a la Hume). The unity of the building of the house and the fully constituted house is thus destroyed. On the Aristotelian account the cause of the house is manifold and includes the idea or principle of the house( the telos is logically included in this idea). The terminus or telos of processes are perhaps more a question of meaning than a question of de re necessity. This might be something that is being suggested by Wielund’s account of the importance of language. It does not, however, appear solely to be a linguistic matter or a matter of the use of language that we describe a potentiality in terms of its actuality. Goals or purposes for both Aristotle and Kant are reflective judgments(not determinate or constitutive judgments). Indeed, for Kant, the final or teleological explanation of something is a :
“cause whose capacity of acting is determined by conceptions”(Critique of Teleological Judgment P.16)
We look upon purposes insofar as ends of nature are concerned as if they were produced by natural law or principle. Kant takes as an example the figure of a hexagon drawn in the sand of an uninhabited beach. Here we would not attribute the form of this drawing to the forces of the winds and the sea or to the activity of any animals: it would be conceived to be a human product. We would in such circumstances change our assumption that the island is or was uninhabited by a human presence. Organisms in contrast to natural forces have purposes or goals that in causal language would be characterised in terms of being both causes and effects of themselves. Of course, given Aristotle’s materialistic focus the organs of an organism and their biological processes would be equally constitutive of the organisms existence. This throws some light upon the Platonic insistence of the parts of the soul because, as Kant points out:
“The first requisite of a thing considered as a physical end, is that its parts, both as to their existence and form are only possible by their relation to the whole.”(C of TJ P.20)
The parts were obviously conceived teleologically with one part having a superior power compared with the powers of the other parts.The reflective decision not to drink water because of a suspicion of contamination is a power of Reason and such a decision is in Aristotelian terms a higher level actuality of a high level potentiality. As we pointed out above Aristotle does not subscribe to the idea of a tripartite soul but prefers to speak of a rational part of the soul, and an irrational part of a soul, constituted respectively by higher level powers and lower level powers. Hylomorphism adheres to a holistic conception of the soul and the body where in the former the powers of the soul are interrelated in a system where each power is for the other powers and in the latter where the form of the body is constituted by the organs and physiological processes which are also systematically related to each other. Both the soul and the body upon which it depends are self organising elements of the organism. This systemic relation of the parts of a body is not to be compared to that of the parts of a clock that “motivate” or cause movement in other parts because there is no self monitoring of the system of a clock that assists in repairing damage to any of these parts. The conceptualising of these systems obviously require more than a reference to their material and efficient causes. There is a sense in which we must estimate the essence of the organism with the aid of teleological reasoning. Indeed, Kant claims that the conception of even the origin a simple organism like a blade of grass:
“is only possible on the rule of ends”(C of TJ P.27)
Without teleological explanation we would not have a clear idea of the essence of the organism and we would not have an explanation that met the criterion of the principle of sufficient reason . Both Aristotle and Kant would vehemently object to the introduction of a designing (divine) agency into the above account because for neither of them was teleological explanation, (isolated from other explanations), a universally constituting explanation. Teleology for them was only one cause in a network, Both philosophers also agree on the position that the underlying substrate of reality cannot be conceived in terms of solely material and efficient causes because this would be tantamount to postulating that causes occurred by chance. This conception, however, does not imply for either Philosopher that there is a divine agency operating behind the scenes. Both Aristotle and Kant would conceive of the divine in terms of thought rather than physical agency. For both, epistemé is a more important aspect of Being than techné. For Aristotle the human transmission of four different kinds of forms in the world require different kinds of powers, powers relating to techné, epistemé and phronesis. In the building of a house(techné), for example, epistemé is not as centrally involved as it might be in the situation where the teacher is transmitting epistemic forms and “forming” the minds of his pupils. In the situation of a man educating himself in a library to become a citizen of the world and exercise judgment on the laws of his land and other lands(phronesis), the idea of using epistemé for the purposes of the common good is involved. There is also a difference between the goods for the body (the physiological needs and safety needs met by living in a house) and the goods for the soul(the cognitive, ethical and aesthetic needs met by education).
The final form that is culturally transmitted is the simplest, residing as it does in the zone of sexuality at the confluence of of bodily processes and psychologial states, namely the reproduction of the species and the mimesis of ourselves(requiring the power of Eros). Aristotle points importantly to the different parts or powers of the mind involved in, for example, calculating the means to ends(building a house, having children) or the acquisition of knowledge(an end in itself) through the processes of teaching and learning. There is also an implied difference in the type of potentiality involved in these different kinds of forms, e.g. the difference between the capacity to build a house and the disposition to exercise ones knowledge in epistemic judgments. A disposition in Aristotle appears to be a higher order capacity. Areté is involved in the actualisation of all of these transmitted forms. Epistemé and phronesis involve of course the transmission of not just ideas but principles governing these ideas. But Hylomorphism although seeking to understand the independence and self sufficiency of the dispositions of a rational mind, also recognises the important relation such powers have to the capacities and powers of a body (that is the physical and material substrate of these mental dispositions). Techné obviously involves the use of the capacities of the body and the calculative disposition of the mind that is thinking in terms of means and ends(in terms of an ought system of instrumental judgments/imperatives). The principle of prudence is involved in the calculations of the builder steering all activity toward the teleological idea of the house that is to be built. Such activity does not have the deontological character of activities connected to phronesis: the activities of a Phronimos are rather directed toward souls and wills that are ends-in-themselves. There is, for Aristotle, a clear distinction between activity directed toward teleological materialistic objects of our desire for safety and comfort, and activity that is involved with both epistemé and phronesis. Areté applies at the level of capacities(skills) and dispositions. Insofar as it is involved in the sphere of mental dispositions areté manifests itself as “virtue”, a deontological feature that applies both to the activity(virtuous action) and the agent(virtuous man) in accordance with the Aristotelian conception of the same principle that is embodied in the action as a part of the mental disposition of the agent. The kind of thinking involved here is not materialistic and connected to a physical object but is rather reflective and contemplative and occurs in the medium of concepts.
What we see emerging from the above account is firstly, a continuum of capacities and powers of psuche, and secondly, a hierarchy of forms of life leading from the instinctive primal activity of reproduction to the great-souled activities of the Phronimos that care about the state of his body, his soul, other bodies , other souls, and the laws and justice of his city. It is interesting to note that the Phronimos or statesman is not a feature of Kantian Philosophy and there may be a number of explanations for this fact. Firstly Kant lived in an era long after the collapse of city states and in an age when it was becoming clear that the principle of the sovereignty of nation-states proclaimed in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia was not the peace-making principle it hoped to be. Indeed in Kant’s eyes the sovereignty of states did not regulate sufficiently the antagonistic nature of man which was seeking new manifestations with every century that passed. This view of mans aggression was the Kantian answer to the Kantian question “What is man?” and it ought to have prevented anyone from dubbing Kantian Philosophy as idealistic. The proposal of the formation of a United Nations to regulate the antagonism of states toward each other might have seemed idealistic at the time, but to us who have benefitted from the activities of this Kantian organisation he has also answered another Kantian question “What can we hope for?” with a form of critical realism worthy of the insight of any Phronimos in History. For Kant, rationality was an Aristotelian potentiality that would require an actualisation process lasting one hundred thousand years. For both Philosophers it was a deontological duty for every individual to strive to actualise one’s rational powers in all its theoretical, practical, and productive forms. Kant’s vision of the telos of the activity of the United Nation’s activities included the means by which rationality would be “produced” in the human species, namely the redirection of the expenditure of resources spent on war(an antagonistic aggressive activity) toward education(a rational activity). The Enlightenment as such was not politically enlightened until Kant appeared on the scene to formulate a philosophically based criticism of political authority and institutions that were tending toward a installing a frightening authoritarianism that revered the idea of another military empire like Rome. Kant’s emphasis on rationality focused on the rational capacities and powers needed to accomplish the progress that needed to be made, but it also acknowledged that although progress depended on man believing that he ought to be rational, he, in fact, was not rational. Man is only potentially rational and this is why the moral law needs to take an imperative form. What was also required was the transmission of knowledge and principles in a peaceful environment that prized the examined or contemplative life (which for him included the scientific form of life that would bring with its unknown benefits). It is not clear that Kant was aware of the dangers of domination of our intellectual life by a technical spirit that “calculated” means rather than examining the values of ends.
