Willing and action

Abstract

Why did Hannah Arendt, in her book on The Life of the Mind, select thinking, willing and judging as the basic faculties of the mind in preference to some others which might be equally plausible? Why did she conceptualise these three faculties as autonomous, each being an activity with its own features, self-motivation and self-determination? If willing is necessarily bound with freedom, what does it indicate about the constraints of freedom in political actions? In this article, I am addressing these questions and attempting to explore them in relation to political psychology. In contrast to Arendt’s perspective, one can discern different forms of willing in political actions, such as those between minorities and majorities, in single individuals and in masses where willing is often displayed as a ‘collective will’.