Chapter III - Willing as a Reaction to External Conditions
3. Willing as a Reaction to the Immanent (Internal) Conditions
3.1. Internal Experiences in Question
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transformation into Love. The Will seen in its functional operative aspect as a coupling, binding agent – can also be defined as Love…, for Love is obviously the most successful coupling agent.134
No matter whether the above interpretation of Arendt is correct or not, it is certain that there is a need to consider the phenomenology of love in order to obtain a deeper understanding into the phenomenology of will with respect to the internal factors influencing it.
This certainly does not mean that love is to be categorized as a purely internal factor. There is normally some external factor, which is an object of love. Moreover, there may be external influences, which facilitate and even shape our feeling of love.
However, love is not an external factor itself, it should be rooted in the Ego, otherwise there is no question of personal love, the love, which stems from the personality of a loving subject. Phenomenology of such a love in its relation to willing and to internal factors related to willing thus will also be explored in this chapter.
3.1. Internal Experiences in Question
The main types of experiences to consider in this chapter are those of interest, choice, preference, deliberating, striving, and judging consequences. All of these factors are immediate manifestations of the will and the practical reason, which is the organ of the will. Such factors as appetite, desire, passion, inclination and need are to be distinguished from the experiences of the will, since they do not possess the freedom, which is a core principle of the will due to its autonomous character. Analyzing these main types of experiences will yield us the main framework for the transcendental analysis of various willing phenomena. At first, individual instances of these experiences are to be looked at, then the various kinds of experiences will be analyzed one by one
134 Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Willing. P. 102.
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and in their interrelationship, finally a framework for the philosophy of the will will be formed and other related sub-types of experiences related to willing will be incorporated into this framework.
A first step in constructing a phenomenological theory of the Will, it is necessary to complete a phenomenological survey of the phenomena, which may be directly related to willing (later we will also develop a method for assessing whether such phenomena is indeed related to the Will).
4. Arendt’s Contribution
In philosophy there have been various philosophical positions with respect to will.
Some philosophers held it to be an autonomous faculty of human soul, others held that willing is a mental process and thus is a part of thinking and reasoning. Yet some thinkers were reluctant to place Will in a certain category and were more concerned with concrete aspects of willing.
Arendt uses the terms "faculty," "activity," "organ," and "capacity" to the three basic abilities or functions of mind135.
In The Life of the Mind Arendt explicitly states that willing is a distinct faculty or activity of mind:
Thinking, willing, and judging are the three basic mental activities; they cannot be derived from each other and though they have certain common characteristics they cannot be reduced to a common denominator.136
This statement is a strong assertion, here Arendt states that there are ONLY three BASIC mental activities and that they can neither be derived from each other nor be reduced to a common denominator. There are certainly philosophers, who would
135 See LOM II, 4-5, 18 and LOM I, 214-15.
136 Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Thinking. P. 69.
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disagree with all of these points, Arendt’s position on these matters is one of many.
Keeping this in mind, we will later try to determine whether Arendt’s idea that willing is a separate mental faculty may be supported by our internal experiences (the
“phenomena” of Will).
It should be noted that the very notion of a “mental faculty” may be misleading.
The notion of “mental faculty” implies that our mind has various active agents, each of which is responsible of doing something pertaining solely to that faculty (“faculty”
comes from the Latin word “facere” – to act, to do). However, if every mental faculty is autonomous, then why do we introduce the notion of “mind”? What does “the mind” do, if everything is performed by the autonomous faculties? Hopefully, these questions are to be answered later on in the course of this research.
Arendt explains what she means by “basic mental activities”: “I called these mental activities basic because they are autonomous; each of them obeys the laws inherent in the activity itself.”137 She holds that willing is autonomous and obeys its own laws.
“Autonomous” here means being independent of the two other faculties – thinking and judging.
