Common sense has a basis in the apparent world, but thinking requires the removal from the world of appearances. In the thinking realm, time and space are abolished. The thinking ego is entirely separate from the world. However, for the thinking ego to exist, the individual must have a life in the apparent world: “What is happiness, what is justice, what is knowledge, and so on, we must have seen happy and unhappy people, witnessed just and unjust deeds, experienced the desire to know and its fulfillment or frustration” (87). Although the thinking ego requires experience in the apparent world, it is thinking that gives meaning to what occurs in the realm of reality. Reflection on experience offers this meaning.

Arendt suggests that because professional thinkers must return to appearance, they are caught in a war between thinking and common sense. While philosophy places thinking above common sense, philosophy is criticized by common sense for how little it has to say about the apparent world.

Arendt explains that the previous chapter has expanded upon what happens when philosophers spend too much time in the metaphysical realm and the thinking ego while ignoring or avoiding the world of appearances. Willing and judging are reliant upon having their feet in the appearing world. Withdrawal into the intellectual alters the function of judgment. Arendt argues that when a philosopher stays in the metaphysical realm, their judgment becomes that of a spectator rather than someone who is participating in the political and social experience.

All mental activities are manifested through speech. Humans think in language and share their thoughts and ideas using speech. Arendt explains that the compulsion to express thoughts through language is inevitable: “Just as appearing beings living in a world of appearances have an urge to show themselves, so thinking beings…have an urge to speak and thus to make manifest what otherwise would not be a part of the appearing world at all” (98). She explains that this urge comes from plurality, which forms the foundation of humanity. Humans need to express their thoughts because they live in a plural world with others. The body, however, expresses the inner workings of the soul.

Language is inadequate to fully manifest thoughts. Since language is innately abstract, it cannot present ideas in a concrete manner. Arendt asserts that the metaphor comes closest to expressing the inner workings of the mind.

Our preference for language or hearing over vision comes from our origin in Greek language, which emphasizes sound over visual. One of the greatest tools for expressing thinking is the metaphor which draws its analogies from the apparent world. This differs from how judging communicates, which Arendt explains is through the metaphor of taste. While they are useful for expressing thoughts, they offer imperfect representations. When metaphors attempt to describe abstract concept using the apparent world, they offer only a glimpse of one part of the idea.

Arendt describes metaphors as the string that connects the apparent world to thinking. She challenges the notion of the Cartesian world—the idea that there are two worlds, that of the body and that of the mind. Rather than two worlds, there is only one, connected through metaphor.