We are the world and not simply Appearing
it always means the other opinion and this opinion varies depending on the point of view and perspective of the audience. In other words, everything that appears, by virtue of its appearance, becomes a kind of disguise that may indeed - though not necessarily - conceal or distort it. The opinion is the fact that all appearances, in spite of their identity, is perceived by a plurality of viewers. The impulse
all'autoesibizione - react with the overwhelming show of being shown the effect - seems common to humans and animals. In the same way in which the plaintiff depends for its entrance into the scene from the stage, the company and the audience, so every living thing depends on a world that appears as a place for their appearance, from his peers to play his part with them, by viewers because its existence is accepted and recognized.
spiritual activities by which we distinguish ourselves from other animal species, although showing great differences, but they all have in common is that a withdrawal from the world and a retreat to the self. This does not cause any serious problem if we were mere spectators, divine creatures thrown into the world to watch over it, to enjoy or be entertained, but still in possession of another region as our natural habitat. But the fact is that we are in the world and not simply in it: we are also appearances, precisely because of our arrival and departure, and passing away, and though we come from nowhere are fully equipped to deal with Whatever it may appear, and take part in the theater world.
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 102
How do you submit to the other
The brave man is not the one in whose soul this feeling is absent, no one who knows how to win it once and for all, but who decided that fear is not what you want to show. Courage can then become a second nature or habit, but not in the sense that the fear is replaced by its absence, as if that could in turn become a feeling. Such choices are determined by several factors, in many cases are predetermined by the culture we are born - the task because we want to please others. But there are decisions that are not inspired by our environment, we are led by the desire to please ourselves or to set an example, namely the desire to persuade others to appreciate what we do. Whatever the reason, the success and failure depend on the operation of self-consistency, and therefore the length, the image that this will present to the world. Since
appearances always occur in the guise of opinion, simulation and deliberate deception by the plaintiff, error and illusion of the viewer include, inevitably, between their intrinsic potential. The self-presentation stands out thanks to the choice dall'autoesibizione active and conscious of the image display: The exhibit has no other choice but to show all properties in the possession of a living being. The self-presentation it would not be possible without a certain degree of self-awareness, capacity inherent to the reflective nature of the activities that transcends spiritual, of course, the mere realization that in all probability the man has in common with the higher animals.
Each virtue begins when I make a gift with which I express my satisfaction with it. The gift involves a promise to the world, to those which I appear to act in harmony with that please me and the infringement of this implicit promise that characterizes the hypocrite. In other words, the hypocrite is not a villain who delights of vice and hide his pleasure to those around him. The test reveals that the hypocrite is the old Socratic motto "Be who you want to appear ', which means always appears as you want to appear to others even if you happen to be alone and not to appear that to yourself. In taking this decision, I am simply to react to this or that quality given to me in fate: I am making a deliberate act of choice among the many possibilities of conduct that the world offers me.
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 118
thoughts have nothing of the properties that can be attributed to the self or a person
If I reflect on my relationship with myself that governs the activities of thought, it seems that everything happens as if my thoughts were "simple
representations', or manifestations of an ego which itself remains forever hidden, because obviously the thoughts have nothing of the properties that can be attributed to the self or person. The "I think that is the real" thing in itself "of Kant: it does not appear to others and, unlike the ego of self-awareness, does not appear to itself, yet it is nothing.
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 125
the death does not change the world but it ceases to
It was for Wittgenstein, finally, that set out to investigate "the extent to which solipsism is a truth 'and thus became the most eminent contemporary, to give all the formulation 'existential illusion underlying all these theories, "the death does not change the world but no longer." "Death is an event of life, death is alive. " Which is the underlying premise of every thought solipsistic.
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 133
think, that is mirrored so as to give meaning to the unknown or all'inconoscibile
Once, speaking of Plato, Kant had to observe, "that is not at all unusual, by comparing the thoughts which the author exposes the its subject ... find that we understand better that he did not mean himself. As if enough had not determined his concept, he sometimes spoke, or thought, contrary to his own intention, "which, of course, applies even to the same work Kant).
