J
Vol.
No.
1 (April 2.
: 131-156 DOI: 10.
36383/diskursusv22i1.
THE BANALITY OF NECESSITY: A MATERIALIST
CORRECTION TO HANNAH ARENDTAoS ETHICS
OF THINKING
Department of English.
Universitas Kristen Krida Wacana.
Jakarta.
Indonesia E-mail: galangardana68@gmail.
Received: 29 Dec 2025 Revised: 14 Mar 2026 Accepted: 16 Mar 2026 Abstract: This article problematizes Hannah ArendtAos concept of thinking in The Life of the Mind, especially the tension between the activity of thinking as an internal dialogue .
wo-in-on.
and the material conditions necessary for it.
Based on the phenomenon of AuthoughtlessnessAy .
una piki.
, this work contends that the lack of thinking in the precarious subject is not a moral failure, but a structural outcome of the political economy of time.
With a materialist framework using MarxAos alienation and JamesonAos political unconscious, this article stages a phenomenological critique of three literary works: Ahmad TohariAos Orang-Orang Proyek.
Kazuo IshiguroAos The Remains of the Day, and Franz KafkaAos The Trial.
The analysis uncovers that the total consumption of the body (Tohar.
, the commodiycation of the self (Ishigur.
, and the colonization of time (Kafk.
are, by their nature, the reasons why the AuwithdrawalAy Arendt needs for judgment is not possible.
This article ends with the idea of the Banality of NecessityAia state in which the survival imperative closes down critical reyectionAiwhich constitutes a materialist correction to ArendtAos ethics.
Keywords: Hannah Arendt, materialism, thoughtlessness, precarity.
Abstrak: Artikel ini mempersoalkan konsep AuberpikirAy .
dalam ylsafat Hannah Arendt, khususnya ketegangan antara aktivitas berpikir sebagai dialog batin .
wo-in-on.
dengan kondisi material yang Berangkat dari fenomena tuna pikir, penelitian ini mengajukan tesis bahwa absennya aktivitas berpikir pada subjek prekariat bukanlah kegagalan moral, melainkan konsekuensi struk131 The Banality of Necessity (Stefanus Galang Ardan.
tural dari ekonomi politik waktu.
Dengan menggunakan kerangka materialis yang mengacu pada konsep alienasi Marx dan nirsadar politik Jameson, artikel ini melakukan kritik fenomenologis atas tiga karya sastra: Orang-Orang Proyek (Ahmad Tohar.
The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishigur.
, dan The Trial (Franz Kafk.
Analisis menunjukkan bahwa konsumsi total atas tubuh (Tohar.
, komodiykasi diri (Ishigur.
, dan kolonisasi waktu (Kafk.
secara struktural menghalangi Aupenarikan diriAy .
yang disyaratkan Arendt.
Artikel ini menyimpulkan dengan mengajukan konsep AuBanalitas KeniscayaanAy (The Banality of Necessit.
Aisebuah kondisi di mana imperatif bertahan hidup mematikan reyeksi kritisAisebagai koreksi materialis terhadap etika Arendt.
Kata-kata Kunci: Hannah Arendt, materialisme, tuna pikir, prekaritas.
INTRODUCTION Hannah Arendt, towards the end of her life, shifted her philosophical attention to the mind itself, focusing especially on the act of thinking.
The Life of the Mind .
, which was published posthumously, she explores what it truly means to think.
For Arendt, thinking is not an abstract or lofty process.
Instead, it is something fundamental and deeply personalAia quiet inner dialogue she refers to as the Autwo-in-one.
Ay1 This process is more than just daydreaming.
It is the genuine capacity to pause, to step away from the rush of everyday life and reyect, even if only brieyy.
That basic actAistopping everything to thinkAibreaks through routine, allowing us to look beyond the surface of things.
ArendtAos primary point in looking at this mental operation was to ygure out where the most radical kind of evil in modern times came from.
Her looking at the issue came off the Aubanality of evilAy in Adolf Eichmann.
What she saw was that Eichmann was not a demon of a kind who was fuelled by a shockingly angry malicious intent, but rather he was characterized by AuthoughtlessnessAyAia lack of any kind of critical inner Hannah Arendt.
