Hannah Arendt's last work, The Life of the Mind, was published in 1978 in two volumes entitled, Thinking and Willing. She planned to write a third volume, “Judging,” and in fact had just begun writing it the day she died. Instead of the final book, “Judging,” Willing, the second volume of The Life of the Mind, contains excerpts from her lectures on Kant's political philosophy and theory of judgment given at the New School for Social Research in 1970. From these excerpts we can get some idea of Arendt's theory of judgment, although we will never know her final thoughts on this subject since she intended to revise and expand the lectures for the “Judging” volume.

The world is entering yet another age of economics. Virtually all the major problems which preoccupy governments are economic problems — problems of growth and limits, food and fuel, employment and inflation, productivity and expanding populations, development and justice. The official documents of the churches since Rerum Novarum (1891) seem more and more preoccupied with economics. Yet there is hardly a less developed area in the tradition of Christian thought, whether in philosophy or in theology, than the relation of Christianity to economics.

Of the many fascinating episodes that punctuate the diplomatic history of World War II, few have intrigued scholars more than the secret Balkan spheres-of-action agreement worked out by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Marshal Josef Stalin at the Anglo-Soviet conference (British code-named TOLSTOY) held in Moscow in the autumn of 1944. It was late in the evening of 9 October. In his first encounter with Stalin since the meeting of the Big Three at Teheran in 1943, Churchill, believing “the moment … apt for business,” appealed to the Soviet dictator to “Let us settle about our affairs in the Balkans.” Specifically, he went on, “We have interests, missions, and agents there. Don't let us get at cross-purposes in small ways.

The present crisis has generated intense debate over the instruments of foreign policy the United States has at its disposal and controversy over their use in particular stages of a dispute or conflict. The debate has centered over the meaning and use of power and force. A little more than a decade ago, writing On Violence in an era when its primary manifestation was within national boundaries, the American political philosopher, the late Hannah Arendt, sought to distinguish between violence and power, saying: “… power always stands in need of numbers, whereas violence up to a point … relies on implements.” Writers differ on concepts such as power and violence. Power for some is conceived as the ability of the individual or the group to impose its will on others. Power for Arendt implied the human ability to act in concert —potestas in populo; without a people or group there is no power in politics. Power for individuals and groups is linked with prestige and authority. In politics, authority requires respect either for a person or an office; its enemy is contempt or laughter directed at the person or office. In both foreign relations and domestic affairs, “violence appears as a last resort to keep … power … intact against individual challengers — the foreign enemy, the native criminal …” or to overthrow authority. It would seem, therefore, that force and violence are the prerequisites of power and power nothing but a facade. In a violent world, it is force that counts not power which is dependent on force.

Throughout the ages it has been held that leisure is the basis of culture. This view can be found in the Old Testament and in Plato, in Burke, Marx, Veblen, and in T. S. Eliot. Whether they were glad for it or sad, people seem to have always taken it for granted that in order to have culture one must first have leisure. Applicable to society as well as to individuals, this rule was put concisely by Dr. Johnson as follows: “All intellectual improvement arises from leisure; all leisure arises from one working for another.”