If Kant had not removed the logs to speculative thought, German Idealism and its metaphysical systems have hardly seen the light. Equally true is that the new type of Philosophy - Fichte, Schelling, Hegel - would not like. Emancipated, thanks to Kant, from the old school and its sterile dogmatism years, encouraged by him to indulge in speculative thought, rather they took their cue from Descartes, they began to hunt for certain, once again confounded the line between thought and knowledge, up to believe in all seriousness that the results of their speculations possessed the same kind of validity the results of cognitive processes.
Although men are existentially conditioned entirely - limited by the arc of time between birth and death, yoked to toil to live and work, encouraged to create works in order to feel at home in the world, forced to ' action to find their place in society of their peers - in spirit can transcend all these conditions, but only in spirit, mind, not in reality or in the knowledge and knowledge that make them be able to explore the real-world and own. They can be judged positively or negatively by the fact they were born and from which they are put together, may want the impossible, For example, a life eternal may think, that is mirrored so as to give meaning to the unknown or all'inconoscibile. And although this may not immediately change the reality - in our world there is actually more clear and radical opposition than that between thinking and doing - the principles on which we act, and the criteria by which we judge and one leads his life depend ultimately on the life of the mind. They depend, in short, by the execution of these operations is manifestly not spiritual, that does not lead to any results and 'do not provide forces for immediate action "(Heidegger). The absence of thought is indeed a powerful factor of human affairs, in statistical terms, the most powerful of all, not only in the conduct of the multitude, but in the conduct of all. The same urgency, the a-scholia, of human affairs requires provisional judgments or rely wants you to custom and habit, and thus to prejudice.
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 153
The main feature of the activities of the mind is their invisibility
In view of the world of appearances and activities to put it, the main feature of the activities of the mind is its invisibility. Strictly speaking, they never appear, though occur to the self who thinks and wants, that judges, who is aware of being active, but lacks the capacity or the stimulus to appear as such.
In other words, invisible to the thought that occurs is a human faculty that, contrary to other faculties, not only is invisible until it is latent, the status of a potential, but still does not show even when it is fully established.
For this verse, as in others, the mind is very different from the soul, which is its main competitor to the rank of ruler of our inner life, not visible. The soul, which flow from our passions, our feelings and our emotions, is a more or less chaotic swirl of events that we do not put in place, but we suffer and that in circumstances of high intensity can overwhelm, as with pain or pleasure, the invisibility of ' soul resembles that of the internal organs of the body, which we feel the operation or malfunction, without being able to control them. The life of the mind, by contrast, is pure activity, an activity that, like others, can be started or stopped at will. Moreover, though their head is invisible, the passions have their own expression: the blush of shame ol'imbarazzo, it pales of fear or anger, you may be radiant with happiness or having the air knocked down, and requires a great exercise in self-control to prevent the passions to show. The only outward manifestation of the mind is distraction, an obvious disregard of the surrounding world, something completely negative, with no sign in any way to what is really going on inside us.
No act of the mind, much less the act of thinking, it fulfills its purpose which is given by the life or the world. It always transcends the mere givenness of anything that aroused his attention, turning it into what Pier Giovanni Olivi, a Franciscan philosopher of the Will active in the thirteenth century, called an "experiment of the self with itself."
Being with him and maintain relations only with themselves constitute the main feature of the life of the mind.
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 156
The thinking I will disappear as soon as the real world returns to impose himself
In fact, I am aware of the faculty of the mind and their reflexivity lasts only as long as their activities. And as if the same organs of thought, will, in the light of the proceedings arise only when I think, or want to judge: a latent state, provided that such latency exists, prior to the actualization they are not accessible to introspection. The "I" thinking, which are perfectly conscious until the last activity of thought, will disappear as if it were a mere mirage as soon as the real world returns to impose himself.
