What does Arendt teach us about thinking and how images work in our minds during the thinking process?
1.
All thinking moves from experience.[1]
Existence is conditioned by the fact of plurality, by the fact that men and not man inhabit the earth and make the world in common; and existence is conditioned by our appearance in the world of things.[2] How one experiences the world affects the way they think about the world, and how one thinks about the world affects the way they are in and toward the world. The changing social, economic, political, and technological conditions of the world shape the way we experience the world, and so to the way we think. The rise of mass society has diminished our ability to distinguish between private and public life. It has changed the way we appear before others, and it has changed the way that we perceive ourselves.[3] For Hannah Arendt, the rise of the social led to a loss of common sense, and a loss of a commonly shared world.[4] The rise of modernity marked man’s flight into himself, teaching him that he could no longer trust his own sensual experiences in the world. People were taught that the world was a knowable object, quantifiable, and replicable. They were taught not to trust their senses, or others, or the world of lived experience. Under these conditions, the only reality becomes the reality of the self. The only authority becomes the authority of the self. As a result, people become isolated, cut off from one another, and cut off from themselves. Their ability to distinguish between reality and fiction is compromised. They become cynical. They become lonely.[5] Meaning becomes impossible when there is no shared experience of the world. Remembrance becomes impossible when there is no public space for recognition. Memory fails because there is nothing worth remembering. People no longer strive for greatness or immortal fame. They strive to escape the human condition. But in order to be fully human one must appear in public before others, and one must have a space of privacy for solitude to think. Only in that space of solitude can one transform worldly happenings into inner experience, which becomes “like a mirror in whose reflection truth might appear.”[6] In that space of solitude, one is confronted by the fact that however far they travel in their imagination, they can never leave the world.
[1] Hannah Arendt, “Hannah Arendt on Hannah Arendt”, Thinking Without a Banister. New York, 2018. Page 349.
[2] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition. New York, 2018. Page 4.
[3] ibid. Page, 46.
[4] ibid. Pages 71-72.
[5] ibid. Pages 171-172.
[6] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York, 1973. Page 80.
[2] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition. New York, 2018. Page 4.
[3] ibid. Page, 46.
[4] ibid. Pages 71-72.
[5] ibid. Pages 171-172.
[6] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York, 1973. Page 80.