Questions about the will

Abstract

In this paper, I propose to review Hannah Arendt, H. (1978). The life of the mind. A Harvest Book. Harcourt, Inc perspective on the will and explore her possible contributions for a psychological reflection on this notion. Although willing and other neighbouring concepts such as volition or motivation have occupied many philosophers and other thinkers throughout history (O'Connor, T., & Franklin, C. (2021). Free Will. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/freewill/>), I focus here on Hanna Arendt’s book The life of mind (Arendt, H. (1978). The life of the mind. A Harvest Book. Harcourt, Inc), where she developed a perspective on willing that has been somewhat unexplored. In order to review her propositions and assess her contributions I proceed in three steps: Firstly, I follow Arendt’s argument and organise it along three questions she explicitly raises: (i) what is the relationship between time and the will? (ii) what affects – or passions – characterise willing?; and (iii) what are the products or results of willing? Secondly, I review psychological and psychoanalytical accounts of the will and I show that Arendt’s questions have been implicitly answered in the different perspectives reviewed. Explicitly, psychologists mainly defined the will in relation to products, such as action and consciousness of will, whilst psychoanalysts focused more explicitly on affects and temporality. Thus, thirdly, in reviewing these propositions, I try to show the value in making explicit three dimensions along which the will can be defined. In this way, from a psychological perspective, willing could be defined not only in relation to freedom, action and consciousness – as many have done – but also to time, affects and products, as Arendt proposed. This might provide a more comprehensive understanding leading us to develop tools for its study in empirical research.