It 'not so much a retreat from the world - just the thought for his tendency to generalize, that is, his interest in general than the particular, tends to withdraw completely from the world - because of his being present to the senses. Every act is based on the spiritual faculties of the mind to have this in itself what is absent to the senses. The representation (in the sense of re-presentation) which makes present what is absent in fact, is the incomparable gift of the mind, and since our whole terminology of mind is based on metaphors drawn from the experience of vision, such as dowry has imagination, defined by Kant as 'the faculty' s insight even without the presence of the object. " The faculty of the mind to make present what is absent, of course, is by no means confined to mental images of absent objects: in a much more general sense, the memory stores and keep available all the memory that is no longer, while the everything will anticipate what the future may bring, but it is not. Only in virtue of the mind's ability to make present what is absent, we can say 'no more' and create a past for ourselves, we can say "not yet" and prepare ourselves for a future. But this is not possible unless the mind after it has been portrayed in this and the urgencies of daily life. Thus, the will, the mind must withdraw from the immediacy of desire, without reflection and without reflection, stretching out his hand to seize the desired object: the will has nothing to do with objects, but projects, for example, with the future availability of an object that, in the present, it may not be desired.
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind ", Il Mulino, p.. 159
The imagination becomes a visible object in an image invisible
The object of thought is different from the picture, how the image differs from the object which is visible in the sense of mere representation. It 's because of this dual transformation that thought "actually goes even further," far beyond the realm of any possible imagination, "when the reason proclaims the infinity of numbers in the thought that no vision of corporeal things has never grasped" or 'teaches us that even the smaller bodies are infinitely divisible. " The imagination, therefore, that transforms a visible object in an image invisible, capable of being stored in the mind, is a condition sine qua non to provide convenient objects of thought to mind, but these objects of thought, in turn, come to light only when the mind remembers actively and deliberately, collects and-choose between the filing of this memory so as to convey his interest sufficiently to cause the merger. In these operations, the mind learns how to face and deal with matters that are absent, and prepare together to "go further" toward the understanding of things that are always absent, of which there can be no memory because I have never been present at 'sensory experience.
All metaphysical questions that philosophy has taken as its own specific issues arising from experiences of ordinary common sense, "the need of reason" - the search for meaning that drives us to make these issues - does not differ in anything from the human need to tell the story of an event which is witnessed or the need to write poems about it. In all these activities thoughtful men move outside the world of appearances and make use of a language full of abstract words, of course, before becoming the special coin of philosophy, have long been an integral part of everyday language. For the thought, then, although not for philosophy in a technical sense, the withdrawal from the world of appearances is the only essential precondition. Because we think of someone, they should be away from our presence, until you are with him, did not think him or about him, the thought always involves the memory: every thought is really a re-think. It can certainly happen that you start thinking about someone or something is still present, in which case we have strayed illegally from what surrounds us, we are behaving as if we were already absent.
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 161
In the act of thinking I'm not where they are in reality non-sensitive objects around me, but images invisible to everyone else
As you think, you have no concept of his body, this is the experience that led Plato to give immortality to the soul when the body was in-game, which led to the conclusion that Descartes' the soul can think without the body, except that, until it is combined, may well be molested in its operations by poor layout of the body. "
Memory, Mnemosyne is the mother of the Muses and the memory, the experience of thinking more common and basic set, has to do with things missing, disappeared from the senses. Still, the absent is made present and evoked to mind - a person, an event, a monument - can not appear in the way it appeared to the senses, as if the memory was tantamount to a kind of witchcraft. To appear only in the mind, it must first be de-sensibiizzato, and the ability to make sensible objects in images we call 'imagination'. Without that option, which makes present what is absent in the form de-sensitized, no trial, no sequence of thought would be possible. So the thinking is "out of order" not only because it stops all other activities so essential to the business of living and survive, but because it overturns all ordinary relations: what is close and appears directly under it is now far, far away is what is actually present. In the act of thinking I'm not where I really: do not surround me sensible objects, but images invisible to anyone else. And as if I had withdrawn into a sort of no man's land, the land of the invisible, of which I do not know anything if I had not given this power to remember and imagine. Thinking undo distances, the temporal space of not less. I can anticipate the future and think as if it were already present, I can remember the past as if it had disappeared.
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 168
Thinking about the activities of the mind, self-destructive tendency
Kant wrote: "I disagree with the review ... that no one should doubt that once you are convinced of something. In pure philosophy that is impossible. Our mind will test a natural aversion. "
We have considered so far the main features of thought: his withdrawal from the world of appearances of common sense, the same self-destructive tendency in relation to its results, its reflexivity and awareness of pure activity that accompanies , not to mention the fact bizarre and disturbing that you may know their own spiritual faculties solo as long as this activity continues, which means that thought can not firmly establishing itself as the ultimate properties of the human species.
