Hannah Arendt explored the duality of the privately and publicly constructed realms which serve, through our thoughts and our actions, to position us in the world. She draws a distinction between the vita activa and the vita contemplativa, challenging prior conceptions of the radical division between the two. / I examine, in Arendt's work, the concepts of solitude and isolation and how these inform her discourse on reflective thinking. It is my argument that the distinction between these two concepts cannot be drawn as neatly as she attempted to do. These two states of being in fact meet in the figure of the pariah as critical thinker, as well as storyteller, and finally as a catalyst for public action. / I submit that there is a subtextual theme of temporality within Arendt's work and then move to demonstrate how this theme expresses the nature and context of thinking and judging, in relation to action. / Finally, I draw upon Arendt's distinctions between thinking and judging, arguing that one cannot be extracted from the other and that the two cannot be defined as autonomous, in the context of critical thinking. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.30845 |
| Date | January 2000 |
| Creators | Lax, Sharon. |
| Contributors | Szanto, George (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of English.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001807073, proquestno: MQ70549, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
Page generated in 0.0127 seconds