This technical scientific spirit has systematically denied the importance of teleology in the name of the so called “mechanical” causes of life in spite of the following argumentation by Kant:
“It is, I mean, quite certain that we can never get a sufficient knowledge of organised beings and their inner possibility much less get an explanation of them, by looking merely to mechanical principles of nature. Indeed, so certain is it, that we may confidently assert that it is absurd for men even to entertain any thought of so doing to hope that maybe another Newton may some day arise, to make intelligible to us even the genesis of but a blade of grass from natural laws that no design has ordered. Such insight we must absolutely deny to mankind.”(C of TJ P.54)
This is an argument for the necessary involvement of teleological explanation in all contexts of explanation/justification. The refusal of both Philosophers(Aristotle and Kant) to countenance a designer is also related to the above quote. Aristotle might however have been surprised to learn that modern science and its knowledge of the sequencing of the human genome is claiming to be on the verge of creating synthetic life: a synthetic cell in a test tube. Scientists currently say that this “discovery” is about one decade away.If this is true, then the Aristotelian objection to the mechanical causation of a designer might be otiose as would be the above argument by Kant. Perhaps it also should be said that this argument was also heard in the 1960’s. It is, however not clear that even if this “discovery” does occur that we can thereby dispense with reflecting upon the teleological and formal actualisation process that brings about the various ends of different forms of life. Imitating the material but not the efficient cause(reproduction) that brings about these ends that we use to characterise the activity of a life form is certainly something that can occur in the context of discovery but it cannot be a complete substitute for the essence defining explanations and justifications we encounter in this very different context. Kant may very well be correct, then, even if this feat of genetic engineering does occur. What Kant may be outlining here is the boundary of techné and the relative independence of theoretical reasoning and its end, (knowledge(epistemé)) from instrumental practical reasoning. These two different types of reasoning were distinguished in Kant as different regions of firstly, the metaphysics of nature, and secondly, the metaphysics of morals. In spite of the differences between these two regions the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason regulate both regions. The metaphysics of nature involved the synthetic construction of concepts (by definitions) which also construct the object that was defined. This was clearly a different activity to the activity of Philosophy which used both general and formal logic to analyse concepts of everyday discourse. This in turn is consistent with Kant’s claim that the scientist should not become a student of nature but rather an active judge that formulates the questions that nature should provide answers to. This is also the condition necessary for understanding natural phenomena and it is this aspect of science that Kant partly has in mind in the above quote relating to the teleological judgment and the origins and constitution of a blade of grass. The division between Philosophy and Science in its turn is consistent with a major distinction in Kant between the investigation of phenomena that is constructed in abstracto (via concepts and principles) and the knowledge of reality in itself that Philosophy has historically sought to provide. The Metaphysics of Nature appeared to require general and formal logic but also Transcendental Logic which is the instrument that Thought uses to “construct” the objects of Science. Logic, for Kant, also had its own architectonic with both analytical and synthetic components. Analytically, the task of logic was to be clear about the concepts of everyday discourse, i.e. it seeks to prevent the confusion of one concept with another. Science however also has the synthetic task of making concepts distinct through an expansive investigation into the scope of the concept through articulating its characteristics( in the context of exploration). The analytic stage succeeds the synthetic stage and the context of explanation/justification requires a definition which clarifies the scope and limitations of the concepts: Kant calls this moment the exposition of the concept. In this process characteristics are selected that Aristotle would describe as essence-specifying. In this process of exploration, Kant in his work on Logic suggests that those concepts which are given empirically, challenge the investigator to gather the characteristics of the concept without any prior rule or measure. It is this context of exploration/discovery that will then provide the material for a more formal exposition in accordance with rules and this in turn will lead to a higher stage of the context of explanation/justification–a stage Kant calls definition. Now one can raise a question about whether the characterisation of man as a rational animal capable of discourse, is an exposition, or a definition. The claim that it is a definition is supported by the fact that all three characteristics would appear to be essence specifying. Arendt might not agree with this because she focuses on the components of animality and discourse, choosing to dismiss rationality on the grounds that it is as a matter of fact not a part of mans essence(mans existence both precedes essence and is a far more important characteristic for her). As a matter of fact this may be correct because rationality in man is identified by both Aristotle and Kant as a potentiality all men strive to actualise. So, we are dealing clearly here with a teleological explanation which both Aristotle and Kant claim is essence specifying. Existentialists and phenomenologists are concrete philosophers, they want to remain on the rough field of the facts and nothing but the facts. They refuse to make the journey either from, or to, the context of explanation in the way laid out by both Aristotle and Kant. The journey begins with an ascent from the focus on description in the context of exploration/discovery to the focus on exposition and essence specifying definitions where thought here formulates rules assisted by the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. The descriptive level will seek to formulate true judgments about what is investigated without presupposing any concept of the thing. These judgments will be complete and they will not analytically imply each other. “Methods” are obviously associated with both of the above contexts. The synthetic method moves from the simple experience to the complex conceptualisation and is associated with the context of exploration/discovery. Mathematics is for Kant synthetic and is important in scientific investigation because it begins with a simple intuition of a figure, or a simple such as a part, and ends with the constitution of a principle or a definition(e.g. a straight line is the shortest distance between two points).The analytical method, on the other hand, proceeds from the complex essence specifying definition (rational animal capable of discourse) to the simple intuition of an individual exemplar, and this method best illustrates what is occurring in the context of explanation/justification. In Mathematics, Kant argues, the concept is never given before the definition is constructed. In Philosophy, on the other hand, we begin at the conceptual level of man and analyse it using the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. When this process is completed clarity and distinctness is thereby achieved. Both Reason and understanding are involved in the philosophical context of explanation/justification. Concepts are actualised and made distinct by the judgments issuing from the understanding but are made complete and clarified by reason (including the logic of syllogisms). Judgments of the understanding are immediately related to intuitions and Judgments of reason are mediated judgments. Insofar as we are dealing with the unity of completeness and distinctness, reason and understanding are unified in the power of judgment. For Kant the “I think” is the “I judge”, because it is in virtue of judging that concepts emerge that abstract a unity from the plurality of representations. The act of understanding is the act of judging and this act involves apperception. In subject-predicate judgment something is determined(represented) and then something is determined in relation to that determination, i.e. a judgments is a complex representation of a representation. In this process of relating judgments to each other, one ascends to the stages of either exposition or definition, or even higher to that of scientific demonstration where principles form the major premises of arguments.
Synthetic a priori judgments are the basis of Kantian metaphysics and these judgments function like principles. They are principles of Transcendental Logic that construct the objects they are about. Kant is often characterised as fully committed to Newtons work “The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” but this commitment is also critical and Kant points to a confusion in Newton between Mathematics and Philosophy. These activities were fundamentally different kinds of activity and should not be conflated. Newton claims that in both Science and Mathematics there is an epistemogenic context of discovery which is the route from the complex to the simple. In Modern Science the “analytic” method is fundamentally inductive and requires what we do not find in Newton’s more “philosophical approach”, namely observation and experimentation(although it can be argued these are implied) are not prominent. The inductive method takes us from observed effects to their causes, e.g. from motion to causal forces. The transition from the context of exploration/discovery to the context of explanation/justification is well illustrated by the Science of optics which was founded by a context of investigation that gave rise to the intellectual intuition that light travels in straight lines. This example compared to the philosophical investigation of man being the rational animal capable of discourse obviously points to the difference between a Philosophical context of exploration and a Scientific one.
