Thinking without bannisters: Hannah Arendt and the life of the mind as a politics of thinking

Author(s)

Adriana Carvalho Novaes

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2017-04-26

Examining board members

Maurício Cardoso Keinert; Bethania de Albuquerque Assy; Yara Adario Frateschi; Alex de Campos Moura; Pedro Paulo Garrido Pimenta

• Advisor: Maurício Cardoso Keinert

Abstract

This thesis aims to demonstrate that the activities of the mind, to which Hannah Arendt dedicated herself in the last years of her life, were indeed elaborated throughout her work. To this end, the appropriations of Immanuel Kant\'s thinking were decisive, so was her criticism to the reductionism employed by modern thought in the interpretation of historical experiences. Arendt\'s method highlighted herein is two-fold. On the one hand, it identifies the origin and interpretation of experiences that have generated meanings. On the other, it shows how distancing from origins has transformed such meanings as well as how the limited approach imposed by the denial of the fact that human affairs are intrinsically contingent. The history of the way in which principles of philosophy were treated, and the reexamination of these meanings attributed to experience, guide Arendt\'s efforts through the elaboration of a politics of thinking, which is based on the defense of spontaneity and resistance. The violent context of the twentieth century, the unprecedented experience of evil brought out by totalitarianism, required the redefinition of the activities of our mind. From critique to functionalization and to totalizing and personalized concepts, Arendt fights the denial of philosophy and seeks to reconcile thought and action by redefining the activities of the mind and by defending the contingency and the unpredictability of history. Therefore, the activities of the mind thinking, willing and judging gain ontological status as affirmed as constitutive of the way in which individuals establish and share their existence and attributions of meaning. The assertion of the life of the mind by Arendt is given as thinking without bannisters, which means understanding philosophy as an interpretation of reality that is not left to be determined by any universalizing explanations, either by nature, by theory or ideology. Thus, she asserts the thinking without bannisters: the insecurity of philosophical thought as a politics of thinking. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 14/03164-7 - Fascination and uneasiness Hannah Arendt and the examination of the mind for a new political philosophy
• Grantee: Adriana Carvalho Novaes
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate