Hannah Arendt
The Life of the Mind
The first woman appointed as Gifford Lecturer, Hannah Arendt investigates the fundamental elements of our mental lives, exploring the concepts of ‘thinking’ and ‘willing’. She provides an overview on how thinking contributes to discerning right from wrong, and the dichotomy between the responsibility of freedom or its abandonment, leading to fatalism. A third category, ‘judging’, was never completed due to her death in 1975. For Arendt, these themes are intimately bound together in the life of our minds.
1972-74
University of Aberdeen