Natural Science is, according to Kant founded upon synthetic a priori principles or judgments. These are Transcendental Judgments whose function it is to construct the objects that they study. Unlike mathematical judgments the necessity involved in transcendental natural judgment attaches to the existence of that part of reality that is being studied. Transcendental Philosophy, that is, is composed of both elements and a method–the elements are a priori forms of intuition, the categories of judgment and ideas of reason. The method recommends using the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason and avoiding the mathematicisation of logic, or dogmatic speculations over ideas of pure reason. The method also recommends founding the ideas of God and the Soul upon the foundation of Freedom and Rationality. Here we encounter two important aspects of critical Philosophy: the refusal to participate in the construction or maintenance of towers of Babel that soar metaphysically up to the heavens, and the recommendation to begin building metaphysics on the solid foundations of a critical system that encourages the search for the totality of conditions necessary for thought about reality. In this search the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason obviously play central roles. In this process the limitations of reason are respected and delineated. Kant claims in the context of this discussion that things can be conceptualised as phenomena because they fall within the scope of the requirement, “the possibility of experience”. Things, in themselves, however, cannot be conceptualised but they can be “thought without contradiction”. This obviously places the principle of noncontradiction in focus, leaving the principle of sufficient reason hanging in the background. Kant claims this realm of things in themselves or the realm of noumena to be the true foundation of the world of phenomena at the same time as claiming that the principle of noncontradiction is a regulative and not a constitutive principle. In the context of the discussion relating to Arendt and existence preceding essence we can see here that for Kant too there is a sense in which the existence of things-in-themselves takes priority over the conceptualisation of essences in the sphere of investigation of Nature. Given the importance of the sensory access we have to what we experience there appears to be a natural barrier to understanding which may not be so obstructive when we are dealing with the motor world of action and the way in which action brings about the changes in reality that we desire. Teleological explanation in this context of action has , then, a greater role in the determination of a reality we are literally bringing about by acting. The cause that brings this about is, then, a noumenal self that we, according to Kant, have a greater understanding of. Practical reasoning therefore actually permits the formulation of a moral law that is a full and complete answer to the question “What ought I to do?” Arendt denies this because it cannot demonstrated that this moral law as a matter of fact is obeyed. This misunderstands the logical form of the synthetic apriori judgments involved in moral contexts of explanation/justification in which “ought judgments” claim for example that “Promises ought to be kept”. The world for Kant is certainly a much more complex place than is exhibited in the claim that “the world is the totality of facts”(Early Wittgenstein). For Kant, this is a world in which action is real, and which plays an important part in bringing about the states of affairs we strive for and desire. It is a world of potentialities actualising and powers integrating with and building upon powers. The realm of the noumenon can be accessed and practically understood via the rational idea of freedom. Here thought opens out onto a super-sensuous domain of super-sensuous causality(awareness and understanding of the power of ones agency) that is not divine but essentially human. On this account, then, our understanding of the categorical imperative–of what we ought to do–is understanding par excellence, superseding even the Newtonian laws of phenomenal nature(Making Kant the Newton of the moral universe). We can also appreciate in the context of this discussion the fundamental relevance of the normative laws of logic that are concerned with the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason in both theoretical and practical contexts of explanation/justification. The concern with how we ought to think and with how we ought to act are clearly related concerns which are only incidentally in their turn related to the facts of how people behave–e.g. not keeping promises, contradicting themselves in their discourse. The actual occurrence of people keeping promises(in the context of exploration where we are searching for a moral principle) may be a necessary condition of the claim that we ought to keep promises but it is not in itself a sufficient or constitutive condition.
The above appeals to theoretical and practical reasoning are systematically rejected by Existentialists and Phenomenologists to varying degrees. They favour a mystical attempt to describe existence or phenomena of existence in accordance with ideas or concepts that are rooted in a context of exploration/discovery. Both Aristotle and Kant would not have accepted such a conflation of the context of exploration/discovery with the context of explanation/justification. We are not maintaining that Aristotle and Kant adopted identical positions. Kant clearly improved upon the Aristotelian idea of categories of existence with his categories of judgment, partly motivated by his conviction that existence per se was theoretically unkowable. This then becomes a stronger argument against existential/phenomenological positions.
Arendt adopts an interesting position in the spirit of exploration when she reflects upon thinking in the context of a dialectical opposition between the Vita Contemplativa and the Vita Activa. Here she invokes the theory of Marx which claims that Praxis is not what man thinks but solely concerned with what man does. For Marx techné is the rule and principle of action. Epistemé, phronesis and almost the entire rational apparatus of Contemplation of both Aristotle and Kant is simply dismantled. Arendt does refer to contemplation and thought but it almost always occurs in a solipsistic situation far from the madding crowd, or alternatively, in a situation in which there is discourse in a public space(as a matter of fact). Sometimes we hear the lonely music of Descartes and sometimes a Hegelian “spirited”rhapsody. The appeals to Socrates are often not in the categorical/rational mode of Aristotelian or Kantian philosophy, but rather in the particularistic mode of factual discourse. Arendt, that is, seems concerned about the “phenomenon” of Socrates.
In her work “The Life of the Mind” Arendt asks the question:”What are we doing when we think?” and constructs the scenery for the stage of her reflections when she says the following:
“Obviously to raise such questions has its difficulties. At first glance they seem to belong to what used to be called “philosophy” or “metaphysics”, two terms and two fields of inquiry that, as we all know, have fallen into disrepute.”(P.8)
Here we can clearly suspect the public space of this discourse to be that which has been created by modernism or post modernism. She goes on to confirm our suspicions by referring to Hegel, Carnap, and the Early Wittgenstein–an unholy trinity of modern thinkers, if there ever was one. She points to Hegel in support of the thesis “God is dead”. She also evokes the Kantian distinction between the world of appearances and a super-sensory realm, citing another member of the club of “new men”, Nietzsche, and his claim that once the former realm is eliminated, the latter disappears with it, because the two worlds are inseparably connected. She uses the following words:
“no matter whether the “true world” abolishes the apparent one or vice versa, the whole framework of our reference in which our thinking was accustomed to orient itself breaks down.”(P.11)
The influence of Heidegger is evident in these reflections. She elaborates upon her position by invoking the Kantian claim in the name of reason that Knowledge had to be denied to make room for faith. In Arendt’s view the significance of this remark was to make room for thought in a form that relates to Heidegger’s question of the meaning of Being. Kant, according to Arendt, never paid much attention to thinking: a puzzling remark to say the very least. The “I think” for Kant, firstly, occurred at the level of apperception, secondly it occurs in categorical forms of thought( at the level of understanding). Thirdly, it occurs in logical thought at the level of reasoning. The “I think” is not that of the Cartesian solipsist meditating far way from the madding crowd and able to miraculously think away his body. The appeal to modernistic “rumours” that both Philosophy and metaphysics have fallen into disrepute is hardly a sufficient argument to “dismantle” both Aristotelian and Kantian Philosophy. Kantian Philosophy was itself an attempt to neutralise the thoughts of the “new men” of his time, Descartes and Hobbes, who both staked their reputations on calling Aristotelian Philosophy into disrepute. Calling on the assistance of Hegel and Carnap in this context provides no support for the “new positions” these “new men” were seeking to establish. The “telos” or destination of these reflections is the description of a form of existence which Arendt calls “self-display”–a form of existence manifested best by ” a glance, a sound, a gesture”(P.31). These are the activities that for Arendt best reveal the “Life of the Mind”. Mere speech or discourse, cannot, it is maintained “show itself” in the way a gesture of anger can. These “displays” or “expressions” demand a spectator to “recognise” them. This spectator-recognition is then necessary for what Arendt refers to as self recognition. Only the spectator, Arendt argues, knows and understands the spectacle of what appears in our perceptual contact with the world. This reference to the spectator is an aesthetic reference. On the stage the role of the actor is known by the actor but this role is only a part of the whole. It does not escape the attention of Arendt that the performance of the actor is not an autonomous event but its evaluation is dependent upon the doxa(opinion) or level of appreciation of the spectators or audience. The spectator is