The Life of the Mind in the horizon of the arendtian moral reflection

An analysis of thinking, will and judge

Abstract

After Arendt’s assistance to Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem a moral concern begins to develop, that will become more complex in the ’60 and ’70 with the introduction of the “faculties of the mind”: thinking, will and judge.
Arendt will carry out in her posthumous work The Life of the Mind a more complete develop of these faculties, although her investigation will remain inconclusive due to his death before writing the section dedicated to the judge. This work tries to show the possible articulation between thinking, will and judge, concentrating on the aforementioned posthumous work. Our reading horizon is that in The Life of the Mind, on the one hand, it is possible to find certain keys to think about that relation; on the other hand, that that relation has as a general direction the possibility of a postotalitarian ethic that can be thought on her unity with politics; at last, that the arendtian answer to the “moral question” gives certain priority to the faculty of judge as a centre of a mundane moral thinking, without neglecting the importance and the autonomy of thinking and the will.