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 173
words, meaning in themselves, and thoughts are similar. The speech, therefore, although in each case "sound meaning" is not necessarily a sentence or a sentence in which truth and falsehood are at stake, and not to be. We have already seen, after all, as it is by no means the only possible case: a prayer and a logos, but is neither true nor false. Thus, implicit in the impulse talking is not necessarily the search for truth, but the search for meaning.
The thoughts need not be disclosed to happen, but they can not occur if they are not states, with mouth closed, or out loud in the dialogue, as appropriate.
The function of this speech without a voice - "to think quietly to themselves" according to Anselm of Canterbury - is to get on top of all that is given according to the daily appearances, the need to reason is to make this into account which is, or has happened. At what drives not the thirst for knowledge - the need may arise in connection with phenomena well known and completely familiar - but the search for meaning. Naming things, the mere creation of words, is the way of man to himself and, so to speak, disalienate a world in which, after all, each one of us is born as a newcomer and a stranger.
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 184
The metaphors and the brain
Every great philosophical language and the poetic language is metaphorical, but not in the simplistic sense of the definition of "metaphor" as a "figure of speech in which a name or descriptive term is transferred to an object different, though similar to that which applies in the proper sense. "
Each metaphor brings out "an intuitive perception of similarity in dissimilar things' and, according to Aristotle, is precisely for this reason a sign of genius', 'by far the biggest thing." According to Kant
this talk in analogies, in metaphorical language, is the only means by which the speculative reason, which we call here thinking, can manifest itself. At the thought without pictures, "abstract". The metaphor provides insight from the world of appearances, whose function is to "establish the fact
of our concepts' then canceling, so to speak, that withdrawal from the world of appearances which is the precondition of spiritual activities.
All philosophical terms are metaphors, analogies, so to speak, frozen, whose real meaning is opened up when the word is restored to original context, this course so vivid and intense to the mind of the philosopher who first used it. When Plato introduced in the philosophical language of everyday words "soul" and "idea" - by connecting an invisible human body, the soul, something invisible in the invisible world, the ideas - had yet to hear those words echo in their use in pre-fiosofico ordinary language. Psyche is the "breath vital 'exhaled by the dying, and idea or eidos, is the template or model that the craftsman must have, first in the eyes of the mind before starting his work - an image that survives the manufacturing process as well as transcends' manufactured object and can serve as a model again and again and again, acquiring a life without end which makes it suitable to eternity in the sky ideas. The underlying analogy to the Platonic doctrine of soul is this: how the breath is related to the body that leaves, that is, with the corpse, so from now on, we deem that the soul is in relationship with the living body. And the analogy underlying the doctrine of ideas can be reconstructed in a similar way: as the mental image of the craftsman runs her hand during the manufacturing process and is the measure of success or failure of the object, so all data elements physically and significantly in the world of appearances relate to a pattern invisible, situated in the sky ideas, and are valued in relation to it. None
before Aristotle had used in a different sense from the word kategoria accusation, which designated that was said against a defendant in the course of judicial proceedings. " Aristotle's use, this word becomes something like 'predicate' based on the following analogy: just as an indictment (kategoreuein you tinos) is down (kata) on a defendant's something they are accused, and therefore belongs to them, so the predicate gives the person the appropriate quality.
read it in a little-known essay by Ernest Fenollosa, that 'the metaphor is ... the true essence of poetry ", without it," there is no bridge over which pass from the truth less than the more visible to the invisible. "
The first to play it was poetic Homer, whose two poems are full of metaphorical expressions of all kinds. In this embarrass de Wealth choose the pace at which the Iliad The poet compares the onslaught of fear and excruciating pain in the chest of men combined attack of winds from different directions on the waters of the sea. " Think of these storms that you know so well, the poet seems to say, and know something of fear and pain. But it is significant that the opposite is not true. Think what you want to pain and fear, but you will not know anything about the winds and the sea: the comparison has a clear purpose to say what the pain and fear are at the heart of man, that is intended to illuminate a 'experience that does not appear. Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 192
The theory of "two worlds" is yes metaphysical illusion, but is neither arbitrary nor accidental: It is more plausible that the illusion has ever afflicted the experience of thinking. Allowing himself to use a metaphor, the language allows us to think, that is to have trade with non-sensitive, because it allows you to 'take over' - metapherein - our sensory experience. There are two worlds because the metaphor unites them.