Throughout The Life of the Mind Arendt criticizes other “professional thinkers”
of being somewhat detached from reality and the sphere of action, which in Arendt’s opinion leads to many fallacies and inadequate speculations, which does not explain the actual “experiences” or “phenomena”. Thus it is surprising to discover that Arendt herself makes theoretical statements, which are at variance with many everyday phenomena pertaining to Will.
For example, when we are willing something to happen, is our will independent of what we know about this matter and about all the relevant conditions and consequences of this happening? Or is our will independent of our judgment about
137 Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Thinking. P. 70.
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something: whether it is virtuous, lawful, effective, worthy or unworthy of our efforts, etc.?
Let us consider a particular example. Let us suppose that we are willing to purchase a car. There are several conditions present, which make such a willing possible.
At first, we should understand what a car is, how it is used, what do we need it for, etc.
Knowing all of this is impossible without thinking. In addition to this, we need to consider and to judge what are the benefits and shortcomings of purchasing and possessing a car, then we need to judge, which benefits and/or shortcomings are most important and finally decide whether it is worthwhile buying a car and, if yes, what kind of car. Here our judgment is involved and it must also cooperate with willing (e.g. when our willing is too strong, our judgment may be biased).
Arendt wants to build a neat model having thinking, willing and judging each rest on a particular shelf. However, this is a simplification, which fails explaining many phenomena adequately.
In our research, we thus will not be bound by this speculative structure of three autonomous “mental faculties”, but we will nevertheless utilize many of Arendt’s findings and observations about the Will.
When commenting on Kant Arendt indicates that “in Kant, it is reason with its
“regulative ideas” that comes to the help of judgment; but if the faculty is separate from other faculties of the mind, then we shall have to ascribe to it its own modus operandi, is own way of proceeding.”138 This is a tautology, Arendt is saying that if a faculty is separate from other faculties, then it should be ascribed its own modus operandi. This statement may be reversed: if some faculty has its own modus operandi, then we should consider it being a separate faculty. There is very little value added in such statements.
Essentially what Arendt does is POSITING that the faculties ARE separate, and then deduces that they thus have their own modus operandi.
138 Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Postscriptum to Thinking. P. 216.
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When distinguishing willing and judging from thinking Arendt writes in The Life of the Mind:
In the second volume of this work I shall deal with willing and judging, the two other mental activities. Looked at from the perspective of these time speculations, they concern matters that are absent either because they are not yet [willing] or because they are no more [judging]; but in contradistinction to the thinking activity, which deals with the invisibles in all experience and always tends to generalize, they always deal with particulars and in this respect are much closer to the world of appearances.139
This citation presents to us some important elements of the theoretical framework utilized by Arendt. It sounds very neat and appealing, however, it is necessary to make some clarifications and corrections in order to avoid additional philosophical “fallacies”.
In her opinion thinking deals with “invisibles” and “always tends to generalize”, while willing and judging always deal with particulars. However, in reality thinking does not always generalize, it must also think about particulars and about concrete experiences. In fact most of the people most of the time deal and think with particulars, and make generalizations for a greater convenience IN DEALING WITH PARTICULARS.
In Arendt’s opinion “…thinking is an indispensable preparation for deciding what shall be [i.e. the realm of willing, K.C.] and for evaluating what is no more [the realm of judging, K.C.].”140 In other words, Arendt places the three mental faculties on a time scheme: thinking is concerned with what is above time (the “nunc stans” – the now, which is above the flow of time and concrete happenings), willing is concerned with future: what does one want to achieve in the future, and judging is concerned with the past: how does one evaluate concrete happenings, which happened in the past with the
139 Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Postscriptum to Thinking. P. 213.
140 Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Postscriptum to Thinking. P. 213.
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aid of universal principles. This scheme of relating mental faculties to the time-continuum is not a strict rule, it is only a generalization, which helps Arendt make some inferences. However, Arendt herself overcomes this scheme and acknowledges that judging is not concerned only with the past, and thinking may be concerned with anything in past, present and future. Nevertheless, Arendt is quite explicit in claiming that “the will is the organ for the future.” This claim is quite strong and it is necessary to determine whether it corresponds to reality.