the aesthetic equivalent of the philosopher who claims to know and understand the cosmos. This is meant to be a critical reflection on bios theoretikos, but the question is whether the context of an imaginative construction of a play is a sufficient indicator of the argument she is searching for. The actor and the spectator are clearly playing their respective technical roles in the sphere of the hypothetical challenge to “Imagine a King of England”(Richard II). It is not immediately clear that bios techné and bios theoretikos are similarly constituted given the fact that in the latter we are dealing with categorical judgments and principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason and in the former we are using what Aristotle referred to as the instrumental calculative part of the mind. For Aristotle, and for Kant, Metaphysical and Epistemological principles are going to be significantly different to the principles of the productive sciences that regulate the hypothetical pleasures and pains of the spectator coming to the theatre for a “good show”. The speeches of the characters on the stage are clearly not evaluated for their argumentative content or the categorical soundness of their arguments but rather in terms of the pleasures and pains associated with the concrete, particular action and thought of the characters. We are clearly dealing insofar as Kant is concerned with aesthetic judgment where the form of finality of the object at best motivates speaking with a universal voice about the object because the faculties of the imagination and understanding are in a harmonious relation. These forms of judgment are subjective for Kant. Shakespearean actors give speeches that are expressions of tragic and heroic minds in the arena of the theatre in which the pendulum of pleasure-pain swings from the tragic, to relief from the pain of the tragic. Arendt characterises bios theoretikos as a withdrawing from life which is in stark contrast to the position of Aristotle where it is maintained that the Contemplative life is the highest form of life. Arendt, however means to apply the spectator model far beyond the confines of the theatre. The spectator, she claims is the only thinker who can deliver the final verdict on ,for example, the French Revolution as if the this spectator dwelling in his public space could have anticipated the Napoleonic troops perusing the burial site of Kant soon after his death in Königsberg.Kant is reported (in relation to the occurrence of the French Revolution) to have voiced enthusiasm over the appearance of freedom on the world political stage . It is probably true that he would have also seen in this phenomenon an expression of Greek areté in the face of oligarchic corruption. It is not clear however how he would have responded to the atrocious aftermath of the Revolution and the aftermath of the aftermath, namely, the ascent of Napoleon, the Empire builder, and warmonger, (given Kant’s views on the pointlessness and meaninglessness of war). Arendt translates the greek term “Logos” as meaning, thus connecting it to the “capable of discourse” segment of Aristotle’s definition of man. “Logos” in many contexts for Aristotle is translated as “account”, which obviously connects it to the ” rational” segment of the definition and places it clearly and distinctly in the context of explanation/justification. Of course Aristotle would have agreed that language and its meaning are among the necessary(but not sufficient) conditions of a rational account(logos) of any phenomenon of the world. Indeed the full and complete definition of man(rational animal capable of discourse) would be an account that for Aristotle would incorporate both the necessary and sufficient conditions necessary for a man to be a man–a human psuche. Contrary to the opinion of Professor Brett from volume one, the definition rational animal capable of discourse, contains reference to many principles of “causality” at different levels of actuality. Jonathan Lear in his work on Aristotle, gives us an interesting account(logos) of these different levels. Beginning at the level of animal perception, the sensible form of a tree is a first level actuality which has the potential of being perceived by all forms of animal psuche(including the human). The actual perceiving of the tree is a higher level actuality. What differentiates the human form of psuche from other animal forms involves of course the powers of language and rationality insofar as these powers are involved in the generation of knowledge(epistemé) and moral judgment(phronesis). The young human psuche before it begins actualising the use of this potential power of language is capable of perceiving a tree. When this human form begins to use language it actualises a higher level potentiality, i.e. the actual use of language is a higher level actuality than the perception of a tree. It might conceivably, that is, in perceiving the tree, point to the tree, and say “Tree!”. According to Kant this human form of psuche is not yet at the level of actualising the higher level potentiality of thought until it spontaneously uses the word “I”. This according to Kant is when a new form of awareness dawns upon the child(one and a half to two years old). A form of understanding has been instituted that is not the third person form of thought of the spectator that Arendt believes to be so important. This first person form of thought is a condition of thinking conceptually and forming veritative judgments that are universal and form the foundation for the first level of the context of explanation/justification. In this context the answer to the question “Why?” will be “Because it is true”. This is a higher level of actuality and is an actualisation of the potentiality or principle that resides in the “I think”. Residing in this higher level of actuality is a potentiality of relating judgments to each other syllogistically. At this level of actuality resides the potentiality for making and understanding scientific demonstrations where the major premise is a synthetic a priori judgment or principle.A further higher level potentiality emerges at this level: a potentiality for constructing an architectonic of the sciences. This progression of forms actualising themselves occurs when a principle actualises itself and becomes the platform for the foundation of a higher level principle. Applying this formula to living organisms of all kinds we can begin at the level of sensibility and the energy regulation principle that regulates the organs and limbs of all animals. This can be used and expressed by a higher power of sensibility, namely the imagination which also operates according to the pleasure-pain principle(the lower form of thought in the human psuche). If the imagination, as Kant outlines in his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment works with representations that are suitable for conceptualisation, the understanding harmonises with the faculty of sensibility. If the “I think” organises the manifold of representations, the understanding then works to produce truth functional judgments(judgments in accordance with the categories). This level can be designated as the Reality Principle. These judgments of the understanding can then be used by the higher power of reasoning and its principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason at a higher level of the context of explanation/justification.
The above is the Aristotelian/Kantian Logos of the context of explanation/justification that Arendt sometimes ignores and sometimes denies. Arendt characterises the level of language as providing us with Logos or meaning. Arendt rightly argues that not all combinations of the meanings of words are truth functional combinations. She points to the example of prayer which she calls a Logos that is neither true nor false. If the prayer being referred to is in confessional form, e.g. “I am not worthy of your love” or transactional form “Make me worthy of your love” there is a presupposition of a principle-like ought premise of the form “One ought to be worthy of God’s love”. This is a thorny area of discussion but it is not clear that this is only an exercise in meaning or linguistic phenomenology, and that rationality and reasoning is not involved. Perhaps what is needed to resolve this problem is the later Wittgenstein’s notion of meaning as use and his notion of language being a question of following rules. Perhaps these notions might generate the logos Arendt is looking for. One can find traces of the importance of third person spectator-language in the Wittgensteinian idea of a world-view but we also find a commitment to Logic(the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason) embedded in his account of language games and their relation to forms of life. We need to remember in the context of this discussion that Wittgenstein was philosophically trained in an anti-Hegelian analytical environment which largely ignored Kantian Philosophy. For Wittgenstein, however the meaning of an expression is not confined to the third person judgment of a spectator. First person usages are equally a part of the meaning of terms relating to the expressions of sensation in contexts of sensibility, e.g. “I am in pain”. “Being capable of discourse”, that is, includes the mastery of first person language. It is not clear, however, that Wittgenstein would agree with Arendt’s reference to a spectator in an aesthetic context as the final judge in the court of objectivity(given his commitment to logic and his anti-Hegelian training). Both Plato and Aristotle understood that theatre is a forum in which life is imitated for specific technical purposes. The dramatic oscillations of emotions between the tragedy of Richard II and the welcome relief from that tragedy which the figure of Bolingbroke represents, is certainly not what Aristotle, for example conceived of, when he recommended we lead the contemplative life. One can, however imagine a philosophical spectator in the audience of a Shakespeare play being less interested in its drama than in what the play has to say about the rationality of the human psuche: what for example the sight of Richard II weeping for the death of Kings actually means for the inhabitants of the modern world. Here Shakespeare’s theatre is oracular, not saying what it means directly but enigmatically hinting at its meaning, showing it. Even if we are dealing with the imitation of life it appears that something essential is being said about the conditions of existence for the human psuche.