The Life of the Mind, one-volume ed.
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1.
, 185.
DISKURSUS.
Volume 22.
Nomor 1.
April 2026: 131-156 dialogue with himself.
Consequently.
Arendt posed a pivotal question: is it possible that thinking as such, independently of its content or result, is what makes human beings capable of not doing evil? For Arendt, banal evil is Authought-defyingAy precisely because it lacks depth or roots.
The close connection of the freedom to think with the prevention of evil as uncovered by ArendtAos analysis is still very much alive in the modern-day context.
She doesnAot simply dismiss evil as something monstrous and uncommon.
she examines how evil can hide within everyday routines and ordinary behavior.
This view makes her work essential for understanding how regular people might end up committing terrible acts when they stop thinking for themselves.
Today, with so many intense discussions about ethics and morality, her call to truly think for ourselves seems more urgent than ever.
This urgency is clear in, for instance.
Karlina SupelliAos lecture, which highlights just how vital it is to keep questioning and thinking clearly as the world becomes more complex.
3 This issue has also been picked up by educational philosophy lately,4 when Michalinos Zembylas points out the emergence of a Auworld alienationAy of increasing intensity, a situation which requires the continuous development of oneAos thinking ability so as to effectively resist systemic disinformation and the depletion of truth.
Having said that.
Zembylas stresses the educational imperative of thinking but simultaneously observes that the ability itself is being threatened by the architectural forces which divide and tire the Still, if we consider ArendtAos command to Austop and thinkAy as something that should be done in every socio-political situation of the present day, it results in a contradiction that calls for an immanent critique.
Even though thinking, according to Arendt, is a faculty that is beyond instru2 Elisabeth Young-Bruehl.
Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (New Haven.
CT: Yale University Press, 1.
, 369.
AuBerpikir bersama Hannah ArendtAy .
Goethe-Institut Indonesia in collaboration with STF Driyarkara.
Jakarta.
November 22, 2.
Michalinos Zembylas.
AuHannah Arendt and the Post-Truth Era: Rethinking Political Education,Ay Journal of Philosophy of Education 60, nos.
1Ae2 .
: 365Ae82, https://doi.
org/10.
1093/jopedu/qhaf046.
The Banality of Necessity (Stefanus Galang Ardan.
mental knowledge, the very moment of withdrawal it necessitates is dependent on time, space, and freedom.
5 Thinking has, in fact, been closely associated with being free from Auearthly cares.
Ay6 This brings about an important paradox: Arendt frequently criticized and was trying to exclude biological needsAithe domain of labor and necessityAifrom the political In late capitalism,8 which is characterized by great insecurity and a shortage of time, the question becomes very important: materially, can all individuals afford the liberty to slow down and reyect? Is not the moral requirement to thinkAiregarded as a condition for being AusomebodyAyAi somehow at odds with the pressing biological need to work in order to live .
nimal laboran.
? This conyict between Arendtian ethics and impelling necessity for survival through work is where this articleAos materialist critique takes its departure.
My critique revolves mainly around what I call the Banality of Necessity: a situation where the basic requirements for biological survival and the total control of time in late capitalism get rid of the possibility of AuwithdrawalAy which is necessary for moral Unlike ArendtAos idea of the Aubanality of evilAyAiwhich results from a choice not to thinkAithe banality of necessity is when the basic material and time conditions for reyection are deliberately removed, so Marie Morgan.
AuHannah Arendt and the AoFreedomAo to Think,Ay Journal of Educational Administration and History 48, no.
: 173Ae82.
Ian Storey.
AuFacing the End: The Work of Thinking in the Late Denktagebuch,Ay in Artifacts of Thinking: Reading Hannah ArendtAos Denktagebuch, ed.
Roger Berkowitz and Ian Storey (New York: Fordham University Press, 2.
, 172.
in {\\i{}Artifacts of Thinkin.
, ed.
Ian Storey and Roger Berkowitz.
Reading Hannah Arendt\\uc0\\u8217{}s Denktagebuch (Fordham University Press, 2.
, 172.
Amy Allen.