Arendt clarifies a connection between judgment and willing: “since the past, being past, becomes subject to our judgment, judgment, in turn, would be a mere preparation for willing.”141 Here it is clear, that for Arendt “past” is subject to judgment, and it is a preparation for willing (i.e. for what is related to the future). One may question whether this is indeed so Arendt presents to us a neat theoretical scheme of the three faculties, which is appealing, however, it should be determined, whether this scheme adequately describes reality. Before doing this it is necessary to get a fuller understanding of Arendt’s own ideas on this issue.
According to Arendt, neither thinking nor irrational desire does not determine willing absolutely, since willing is an autonomous mental activity. She observes that:
The decision the will arrives at can never be derived from the mechanics of desire or the deliberations of the intellect that may precede it. The will is either an organ of free spontaneity that interrupts all causal chains of motivation that would bind it or it is nothing but an illusion. In respect to desire, on one hand, and to reason, on the other, the will acts like “a kind of coup d'état,” as Bergson once said, and this implies, of course, that free acts are exceptional’… In other words, it is impossible to deal with the willing activity without touching on the problem of freedom.142
141 Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Postscriptum to Thinking. P. 213.
142 Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Postscriptum to Thinking. Pp. 213-214.
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According to Arendt, willing is the “spring of action”, it makes humans capable of beginning something new and thereby their actions are purposeful. When commenting on Kant’s Third Critique she says:
Kant’s own answer to this perplexity [what is the purpose of the existence of humans and of the Universe?], as derived from the second part of the Critique of Judgment, would have been: We ask such questions as What is the purpose of nature?
Only because we ourselves are purposive beings who constantly design aims and ends and belong, as such intentional beings, to nature. In the same vein, one could answer the question why we perplex ourselves with such obviously unanswerable questions as Does the world or the universe have a beginning, or is it, like God Himself, from eternity to eternity? By pointing to the fact that it is in our very nature to be beginners and hence to constitute beginnings throughout our lives.143
Arendt gives the following interpretation of Kant’s thought:
…judgment of the particular – This is beautiful, This is ugly; This is right, This is wrong – has no place in Kant’s moral philosophy. Judgment is not practical reason; practical reason “reasons” and tells me what to do and what not to do; it lays down the law and is identical with the will, and the will utters commands; it speaks in imperatives. Judgment, on the contrary, arises from “a merely contemplative pleasure or inactive delight.”(Kant, Introduction to The Metaphysics of Morals, section I.)144
143 Arendt, Hannah. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. Edited by Beiner, Ronald. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2007. P. 13.
144 Arendt, Hannah. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. P. 15.
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Arendt notices that the realm of the willing faculty is the internal life of human mind. Even though willing may be directed upon external objects (projects may also be called “objects” here), these objects have to be first internalized by the Ego for the mental act of willing to take place. Arendt observes that “this faculty [willing] was
“discovered,” that we can date this discovery historically, and that we shall thereby find that it coincides with the discovery of human “inwardness” as a special region of our life.”145
Arendt considers willing to be a “paradoxical and self-contradictory faculty,”146 for the reason that “every volition, since it speaks to itself in imperatives, produces its own counter-volition.”147
Arendt also holds that:
…volition is the inner capacity by which men decide about “whom” they are going to be, in what shape they wish to show themselves in the world of appearances. In other words, it is the will, whose subject matter is projects, not objects, which in a sense creates the person that can be blamed or praised and anyhow held responsible not merely for its actions but for its whole “Being,” its character.148
This observation may be analyzed with the help of Husserl’s notion of habitus, which is a pre-conscious character of a person, being conditioned by nature and by the past actions of a man. In Chapter V we will deal more closely with the internal factors influencing will.
145 Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Postscriptum to Thinking. P. 214.
146 Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Postscriptum to Thinking. P. 214.
147 Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Postscriptum to Thinking. P. 214.
148 Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Postscriptum to Thinking. Pp. 214-215.
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