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 197
In Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie, Hans Blumenberg has traced along the centuries-old history of Western thought, the story of certain figures of speech quite common, as the metaphor of the iceberg and the various marine metaphors, to discover, almost incidentally, to what extent some modern pseudoscience typically owe their apparent plausibility evidence of metaphor, which subrogated evidence of defective data done. His main example is the psychoanalytic theory of consciousness, where consciousness is seen as the tip of the iceberg, a simple indication of the mass of floating unconscious beneath the surface. Not only is this theory has never been demonstrated, but in its own terms is unprovable: the instant in which a fragment reaches the tip of the iceberg of the unconscious became conscious, losing all the properties of its supposed origin. Yet the evidence of the iceberg metaphor is so overwhelming that the theory does not need neither argument nor proof.
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 200
Common sense
Among the important characteristics of our senses is the fact that can not be translated into each other - no sound can be seen, heard no image, and so on - although connected by a sense policy, which for that reason alone is the largest. In this regard, recall the definition of Thomas Aquinas, "the right only [that] extends to all objects of the five senses, at or in accordance with common sense, the language called an object with its common name: this community is not only the key determinant of intersubjective communication - the same object is perceived by different people and their communities - but also serves to identify a figure that appears in a completely different way to each of the five senses: hard or soft to the touch, sweet or bitter taste, dark or bright to the eye, in different resonant ear tones. None of these feelings can be adequately described in words. And the meaning of knowledge, vision and hearing, have an affinity with words the narrower meaning of the inferior. Something smells like a rose, it tastes like pea soup, soft like velvet. Further on you can not go, "a rose is a rose is a rose."
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 207
If the thought, led by the old metaphor of sight, misunderstanding itself and its function, its action is expected by the 'truth', that is not only ineffable truth by definition. "As children who, by closing their hands, trying to catch the smoke, the philosophers so often seen flying away in front of them who wanted to grab the object '- so, with extreme precision, the last philosopher who believed firmly in the 'intuition', Bergson, describing what really happened to the thinkers of that school. And the reason of "failure" is simply that nothing in words can never draw the immobility of an object of pure contemplation. A comparison of the object of contemplation, the meaning, you can say and whom you can talk, is elusive if the philosopher wants to see it and grab it "evaporates."
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 210
If the thought is out of order because it is the search for meaning does not lead to final results that will survive the activity itself, which will continue to have effect after the activity has come to an end. In other words, although the manifest to the self that thinks, the pleasure of speaking Aristotle which by definition is ineffable. The only metaphor that is the only one that can be conceived for the life of the mind, is the feeling of vitality. Without the breath of life the human body is a corpse with no thoughts of the mind of man is dead.
If I thought it was a cognitive operation should follow a straight line, starting from the search of purpose and ends with his knowledge. If you combines with the metaphor of the vitality, the circular motion of Aristotle evokes a search for meaning for man as a thinking being is accompanied by the life and ends only with death. The circular movement is a metaphor derived from the life process that, even though they are from birth to death, rotates in a circle around itself until the man is alive.
Hegel says: "Philosophy forms a circle ... is a series that is not suspended in the air, is not something you start from nothing to the contrary, it comes back in a circle around itself. " The same idea meets at the end of Che cos 'is metaphysics?, Where Heidegger formula' the fundamental question metaphysics "as" Why, in general, there is something and not rather nothing? "-one way of thinking the first question, but at the same time the thought that" it must always be constantly swinging back. "
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 213
Moreover, the metaphor of the vitality clearly rejects any answer to the inevitable, "Why do we think?", Since there is no answer to the question "Why do we live?".
In Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (written after he had persuaded the former dell'insostenibilità attempt, in the Tractatus to understand the language, and thought, as' representation of reality "-" The proposition is a picture of reality. The proposition is a model of reality as we think ") is an interesting game of thinking that can perhaps help us clarify this difficulty. He asks, "What do you think man? ... The man thinks, because the thinking has yielded good results? Why do you think is beneficial to think? "That would amount to ask," Educate the children because it gave good results? ". It must be acknowledged that "sometimes you think because it gave good results, "implying with the course that only" sometimes "things are so. Then: "How could you find out why you think?" To which Wittgenstein replied: "Often we see the important facts only after deletion of the question" why? ", Then in the course of our investigation, these facts lead us to a response. Just trying to suppress the question: "Why do we think?", I will address now the question: "What makes us think?"
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 215
What makes us think?
Our question "What makes us think?" does not go in looking for causes or purposes. Taking for granted the human need to think about it based on the assumption that the activity of thought is one of those energeiai that, like playing the flute, have their end in themselves and leave no outwardly no tangible end product in the world which we live. You can not locate in time the moment you began to feel such a need, but the very existence of the language and everything we know about prehistoric times and mythologies, whose authors can not give a name, allow to assume, without risk of mistaken too, that need to be contemporary with the appearance of man on earth. What is possible date, however, is the beginning of philosophy and metaphysics, and what we can give a name are the answers to our question gradually during the different periods of history. So part of the response of the Greeks can be found in the belief that all thinkers Hellenic philosophy that enables men to stay close to the mortal immortal things, and therefore to acquire or to lodge itself "immortality to the fullest extent permitted by human nature. " For the short time that mortals bear to devote to it, the philosopher turns them into creatures like gods, in "mortal" as Cicero wants.
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind ", Il Mulino, p.. 217
Coleridge writes: "Have you ever lifted up your mind to consider the existence, in and of itself, as well as act to exist? Have you ever said to yourself thoughtfully "E '", regardless if in that moment before you there was a man, a flower or a grain of sand, without reference, in short, and in this way or that particular form of existence? Are you really come to this, you will have felt the presence of a mystery, he must have stopped your spirit in awe and amazement. The very words "There is nothing" or "There was a time when there was nothing!" Are a contradiction in terms. There is something in us that rejects these words el'istantaneità with the intensity of a light, as if they spoke against the evidence of a fact that it is because of his own eternity.
not be, then, is impossible: to be incomprehensible. If you have taken this insight of absolute existence, you will have learned all this and nothing else was what in ancient times took the noblest minds, the elect among men, with a kind of holy terror. This is precisely what made them feel for the first time within it the harbinger of something ineffably greater than their individual nature. "
The Platonic amazement, the initial shock that drives the philosopher to undertake his journey, is revived in our time when Heidegger, in 1929, concluded a conference entitled "What is Metaphysics?" with the words, already mentioned, "Why there is something in general and not rather nothing? "; this question by defining" the fundamental question of metaphysics. "
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 234
Socrates did not teach anything, he had nothing to teach
Socrates did not teach anything for the simple reason that had nothing to teach: it was 'sterile' as the midwives Greek, they must have passed the age to procreate. (Since he had nothing to teach, no truth to be transmitted, was accused of never to reveal his view, as we learn from Xenophon, who defended this claim). It seems that, unlike the philosophers by profession, he warned the momentum of the test with others to determine whether they shared his concerns and this is something very different depends if solutions to the puzzles and then show others .
consider briefly the three similarities. First, Socrates is a gadfly: he knows how to goad citizens who, without him, "will continue unabated sleep for the rest of their life, "unless someone comes to awaken them. And wake up to what? To think and consider, an activity without which, in his view, life is not only it would not be much, but it is not even fully human. (On this subject, nell'Apologia as elsewhere, Socrates says almost the opposite of what Plato makes him say in the 'revised defense "of the Phaedo. Nell'Apologia, Socrates sets out to his fellow citizens the reasons why he should live and, together, explain why, although life is the 'very dear', not afraid of death in the Phaedo explains to friends that life is so burdensome and be happy to die).