Sartre, the existentialist, we know has his hero Roquentin experience nausea at the thought of existence. Arendt in her turn speculates on whether the turning away from the experiences of awe and wonder in the face of the world toward negation and nothingness does not signify the end of Philosophy(Life of the Mind, P.148).
Arendt also discusses the Roman response to Greek awe and wonder and the Roman response to the Greek self sufficient Phronimos. She quotes the view that the political writings of Plato and Aristotle were addressed to the inhabitants of a lunatic asylum standing on the trembling foundations of the Greek city-states. This view was also expressed by Hegel(influenced by the Roman experience) who saw the ancient world as an arena of activity for mad men who could not understand that the History of the World after the decline of Rome would not be a play performed in the theatre of happiness. The Romans were of course critical to the point of disrespectful at the fact that the concept of the city-state was a failed project. The only answer to the dilemmas of civilisation, in their view, was a military Empire guarded by Janus, that impossible figure with two faces and four eyes. The imperative of the military commander of Res Publica might be, on Arendt’s account, the voice of the actor that does not speak of, or in accordance with, theoretical principles. For him areté means winning the next battle, and right and justice are instrumentally oriented toward might and power rather than Phronesis. Bolingbroke is the next English hero and King because he defeated Richard II in battle. He of course did not aspire to being Emperor of the world.
How was it possible for thinking in all its philosophical forms to be deposed? Arendt argues that we now live in the imitative world of appearances, and thinking is merely the activity of making present what is absent. This “march of change” involves a move from an understanding based reflection to an emotionally based imagination that no longer has the cognitive resources to imagine the best of all possible worlds but rather is limited a solipsistic search for what is not present:
“Whether what effects you is mere illusion depends on your decision whether or not you will recognise it as real.”(P.155)
Arendt returns to the example of Socrates and the theme of the Socratic imperative that it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. Arendt suggests that thinking is discoursing with oneself which in its turn suggests the presence of two agencies in the soul. It is not clear in this account whether or not one of these agencies is the famous “daimon” of Socrates that was consulted in an almost hypnotic state. The nature of this consultation with his daimon did not seem to be a straightforward form of discourse because Socrates talked of waiting for a “sign” from this source. This rather reminds one of oracles of the time “Indicating” what they meant rather than saying it directly. Daimon in Greek means spirit and areté was one of the tasks of this spirit. It is difficult to imagine that this spirit’s “thinking” was merely a case of imagining something that was not present. For the Socratic daimon, murder was undoubtedly wrong or evil because of the Socratic knowledge of the soul which claims that one becomes what one does. If one does geometry one becomes a geometer. If one murders someone one becomes a murderer, a man who violates the principle of practical noncontradiction by using ones form of life to take a life. Given the obvious fact that it was contradiction that stood in the way of leading an examined life, becoming a murderer would mean living with a contradiction, something Socrates was clearly not prepared to do. Does this reported experience mean that Socrates subscribed to the theory of parts of the soul? If so, with his daimon, we are probably not dealing with the humanly rational part of the soul because that would not need to give signs but rather produce demonstrations in the form of elenchus: demonstrations that presumably would be able immediately to say what is wrong and why. Plato’s theory of the good would fall into the realm of that philosophical thinking that Arendt had declared disreputable as would the Aristotelian theory of virtue presumably because it was vitally connected to his metaphysics. She does appear to be prepared to accept Socratic discourse as an example of thinking perhaps because it can be construed in Hegelian fashion as a form of spirited thinking viewed in terms of judgment, judging particulars, but it is not clear exactly how she conceives of this faculty of judging. If, for example, Socrates believes universally that murder ought not to be committed and someone proposed to him a particular action namely that he murder Miletus(one of his accusers) then presumably in this context of justification no daimon would be needed to assist Socrates to conclude that he ought not to murder Miletus. If this is the case why was Socrates consulting his daimon in relation to his upcoming trial? It was probably because here was a particular for which he had no universal belief. Should he for example in his speech of defence admit to the charge of introducing the new God of Philosophy into the Athenian agora? He might also have been pondering whether to take the opportunity to escape from prison after the trial as many before him had done but this is less likely because he almost certainly believed universally that the law of the city ought to be honoured (however it was abused by its citizens). Here we have a case in which two determinant judgments capable of demonstration in a context of explanation/justification and one reflective judgment where a universal had to be found for a particular action. A case in which Socrates was wondering whether or not to admit openly what was being done(Introducing the child of the Gods–Philosophy into the agora). Here Socrates found himself in the context of discovery and this might have required the help of his daimon.
The following question arises: if elenchus, Platonic theory, and Aristotelian metaphysics have all fallen into disrepute how are we to characterise thinking and by what means will thinking proceed? Can Hegelian dialectical logic, a logic that appears to be an inductive means of argumentation embedded in the context of exploration/discovery be an adequate substitute for Socratic, Platonic, Aristotelian, and Kantian rational explanation/justification? We are nowhere given a direct argument for why these forms of reasoning have been brought into disrepute but there is an anecdotal hint at a possible reason for Arendt’s skepticism in the face of Kantian Philosophy, for example. In the trial of Eichmann, the defendant is reputed to have claimed that he weighed all his actions in the light of the Kantian Categorical Imperative. Reporting this moment is one thing, but taking it to be representative of the inadequacy of Kant’s moral Philosophy is quite another. This “confession”occurred in Arendt’s “public space” but all manner of doxa and rumours circulate in this space and this is exactly why Socrates took Philosophy into the agora and why Kant would have regarded the trial of Eichmann and his defense in the public space as yet another moment of the melancholic haphazardness of everyday life. The above judgment by Arendt to accord this moment serious consideration was only made possible by a long history of skepticism and dogmatism in which imagination, the emotions, and the recognition of such particulars as a gesture, a sound or a frown, have succeeded in dismantling the apparatus of rationality. In the absence of the the principle of sufficient reason and noncontradiction, literally any universal can be found for these “particulars”, because the imagination freed of its ties to the understanding and reason is absolutely free to “judge” in whatever way it pleases, especially when the concerns of rationality are abandoned in favour of the bodily bipolarity of pleasures and pains. It is as Kant claims in his Third Critique:
“that subjective side of a representation which is incapable of becoming an element of cognition is the pleasure or displeasure connected with it”(P29)
Pleasure and displeasure are principles of the emotions that manifest themselves in action, in accordance with the formula proposed by Spinoza, namely that pleasure increases the momentum of ones existence or form of life and displeasure decreases this momentum. It is also a principle that is partially adjusted to the animal conditions of life: the desire to be and the effort to exist.
