Chapter II – Overview of the Arendt’s Conception of Willing and Action
6. Three Mental Faculties Framework III: Willing
6.1 Willing and St. Augustine
國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
praised and anyhow held responsible not merely for its actions but for its whole ‘Being,’
its character.”53 It is true that without some freedom of choice a person may not be held accountable for his/her actions and there is no purpose of rewarding or punishing, praising or blaming someone in case his/her actions were predetermined.
In the beginning of The Life of the Mind Arendt explicitly states that “the notion of free will serves... as a necessary postulate of every ethics and every system of laws.”54
This essentially puts Arendt in the category of voluntarists (as opposed to determinists), who claim that a person is endowed with a free will and, moreover, has a positive freedom. Not only a negative one. In other words, a person is not only free from something (however, he is also not free from something else), but he possesses an authentic freedom to do something. These aspects of willing and freedom are to be discussed and examined in a greater detail in a later part of this paper, which will be dedicated to the phenomenology of willing per se.
6.1 Willing and St. Augustine
Arendt undertakes a study of St. Augustine’s conception of willing. She even utilizes some aspects of St. Augustine’s conception for her own theory.
Arendt agrees with St. Augustine that human choice is essentially free.55 This assertion may be challenged in view of St. Augustine’s theory of predestination, which is emphasized in his later writings, especially in his polemics with Pelagius and the pelagians, when he made an accent on the Divine Grace, rather than on human freedom, which was the decisive factor for salvation.
Another aspect of St. Augustine’s thought, which was emphasized by Arendt, is the notion of the ability of the will to reject the very existence of the willing subject, the
53 Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Willing. Pp. 214-215.
54 Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Willing. Pp. 4-5.
55 Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Willing. Pp. 88-89.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
ability to negate the world itself.56 This ability of the will is worth a close attention, since this ability does not necessarily involve imperative to an action. This rejection may be only mental. However, in her work Arendt claims that willing is limited to the realm of action: one may be willing to act, to choose a course of action and to issue an imperative to act accordingly. However, in a later part of this paper it will be claimed that willing is not limited to this realm, willing may apply to phenomena, which do not involve any action whatsoever.
Arendt also reflects upon St. Augustine’s claim that a person is called to create something new, this vocation is given to him since he is created in the Image of God and bears this Image of God. For St. Augustine the will is the faculty, which makes this possible, it makes possible all the unique free choices made by a human being. Arendt uses a notion of “a new beginning” to refer to this ability of humans.57
This notion is certainly related to the Kantian notion of a “faculty of spontaneously beginning a series in time”, which is possessed by a willing subject.
Arendt also seems to support St. Augustine’s idea that love may resolve the tension and inner conflict, which are characteristic of willing. This idea of love’s ability to still the turmoil of the will was also supported by Duns Scotus.
Even though overall Arendt is very supportive of St. Augustine’s teaching on will and freedom, she nevertheless expresses some criticism on some aspects of St.
Augustine’s thought. She claims that St. Augustine did not make a connection between the “liberum arbitrium” (the free choice of the will) and the idea that every person is a new beginning. Arendt mentions that if St. Augustine had “drawn the consequences of [his, K.C.] speculations, he would have defined the freedom of the Will not as... the free choice between willing and nilling, but as the freedom of which Kant speaks in the Critique of Pure Reason.”58 Here by “freedom” Arendt explicitly denotes the “faculty of
56 See Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Willing. Pp. 68-69.
57 Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Willing. P. 108.
58 Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Willing. P. 109.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
spontaneously beginning a series in time,”59 which is essentially the “freedom” in Kant’s understanding.
It is important to notice that Arendt attaches a special importance to St.
Augustine’s conceptions of “natality,” and “principium individuationis.” She notices that for St. Augustine, the first man who was created by God, i.e. Adam, was a “new beginning” (denoted by the Latin word “initium,” which is different from “principium”
that refers to the creation of the world). For St. Augustine this “new beginning” carries a very deep theological meaning, since creation of a human being is the ultimate goal or completion of God’s creation (these two meanings may be both expressed by the Greek word “τέλος”). According to St. Augustine, God has created this world for the purpose of creating man, who would be able to communicate directly with God. Thus, as long as there is a man and he has a relationship with God, existence of this world fulfils its purpose. For this reason creation of the first man is indeed “a new beginning,” it is a beginning of world’s life in its full sense. However, there were things, which existed before Adam, so the beginning of creation of those things is denoted by another word –
“principium.”
Arendt utilizes St. Augustine’s notion of “initium” for somewhat different purposes. First, she extends the notion of a “new beginning” (i.e. “initium”) to every newly born human being. This extension may be partly justifiable with respect to St.
Augustine’s thought, since for St. Augustine every person is created into image of God and the world exists for the sake of every human being and for the sake of his communication with God. However, this extension may also be criticized from the point of view of Augustine’s own thought: for St. Augustine the theology of Adam is fundamentally different from the theology of every other human being, and there was a distortion in the communication between God and man after the “original sin” of Adam, which had drastic consequences for the humans, who were subsequently born.