Secondly, Socrates is a midwife. In the Theaetetus, he argues that because sterile himself, knows how to relieve others of their thoughts, also thanks to its sterility, he has the experience of the midwife and know whether the baby really is that simple or unfertilized egg of which the mother must be purged. In the dialogues, however, rarely some of the interlocutors of Socrates gave birth to a thought that it was not an unfertilized egg and that Socrates considered worthy of being kept alive. He was rather what Plato, in Lead, of course thinking of Socrates, the Sophists said: cleansing of the people of 'their opinions', ie unreflective of the prejudices that prevent them from thinking-help, as Plato said, to get rid of what is evil in them, their opinions, but may not make good, without giving them the truth. Finally, knowing that we do not know yet reluctant to let go as if nothing had happened, Socrates stops insisting on their concerns and how the torpedo, paralyzed himself, paralyzed persons coming in contact with him. At first glance, it seems, the torpedo is the opposite of gadfly: where it paralyzes the gadfly pricks and alarm clock. Yet what may seem like a paralysis from the outside - from the perspective of ordinary human affairs - is heard as the supreme condition of activity and vitality. In support of this, despite the lack of documentary evidence on the experience of thinking, there are several statements in the course of the centuries of thinkers.
So Socrates, gadfly, midwife, torpedo, not a philosopher (teaches nothing and has nothing to teach), nor is a sophist, as it seeks to make men wise. He is confined simply to show them that you are wise, which, in reality, no one is - an 'occupation', which kept him busy so as not to allow time for any other public or private affair. And while he vigorously defends the charge to corrupt the young, do not ever claim the honor of improving them. On the other hand, he claims that the appearance in Athens of the thinking and the Examiner, which he represented, was the greatest good that ever was allotted to the City. He was concerned about it, of the services rendered by thinking, although in this case, as in all others, did not give clear and definitive answers. You can be sure that a dialogue turned to the question "To what pros' think?" Would have resulted in the same places all the other questions.
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 267
For its part, well conscious of having to do his business with what is invisible, a metaphor of Socrates, he was worth in order to explain the activity of thinking - the metaphor of the wind: "The winds themselves are invisible, but what they do is manifest and somehow we feel their approach. "
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 268
In the end, the implication is that thinking inevitably has a destructive effect, such as to undermine all the criteria in depth, shared values, the units of good and evil, in short, all the customs and rules conduct in question in morals and ethics. These frozen thoughts, Socrates seems to say, they are so comfortable that you can use them even in sleep, but if the wind of thought is now in you'll shake you from your sleep rocked, made you wide awake and alive, you'll see that it had in hand if not of concern, and the best thing we can do is share with each other. Then the paralysis caused by the thinking is twofold: first is inherent in the stop-and-think, the discontinuation of all other assets (in psychological terms, one can not define error "a problem" as "a situation that for some reasons significantly blocks a body in its efforts to reach a goal), but it also can, when it is released, a staggering delayed effect, because we now feel unsure of what seemed to be beyond any doubt until it was committed, without thinking, in what was being done.
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 269 \u200b\u200b
The two-in-One as soon as one becomes the outside world to impose strong thinker
Sure, I appear and the others see me, they are one, otherwise I would be unrecognizable. And while I'm with the others, barely conscious of myself, they seemed to others. It's called consciousness (literally, as we have seen, "to know with myself) the curious fact that in a sense are-for-myself, although I just can not say that I appear to myself, and this indicates how the Socratic "being one" is not as unproblematic as it seems. I'm just not-for others, but also for-me, and in the latter case, it is clear, I'm not just one. In my unit has crept a difference.
In other words, we are faced with a transference, transference of the experience of the self that thinks about the things themselves. Nothing, in fact, can be himself and at the same time for himself-if not the two-in-one that Socrates brought to light as the essence of thought that Plato and translated into conceptual language as the dialogue without a voice, to myself and myself. But, again, is not thought to be the work of the unit, to unify the two-in-one, on the contrary, the two-in-One as soon as one becomes the outside world is ruled by force to the thinker and cuts short the process of thought. Then, when called by name in the world of appearances, there is always one where it is as if the thinker, split in two by the thought process, the difference is richiudesse abruptly. In existential terms, thinking is a solitary occupation, but not the occupation of the island. Loneliness is the human situation where I keep myself company. The desolation of isolation occurs when only without being able to separate the two-in-one, without being able to keep me company, if, as Jaspers would say, 'I am not myself "or, put another way, when you are without a company.
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 280
attracts thought in his mind, the will move in a region where there is no such certainty
aversion towards the ego that thinks the will is obviously much different. The clash took place in this case between two spiritual activities, which seem unable to coexist. When we form a volition, when it focuses on some future project, there has been withdrawn from the world of appearances, at least when you are following a direction of thought. Thoughts and desires are only opponents to the extent that affect our mental states, both of them, it is true, make present to the mind what in reality is absent, but the thought in his mind that attracts what is hard or at least was , while the will, leaning into the future, moves in a region where there is no such certainty. To address what the meeting is from this region of the unknown, our psychic apparatus - the soul as distinct from the mind - is equipped with the ability of expectation, the details of which are the main hope and fear.
normal emotional state is the ego that wants to impatience, agitation and 'care' (Sorge), not only because the soul responds to the future with hope and fear, but also because the project will require an I-I of which there is no guarantee. The fears of anxious desire can be quenched only by the ego-and-I-do, namely the cessation of its activities and the liberation of the mind from the power of this activity.
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 352
The memory can disturb the soul with the desire of the past, but this nostalgia, even if it contains pain and bitterness, not to disturb the equanimity of the mind, as it relates to things that are not in our power to change. On the contrary, I want that, looking forward and not back, it has to do with things that are so in our power, but whose realization is by no means secure. The tension that results, otherwise the excitement that accompanied the rather challenging task of solving problems, causing a kind of restlessness in the soul that crosses easily into turmoil, a mixture of fear and hope that it becomes unbearable once you find out, according to the formula of Augustine, and that will be able to achieve, velvet and posse, I'm not the same. And this tension can not be resolved except by the action, ie giving up completely on every spiritual activity: the simple passage of the will to think, produces nothing more than a temporary paralysis of the will, the same way a pass from thinking the will is felt by the ego that thinks like a temporary paralysis of thought.
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 352
The reason, of thought without a voice in the dialogue between me and myself, is persuasive, not mandatory
Aristotle says: "One part of the soul is the reason. It is the natural ruler and judge of the things that concern us. The nature of the other party is to follow and submit to his government. " We will see later how to execute commands is one of the main characteristics of the Will. In Plato the reason he could take upon himself this function under the assumption that the reason given is the truth, and truth is in fact coercive. But the same reason, while leading to the truth of thought without a voice in the dialogue between me and myself, is persuasive, not mandatory, only those who are not capable of thinking need to be forced.
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 373
But the inner dialogue of thought, which is the philosophy 'the solitary occupation "of Hegel (although it is always self-conscious, accompanying himself tacitly in everything I do, I cogitate the cogito of Descartes), it is addressed thematically ego but on the contrary, the experiences and problems that I, an appearance among appearances, feel the need for thoughtful analysis. This meditation on all that is given may be disturbed by the necessities of life, the presence of others, from all sorts of shops urgent. But none of the factors that interfere with the activity of mind comes from the mind itself, since those involved in the two-in-one are members and friends, and keep intact this "harmony" is the first concern of the self that thinks.
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. Over 379 Jews
immortality was seen as necessary only for the people and assured to it only, the individual was satisfied to survive in its progeny
E 'interest in the life eternal, omnipresent in the Empire at that time Romano, who so clearly discriminates against the new era from ancient times, revealing himself as the common bond that united the many syncretic new Oriental cults. Not that the interest of Paul to the Resurrection individual was originally Jewish: Jews immortality was perceived as only necessary for the people and assured to it only, the individual was satisfied with his progeny survive, to die old and also pay "full of years." And in the ancient world, greek or roman, the only immortality you are looking for or where you fight consisted of non-forgetfulness of fame and big business, then those institutions, the polis or civitas, which could ensure the continuity of memory .
Cicero had said that while men must die, communities [civitates] are intended to be eternal and only die as a result of their sins. Behind the many new beliefs looms clear the common experience of a world in decline, perhaps dying. And in his eschatological aspects of the "good news" of Christianity stated with finality: "You who have believed that men die but that the world is everlasting, you only need to reverse things, converts to the faith that the world has an end but yourself have eternal life. " In this way, of course, the problem of "justice", ie being worthy of this eternal life, plays a completely new, of a personal nature.
Hannah Arendt, "The life of the mind", Il Mulino, p.. 381
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