Arendt, then claims that the faculty of judging particulars is not “the same as the faculty of thinking”, because it dos not deal with representations of things that are present: on her account representation only occurs in the absence of things. On this definition of thinking, thinking and the sensation of being alive(presumably one of the central features of the life of the mind) are separate matters, Thinking she maintains, interrupts ordinary life activities(P197). According to Kant, thinking conceptually abstracts from the particularity of the manifold or representations they are related to, and in this case thinking universally is only indirectly related to representations that are in turn directly related to the particular. Arendt describes this state of affairs controversially, claiming that the gravity of such thought is “homeless” and located in no particular place. It is this, she further argues, that is at the root of what she calls a “cosmopolitan spirit among the philosophers”. This is a deep and interesting claim since, whether Arendt believes it or not, it is thought in the form of understanding and reason that gives rise to the idea that the principle of life has universal and necessary characteristics. Arendt clearly believes that bios politikos and bios theoretikos are incompatible forms of life. Aristotle would not have accepted this characterisation. For him the contemplative life was not detached from a political life because the political life was also led in the spirit of areté. Such a life is not merely doing the right thing in the right way at the right time but also making the right judgments at the right time, part of which involves not doing anything involving a practical contradiction such as murdering ones opponent, lying to the people etc. Here, the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason are being used and they are as much a part of bios theoretikos as they are a part of bios politikos. Bios politikos also will contain situations where determinant judgments (where the universals are known) will not suffice to make decisions about what ought to be done or what judgments ought to be made: i.e. there will be contexts of discovery that require the use of reflective judgments and perhaps some form of dialectical logic involving the negation of what one believes to be the case will be involved in these contexts. This form of logic, however, cannot be used in contexts of explanation/justification where exposition, definition, and demonstration may be required.
The image of Janus is incontrovertibly Roman: a monster God with two faces and four eyes. The most charitable interpretation of this guarder of gateways is to conceive of one pair of the eyes as being turned toward the past and one pair toward the future. Janus is not in any sense Greek because they would not have represented time as having a beginning. The Greek idea of time was that of a continuum without beginning or end. It is man that introduces a linear conception into the continuum: a continuum that is best represented by a clock face where the hands of the clock tick forever forward and forever around the circular face. Arendt, and many phenomenologists before her, wish to disturb the unity of this vision by dividing the whole of time into the parts of the past, present, and future. Dialectical logic, of course, is used to define the relation of these parts to each other: the present is not past, and not the future, etc.,etc. Somehow the continuity of our lives seamlessly integrates these “aspects”. It is not thought, however, according to Arendt, that is behind the integration, but rather the sensation of life itself(which is part of the life of the mind). Thinking, she maintains, interrupts and disturbs this continuous activity.Arendt believes that when one thinks, one ceases to participate in life and one becomes instead a spectator or a judge. Of course language has past, present, and future tenses but all this registers is the fact that we talk about what has happened, is happening and about what will or might happen. This does not however entail any antagonism between these ways of thinking. I can also speak of thinking in the past, in the present and in the future. If the thinking of the future takes the form of understanding or reasoning about what one ought to do(murder Miletus or not) it appears arbitrary to claim that this form of life is fundamentally different from the kind of thinking that controls the building of a house. In the one case moral forms are being used ,and in the other technical forms are being transmitted in the activity.
The reasoning Arendt has been using has been leading to a climactic moment in the work when confession becomes the most appropriate means to continue the narrative:
“I have clearly joined the ranks of those who for some time now have been attempting to dismantle Metaphysics, and philosophy with all its categories, as we have known them from their beginning in Greece until today. Such dismantling is possible only on the assumption that the thread of tradition is broken and we shall not be able to renew it. Historically what actually has broken down is the Roman trinity that for thousands of years united religion, authority and tradition.”(P.212)
It is the contention of this work that the thread has been strained but not broken in spite of the Roman attempt to to do just this. Here we can imagine the nervous Janus poised at the gateway to Rome keeping his anxious eyes on the advancing thread. Kant rationally postulated this thread as leading to a Kingdom of Ends one hundred thousand years in the future, i.e. one hundred thousand thread years away. Philosophy moved to the Universities during Kant’s time and it is that universal institution that will determine whether we are dealing with a thread of Ariadne’s or a thread that will be woven into some larger cluster, losing its identity altogether in future civilisations. The fate of Philosophy and metaphysics has not, (despite Arendt’s premature judgment) , been decided yet.
What the Romans Romanised was Greek Philosophy and a part of this larger cultural process involved the Latinisation of the translations of Greek texts as well as the translations of texts in other languages. Janus presided over the idea of a military maintained Empire to replace the cosmopolitan thinking of the Greeks. Greek Cosmopolitanism left space for religion and politics under the umbrella of a metaphysics of nature and a metaphysics of morals. Roman militarism was anxiously designed, anxiously maintained, and would disappear in a cloud of anxiety not with a bang but with a whimper. Kant did not completely restore the damage the Romans had done, but restored the thread of telos sufficiently for it to continue on its journey, finding a home for it in the Universities. The Greek spirit may not have been restored but it still survives in some form or other in our Universities. We know that a year after Kant’s death, Napoleon’s soldiers were surveying his grave in Königsberg with, one can imagine, the nervous eyes of Janus. The free good will of Kant was again being overshadowed by a modern will to power added to an ancient Roman Spirit. Arendt correctly characterises this will to power as a coup d´etat in the mind.
Arendt claims in her investigations into the “Life of the Mind”, to have discovered a new faculty–the very modern faculty of consciousness. This discovery appears to have coincided with the discovery of an inner theatre of mind. She quotes in this context the dramatic dialectical inner struggle of St Paul:
“I do not do what I want but I do the very thing I hate.”
claiming that it is in these moments that the will was discovered. The above, for the Kantian spectator, would be an example of a will out of control of the cognitive parts of the mind: those cognitive parts, that is, that are involved in the context of explanation/justification of action. For the Freudian spectator, the above would be an example of a mind or consciousness oscillating between pleasure and pain, whilst attempting to assert its agency in a context of exploration of the boundaries of action. Yet the above is a part of what Arendt claims is part of her discovery–a discovery of the fact that willing has replaced thinking. She appeals to both Marxism and Existentialism as examples of positions that view thinking from the modern perspective. It is also pointed out that this modern idea of the will is in conflict with the laws of causality and Hegelian History. It is not particularly surprising, then, to find modern Philosophers like Ryle attributing the will to a Cartesian “Ghost in the machine” perspective which is, he argues, illusory metaphysics.
It is claimed by Arendt that the concept of the will did not exist for Greek Philosophy but there is a reasonable doubt about such a position. Socrates maintains that if we know the good we will do it. This may be one of the sources of the idea of the good will that we find in Kant. Another source may be Aristotle’s reflections on what it is that makes an action, a voluntary action. Both accounts referred to the important relation of knowledge to action (especially the knowledge of the good). It would not, however, (in the context of the discussion above relating to continuity), be misleading to claim that modern ignorance or denial of Greek or Enlightenment ideas, lies behind the abandonment of the thread of continuity with the past–a state of affairs that began with Descartes and Hobbes. Arendt denies the above claim that the concept of the will can be found in Greek Philosophy in some form or other. It would, for example be positively absurd to maintain that freedom as a concept also played no role in Greek thought given the Greek attitude toward the Persian barbarians who were enslaved by their tyrants. Greeks, in comparison, were proud of their freedom.