Our task here is not a theological discussion, so there is no need to consider St.
Augustine’s though any further now, it is only necessary to indicate that Arendt has
59 Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Willing. P. 110.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
extended St. Augustine’s thought without explicitly explaining the purpose and of this extension and any “injustice” this may imply to the purpose and intention of St.
Augustine’s own thinking on the “new beginning.”
What interests us the most for the purposes of the current research are the implications and philosophical significance of the notion of a “new beginning,” which it has in the philosophy of Arendt, as well as the implications of this concept for developing a phenomenological model of willing and action.
The main idea, which Arendt associated with the term “new beginning”, is that every person’s life is “inserted” into this world as a “new series of events in time,” and essentially it is a beginning of something entirely “new.” This also means that a man is not only a “beginning,” but is also a “beginner” of something “new.” Every human being is able to act in such a way, so that this will break all chains of causality, which exist in the world, and will “initiate” something entirely new. The mental “organ” of such action is the “will,” which constitutes this ability of every human person.
Stephan Kampowski expresses Arendt’s intuition in the following way:
…human action is at least analogous to the divine absolute first beginning insofar as nothing that preceded it can explain it sufficiently, i.e., given the same previous conditions – which are in fact true and given conditions – it could still have been otherwise.60
In other words, Arendt indicates that there is a deep similarity between the Divine act of Creation and human action, which is also not fully conditioned by any factors, and is a manifestation of the free will.
Another concept of St. Augustine, which Arendt relates directly to the will and to the notion of every man being a “new beginning” is the notion of the “principle of individuation” (“principium individuationis”). This principle relates human will to the
60 Kampowski Stephan. Arendt, Augustine, and the New Beginning. Cambridge: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2008. P. 150.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
“individuation” of every human person. Human will makes us act in some particular ways, which are peculiar to our own self and the unique setting in which we find ourselves. When we act in particular way, we express our self as different from other selves and in this respect “unique” and “particular,” rather than “general,” and attributable to all of mankind, to “humanity” as a general kind. For Arendt this principle is thus very important and relevant for her notion of the will, and she connects this principle with the notion of the “new beginning.” She even indicates that St. Augustine’s thought would be benefited by such a connection, i.e. if “he would have defined the freedom of the Will not as... the free choice between willing and nilling, but as the freedom of which Kant speaks in the Critique of Pure Reason.”61 Here she explicitly indicates at the “improvement,” which she proposes to make to St. Augustine’s conception of “freedom.” In other words, Arendt sees that St. Augustine’s conception of will implies the principle of individuation of human person through a unique free action;
however, St. Augustine does not explicitly unite these conceptions in his definition of
“freedom,” which is defined in terms of “choice,” rather than in terms of “beginning something new.”
It should be noted that the above discussions provides us not only Arendt’s interpretation and criticism of St. Augustine’s thought, but it also provides us some fundamental elements of Arendt’s own conceptions of will, freedom and action. These conceptions are to be further researched in this and in the following Chapters, and will also prove to be some of the main elements of the phenomenological framework of will and action, which is to be developed in the course of the present research inquiry.
For St. Augustine will is important for living in the temporal world, world in which a human person is separated from God. This separation brings in fragmentariness of human nature and life, it brings in separateness of humans as well as many deficiencies and imperfections, which require human action to be filled or removed.
Thus, there is need for will only in the life, which is deprived of eternal dimension.
Eternal dimension is brought in by God and is actualized in human hearts through love,
61 Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Willing. P. 109.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
which erases all separateness and scarcity. Thus, love is universal and thus will is in principle universal, since will is THE faculty, which develops into love as a human being progresses spiritually and with God’s help builds a Kingdom of Heaven within his heart. Arendt does not develop these theological aspects of Augustinian thought, but they prove to be highly relevant for developing a more universal and integrated theoretical framework of will. Thus, this notion of universalization of will is to be used for the purposes of current research inquiry.
It is also possible to relate the notions of “love” and “will” to the phenomenological notion of “intentionality”. The notion of “intentionality” is relevant to all aspects of phenomenological experience, since it directs human conscience towards intuiting some essence and draw in something “given” to us phenomenologically. It may be claimed that “love” has an “intentionalistic” nature, and thus “will” also has such nature. In any act of .intuiting something our will is getting involved. Thus, it is possible to universalize will’s application and expand its relevance to all fields of human experiences, and to apply both to “internal” and “external” factors of the phenomenology of human conscience.
For the purposes of current research we shall thus utilize this universal applicability of “will” and expand its application to all phenomena of human conscience, since all of them involve intentionality. It should be indicated that such application is valid and firmly grounded in phenomenological experience. It is by no means just an idea borrowed from St. Augustine.
In the following sections we will discuss Arendt’s treatment of philosophical conceptions of Duns Scotus and Kant in view of the above discussed conceptions, which according to Arendt have their insightful expression in the philosophical and theological thinking of St. Augustine.