On Thinking with Hannah Arendt

Building on these questions raised by Hannah Arendt in The Life of the Mind, Dr. Karlina Supelli will deliver a lecture exploring this theme, as part of an ongoing discussion series commemorating the 50th anniversary of Arendt’s passing, organized in collaboration with STF Driyarkara. Joan Rumengan will moderate this program.
 
Arendt began writing The Life of the Mind out of her astonishment at the sheer shallowness of a man who had committed great crimes—a man who, she observed, seemed to lack thought altogether: he had no wicked motive, no hatred, no deep ideological conviction.
 
From this observation, Arendt turned her attention to three inner faculties of the human mind: thinking, willing, and judging. She imagined the world as a kind of stage—where actors perform and spectators observe. The actor, driven by will and action, brings new and unpredictable things into being. Yet will, she warns, can also become the seed of tyranny. Only the spectator—through thinking, through the exercise of multiple perspectives—can grasp meaning.
 
Between these two stands the judge: the human being capable of both observing and judging, of taking responsibility not only as a thinker but as a doer. Sadly, Arendt passed away before she could complete this final part of her book. Still, from her lectures and notes, we see that this figure of the judge embodies the moral bridge between freedom of will and the reality that gives meaning to thought.
 
In an age obsessed with results and measurable outputs, Arendt’s final work invites us to pause and think. Thinking, she insists, is not about producing results or proving anything. It is a search for meaning—its byproduct, the quiet voice of conscience. When moral collapse becomes widespread, thinking keeps a person alert, ready to judge with their own conscience rather than merely follow the crowd.
 
For this reason, thinking—an activity so silent and hidden—becomes profoundly political when it manifests in those who refuse to compromise with corrupt regimes, who resist the concealment of truth, and who refuse to protect cruelty. Conversely, the absence of thought can give rise to unspeakable evil—committed by people who, though obedient, no longer think.