Rome and Janus helped to convert the Greek cyclical idea of time to a linear idea where the past, present, and future all lie on this line which is basically a continuous sequence of unrepeatable events. The cyclical idea, in contrast, sees Spring to be coming again in the cycle of the seasons. The Greeks would not have any interest in looking back to the past to find the first Spring or looking forward to the last Day of Judgment. Beginning Time with an act of creation and a first family rather than a race of men would seem mere literary devices for the Greeks and would understand that these devices emanate from a narrative framework constructed by a mind that is not Greek. Janus has an important place in this narrative . One pair of eyes symbolises the memory and another pair the imagination because these are the best powers of mind to characterise particular unrepeatable events. It is this background that we should bear in mind when we remember that the Romans almost inexplicably chose what at the time must have seemed an obscure Middle East sect(Christianity) to become the official religion of the Roman Empire. Let us not forget that the Calendar begins with the month named after Janus who stands at the gateway of time. The clock organises the day, and the calendar organises the year. Times of the day repeat themselves as particular days of the particular year do not. The year 2020 is not the same year as 2019 and the 25th December 2019 is not the same day as the 25th December 2020. Both clocks and calendars are necessary for organising our consciousness of time. The Historian is more concerned with the calendar than the clock because he constructs a thread of unrepeatable events in temporal and causal sequences. The philosophical historian, however, sees the same occurring with variations and he wishes to see the significant good events of our life(the flourishing state, the flourishing lives of its citizens) repeat themselves, and the significant bad events(war, earthquakes, famine,) not to repeat themselves(if they can be avoided). Many modern Historians believe the world is a totality of facts and seek to cleanse History of the good and the bad which for them are nothing but philosophical and metaphysical illusions. History for them is a temporal system of causes and effects recorded for bureaucratic purposes. Arendt’s treatment of the History of the Will is an example of this kind of History whose intent it is to dismantle what is universal and necessary in the course of the passing of Time. Ethical action is of course the first casualty of modern thinking, and Arendt invoked the wrath of many intellectuals by claiming that Eichmann’s “crime” was a merely a failure to think. It could be argued in her favour that these intellectuals perhaps did not understand the considerable power of thought, but such a defence would be not entirely honest given the fact that we have argued in this work that Existentialism itself does not fully understand the power of thought. The thread of Greek and Enlightenment Philosophy contains a view of Ethics, Politics, Religion and Philosophical Psychology that cannot be fully comprehended in modern thought. Attempting to dismantle the categories and principles of this thread of continuity and replace it with a linear thread composed of a series of sequential events or acts of will to power or acts of consciousness in the Spirit of Existentialism, Marxism, Capitalism, Science or Post-Modernism is an empty gesture in the public space of Philosophy.
The Will is, as Kant characterised it, that unique power which humans possess to spontaneously cause something to come into existence whether it be a house that has been built, or the keeping of a promise. Arendt claims controversially that Kant’s theorising about the will was part of the last stage of separating Reason from the Will. She is here failing to recognise the role of practical reasoning in the wills use of its freedom to choose between alternative courses of action. In defence of her position, Arendt points to Post Kantian Philosophy, in particular to the position of Schopenhauer which claims that Kant turns the will into a thing-in-itself–a noumenon– lying behind all appearances in the world. Hegel and Nietzsche continued the process of the dismantling of Kantian Philosophy by questioning the wills connection to reason and freedom. Arendt notes that the skepticism over the study of Being qua being began with the Philosophy of Descartes and Leibniz. She omits Hobbes, Hume, and Adam Smith from her list. Hobbes was one of the first to doubt the importance of the Will. Spinoza is also mentioned in this historical analysis. She quotes from a letter Spinoza wrote in October 1674:
“a stone set in motion by some external force would believe itself to be completely free and would think it continued in motion solely because of its own wish”
This assumes incorrectly that a stone can be “conscious of its endeavours” and “capable of thinking”.
In the context of this discussion Arendt claims that the denial of the freedom of the will by both Hobbes and Spinoza is:
“entirely in accordance with the Greek’s position on this matter.”(P.24)
This is false, if what we have claimed above relating to voluntary action, chance, and the Socratic will are true. Arendt then also interestingly notes that when modern philosophers deny the existence of the will it is in the name of consciousness which she also claims is not mentioned in Greek Philosophy. In this connection she mentions the Greek term “synesis”, a term which clearly carries with it connotations of both conscience and consciousness. She quotes Plato in this context:
“the bloody deed haunts the homicide”(P.25)
Freud taught us that trauma prevents its victim(even the perpetrator) from sleeping and makes its presence felt in consciousness. Shakespeare brilliantly characterises this element of consciousness in relation to the traumatic causality of a bloody deed in Macbeth’s hallucination of Banquo at a feast. The hallucination is both a manifestation of conscience and consciousness. Suggesting that Plato would not have been familiar with the conscious experience of hallucination, given that the Greeks of his time were familiar with mental illness in general and mania and depression in particular, is ignoring the evidence we have of these facts. Indeed, Plato’s position on the issue of mental illness was a humanistic one, rejecting the view that mentally ill people should be punished for their social transgressions, and arguing for confinement in their homes under the supervision of relatives. Greek literature also has its Shakespearean moments when for example Orestes is haunted by the Furies(Erinyes) after killing his mother, Clytemnestra. Hallucination of course, also has the property of seeming unreal to the experiencer(hence the Shakespearean question”Is this a dagger i see before me?”) and this prompted Plato to liken hallucinations to dreams.
Consciousness is not the unitary idea that many believe it to be, and given the manifold of phenomena it is meant to designate, it is inevitable that academic skirmishes have occurred over whether, for example, Aristotle understood the idea of consciousness. One of the characteristics of consciousness is its reflexiveness(the quality of being conscious of itself) but Aristotle did not understand this to have anything to do with observing oneself. Hylomorphism prefers to characterise self consciousness in terms of intentionality. Many forms of psychological awareness, that is, can become the material or objects of higher forms of mentality, e.g. I see lightning strike a tree and I become aware of the perception by conceptualising it in the judgment “The lightning struck the tree!”. The past tense of the judgment expresses the truth of what I perceived, registering at the same time my awareness of my perception. This is then a reflexive form of expression that registers both my experience and an organising of that experience. Victor Caston in his article “Aristotle on Consciousness” in Mind confirms this view:
“He speaks directly and at length about how we perceive what we perceive…On Aristotle’s view the awareness we have of our own mental states is an intrinsic and essential feature of those states: and yet it is to be explicated in terms of intentionality.”(Mind Vol III, 444, October 2002, OUP 2002).
In perceiving the lightning strike the tree we are then also perceiving that we are experiencing, namely, a visual event with a specific content (.Using the language of Kant: there are different faculties of mind involved here, one of which(the understanding) has a form that takes the content from another(sensibility)). Caston points out the obvious fact that this awareness of being aware of the lightning is an elusive matter. This is an interesting observation to make in the context of this debate because this feature might explain the readiness of many modern philosophers to deny that Aristotle was concerned with consciousness. He, like Julian Jaynes does not either move consciousness to the centre of his theorising nor make consciousness responsible for what it is not, e.g. learning, reason etc.. For Aristotle the reflexive character of our consciousness is a consequence of powers building upon powers and transforming more primitive powers, e.g. the child’s sudden use of the word “I” expresses a more complex form of awareness of itself and the world. This complex form of awareness is implied in Kant’s account of the unity of apperception ( the “I think”). The integration of the power of perception when it is involved in apperception(which Kant regards as a form of consciousness) is well illustrated in Aristotle’s works that constitute the Parva Naturalia(455a 12-22)
“each sense possesses something which is special and something which is common. Special to vision, for example, is seeing, special to the auditory sense is hearing and similarly for each of the others: but there is also a common power which accompanies them all in virtue of which one perceives that one is seeing and hearing…For there is one faculty of sense and one master sense organ..”
