Hannah Arendt opens her work with a question: Can thinking impact morality? Her experience writing about the Eichmann trial showed her that evil relies on thoughtlessness. Eichmann was thoughtless, and therefore capable of participating in atrocities without ever examining the meaning of his deeds. Thus, throughout The Life of the Mind, Arendt wrestles with the moral importance of thinking.

However, Arendt is careful throughout the work to separate thinking from morality itself. She repeatedly reminds readers that the activity of thinking has no guaranteed product. To think is to enter into a silent dialogue with oneself, what she calls the “two-in-one.” This inner dialogue can produce consistency of character and provide a defense against thoughtlessness. The function of thinking is to produce meaning. This is not the same thing as truth; however, since thinking is rooted in meaning, it wards against the type of banality exhibited by Eichmann.

Willing, on the other hand, represents freedom. Drawing from Augustine, Nietzsche, and others, Arendt shows how the tradition of philosophy understood the Will as the force of beginning, the inner push that makes action possible. The inner conflict which arises demonstrates the limitations of the Will as a moral guide: The Will may enable new beginnings, but it does not resolve the question of how to evaluate the moral worth of those actions.

This is why judgment becomes so essential to Arendt’s thesis. Although she never had the opportunity to complete the final volume of her work on Judging, the book offers notes that indicate where she is headed. Where thinking is a silent dialogue of the self and Willing is the push to begin, judging brings the individual into plurality. By taking an enlarged standpoint and accounting for the experiences of others, judging roots us in collective experience. Thinking is a defense against thoughtlessness, but it is neither innately evil nor good. Will does not shape morality, because it is not explicitly free and it is innately conflicted. Arendt argues that morality emerges from Judging. Morality arises not as obedience to rules, but as the cultivated ability to see from multiple perspectives and to make decisions about right and wrong.

This orientation to plurality is crucial. For Arendt, morality does not emerge from submission to external authority nor from the sovereign power of the Will. Instead, it grows from humans’ capacity to see and evaluate the experiences of others. In this sense, morality is inherently political—not because it is about policy or law, but because it arises from the very condition of plurality.