Charles H kahn has the following to say on this issue:
“Now this common power which accompanies all the senses in virtue of which one perceives that one is seeing and hearing” would not see to be so very different from the modern notion of consciousness as defined by Locke..”the perception of what passes in a mans own mind” “(P 13 Articles on Aristotle, 4. Psychology ad Aesthetics ed by Barnes J, Schofield M, and Sorabji R, Duckworth, London 2003)
It is important, however, to clarify that the above relates to our sensory power of uniting and separating representations, some of which are only indirectly represented to consciousness(these are what Kant called “obscure representations” which are judged to be a part of an object but not directly perceived). Kant points out in relation to this discussion that there is a period of infant-hood when we in fact do not unite scattered perceptions into a unified perception of an object. The above actualisation of the above power of common sense must be involved in the process of apperception. Concepts(involving the understanding) are only involved when one learns to transcend the operation of attention upon the object and abstract from the representation in favour of a universal characteristic of a number of representations.. This obviously requires both sensory integration and the “I think”. The power of attention so critical to sensory experience is taken up in Kant’s work “Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view”. Here he regards attention as a problem especially if it is used in a process of self observation. This can, Kant claims, lead to madness. This comment is of interest in the light of the Neo Cartesian obsession with introspection(paying attention to the inner particulars or contents of the mind rather than abstracting from them in acts of conceptualisation). This also speaks volumes about the modern view of consciousness that has permeated much of contemporary Psychology. Kant does, however, believe that in the context of exploration it is useful to observe “the acts of representative power”(P 22), but he warns that this is difficult business, given the fact that inner sense is fluctuating in time and therefore does not provide the same conditions as does observing external objects in space. In the context of this discussion we encounter a Freudian moment in Kant’s questioning of Locke’s claim that there is a contradiction in the ida of having representations we are not conscious of. Kant’s(Freudian) response is to point to the field of sensory experience and realise that there are only a few points of the field that are as he puts it “illuminated” on the vast map of our awareness. The implication of this is clear: the region of obscure representations is considerable. He also says, however, that investigation of this region belongs not to pragmatic anthropology but rather to physiological anthropology. Kant also points out in the spirit of Freud that these obscure representations can be the source of illusions when related to sexual love to take an example. Thinking conceptually , on the other hand, would have fallen into the category of cognitive acts for Freud who characterised both Consciousness and cognitive acts as different forms of vicissitudes of instincts. Freud, like Aristotle, Kant and Jaynes sees consciousness to be a relatively peripheral mental phenomenon.Kant gives us the following account in his Anthropology on the relation of sensibility(in the form of the unity of apperception) to the intellectual reflective act of the understanding:
“One readily sees that if the faculty of cognition in general is to be called understanding(in the most general meaning of the word), then this must contain the faculty of apprehending(attentio) given representations, in order to produce intuition, the faculty of abstracting what is common to several of these intuitions(abstractio) in order to produce the concept, and the faculty of reflecting(reflexio) in order to produce cognition of the object.”(P.27)
Cognition of the above kind is also involved in the process of judgment when one claims something to be about something(in the name of truth). It is, however, as Kant points out the man of science whose task it is to consider the rules of cognition in abstracto(P.28).
Cognition, therefore, as we can see from the above is both passive and active. When the mind is affected by an object(inner or outer) this, for Kant, falls under the ontological distinction so important to practical reasoning, namely between that which happens to me and that which I actively do. What happens to man(reflecting upon the passing contents that come and go in ones mind) is a part of what is going on in the lower cognitive faculty. Consider in this respect the expression “falling” in love which indeed carries the connotation of something happening to one and one can guess the role of sexuality in this experience. The higher cognitive faculty, on the other hand displays a “spontaneity of consciousness”(P 29) that is essential to the activity of thinking. The reflective form of consciousness(reflexio) is also involved at the level of the combination and separation of representations in the manifold one attends to(intuitive consciousness). This form of intuitive consciousness is to be distinguished from the conceptual form of discursive consciousness. Kant also distinguishes in this context between the egoistic inner observation of the passing of “events” in the mind and “actively” thinking. In the former one experiences oneself passively in time as an appearance. This form of consciousness also needs to be distinguished from that which we encounter in moral forms of consciousness where I am spontaneously active. In such contexts the “I think” is in the form of the “one”–a universal one–a citizen of the world. The inner intuitive apprehension can not give us any idea of this form of consciousness because this form of consciousness is merely about what one undergoes and not what one does. Imagination is a faculty that manifests both passive characteristics –the involuntary occurrence of images–and active characteristics–where, for example, an artist is actively composing his art work. The above involuntary play of images also occurs in dreams and in the minds of the mentally ill in the form of hallucinations which play havoc with the patients abilities to use his higher cognitive faculties. For Julian Jaynes and Freud, Language is a power that is intimately connected to Consciousness. For Kant, too, Language is best means of signifying thought and it also the greatest instrument we possess for the understanding of ourselves and others:
“Thinking is speaking with oneself–it is also listening to oneself inwardly (by means of the reproductive power of the imagination)…”(P.86)
Aristotle’s metaphysical theory of change also provides us with a framework for the understanding of self-consciousness that is identical with the conditions for the conceptualisation of any form of object of consciousness. Aristotle’s theory states that in certain kinds of change (not substantial change), a thing changes from one state into another, but remains substantially the same throughout the change. If the change is moreover, an internal change, for example, the occurrence of a memory, then this memory is “mine” in virtue of the above three principles of change(what a thing changes from, what a thing changes to, and the thing that remains identical throughout the change). This form of self consciousness may not be what some modern theorists have in mind but that is not Aristotle’s problem. Aristotle’s form of self consciousness would deny neither the roll of the will in voluntary action (when we choose between alternative courses of action), nor would it deny the role of the understanding and reason as they operate in the above forms of consciousness. Failing to understand the relations between consciousness, will, understanding, and reason is failing to understand the complexity and unity of the mind.
We should also point out that it may well in some sense be true that the will(practical reasoning) ought to be given priority over the intellect(theoretical reasoning) but this claim does not imply the dismissal of the role of knowledge in action, or the importance of the role of truth in judgments relating to the Principle of the Good. We know that Plato in “The Republic” thought that the principle of the Good was more important than the principle of truth. but it was also the case that he was in no doubt about the importance of their connection. The question is not whether one form of reasoning is superior to another but rather, whether there is a real divide in the mind between Knowing and acting.
What is clear is that what Aristotle regarded as the integrated unity of the Will and Thought, Arendt regards as incompatible co-existents(antagonists). Arendt is, of course, not using the concepts of the will we can find in the work of Aristotle or Kant but rather the concept that is implied by the theories of Hegel and Marx. In these theories, dialectical logic and its “mechanism” of Negation, is the driving force of History. Thinking, on this kind of view, is intent upon doing nothing, Arendt argues in “Life of the Mind: Willing(P.37)”. In elaborating upon this view she claims that the fundamental mood or life of the mind in relation to thinking is serenity. Serenity is then arbitrarily defined as the enjoyment of an activity that never has to overcome the resistance of matter. So, on this account, when the builder is thinking about moving heavy materials around on his building site, he is not planning to overcome the resistance of the material, until he actually engages in the action of moving the material in question. When he does move this material this is ,then, only an “accidental relation” between the thought and activity. Arendt then argues that the predominant mood of the will is tension and refers back to the work of Hegel:
“No philosopher has described the willing ego in its clash with the thinking ego with greater sympathy, insight, and consequence for the history of thought, than Hegel.”(P.39)
There is, however, a strange sensory-motor “feel” to the above judgment. Consider the role of “recognition” in the master-slave dialectic, in which a thoughtful process of reflection upon the equality of human beings seems not to be a possible route to understanding the relation between the master and the slave–a route that has been actualised in civilisation since the time of Hegel, (actualised through the real emancipation of slaves(not the mere declaration that occurred in 1833)). For Hegel it was the willing ego and not the thinking ego that lay behind the advancing Spirit of modern ages. A curious statement given the Kantian distinction between the empirical ” I” of inner intuition, and the moral “I” that belongs to future citizens of a future world. Nietzsche also, of course subscribed to the above “isolationist” view of the will. According to him the will and universal thought have nothing to do with each other–as if the mere fact of centuries of the use of powerful wills to create chaos in the world, sufficed to condemn the accumulated thoughtful wisdom and understanding of millennia.
Hegel sees in death an important relation to the life of the mind. Death, for someone operating with dialectical logic and the mechanism of negation is merely life turned upside down. It is this chaotic state of affairs that is the goal of the Hegelian restless Spirit. The “Spirited Kingdom” is the Kingdom of the Will living in an upside down world. Hegel is a “seer”. He sees World Spirit in Napoleon on horseback willing his way to the world Empire that never actualised, using the fuel of the sensible power of recognition and the sense datum of power. Arendt, too is swept away by this very modern “wave of change”. In being swept away in this fashion we are unsure whether the it is the world that is upside down or ourselves.
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