AuSolidarity after Identity Politics: Hannah Arendt and the Power of Feminist Theory,Ay Philosophy & Social Criticism 25, no.
: 97Ae118.
Angela Last.
AuRe-Reading Worldliness: Hannah Arendt and the Question of Matter,Ay Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 35, no.
: 72Ae87.
I follow Ernest Mandel .
and Fredric Jameson .
in using the term Aulate capitalismAy to denote the post-World War II stage of globalized, multinational capital.
Unlike earlier competitive or imperialist stages, late capitalism is characterized by the total commodiycation of all spheres of human existenceAiincluding time, the psyche, and the Auworld of appearances.
Ay For the purposes of this article, its deyning feature is the Autime-space compressionAy (Harvey, 1.
that eliminates the temporal surplus required for the vita contemplativa.
DISKURSUS.
Volume 22.
Nomor 1.
April 2026: 131-156 that thoughtlessness becomes a structural outcome rather than a moral The concepts of Thinking and Judging in an Arendtian framework and their moral implications have been the focus of a lot of debate in the works of various scholars.
Seyla Benhabib, among others, engaged in the interpretative work of Authinking with and against ArendtAy and identiyed a Aunormative lacunaAy in ArendtAos ethics.
9 Some other critics emphasize the omission of a politico-economic analysis in ArendtAos work, such as poverty, which she ygured as outside the political domain.
10 However, these confrontations seldom challenge the politico-economic conditions for thinking to be possible.
it is as if the material conditions for the vita contemplativa are presumed to be already there.
11 Steven Klein, for instance, notices that Arendt did not follow up her insights about the worldly character of the economy with a deeper investigation.
12 This paper intends to close that gap by providing a materialist correction to Arendtian ethics.
This article explores this tension by drawing on materialism and MarxismAifocusing on MarxAos concept of alienation and Fredric JamesonAos idea of the Aupolitical unconscious.
Ay Rather than seeing work as simply something people must do, this perspective exposes it as a system that ensnares individuals, preventing any real escape.
To examine this.
I employ a kind of phenomenological simulation: I analyze a selection of literary textsAiAhmad TohariAos Orang-Orang Proyek .
Kazuo IshiguroAos The Remains of the Day .
, and KafkaAos The Trial .
I approach these works as cognitive laboratories, spaces to probe and challenge how people think when subjected to relentless labour and ongoing insecurity.
Seyla Benhabib.
The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt, new ed.
(Lanham.
MD:
Rowman & Littleyeld, 2.
, 193.
10 Last.
AuRe-Reading Worldliness,Ay 72Ae87.
Nica Siegel.
AuThe Roots of Crisis: Interrupting ArendtAos Radical Critique,Ay Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 62, no.
: 60Ae79.
11 Ville Suuronen.
AuResisting Biopolitics: Hannah Arendt as a Thinker of Automation.
Social Rights, and Basic Income,Ay Alternatives: Global.
Local.
Political 43, no.
35Ae53.
12 Steven Klein.
AuAoFit to Enter the WorldAo: Hannah Arendt on Politics.
Economics, and the Welfare State,Ay American Political Science Review 108, no.
: 856Ae69.
The Banality of Necessity (Stefanus Galang Ardan.
In this way, literature does more than mirror realityAiit transforms experiences into Authought-things,Ay tools that allow us to investigate what lies beneath the surface of this crisis.
This article contends that AuthoughtlessnessAy as a phenomenon in the precarious subject should not be considered a moral failure, but rather a structural result of how the economic system steals time.
The main novelty of this article, which is a materialist correction, moves the emphasis from individual moral responsibility (Arend.
to the system critique that conditions the subject to be simply homo oeconomicus.
Accordingly, this article is in agreement with ArendtAos critique of the perils of thoughtlessness, and at the same time, it adjusts her ethical assumption which disregards the material conditions for intellectual freedom.
The argument will yrst look into the analysis of the anatomy of Arendtian prerequisites for thinking, then the politico-economic framework of time in late capitalism followed by a literary constellation analysis as a phenomenological simulation of the death of critical power.
THE ANATOMY OF PRIVILEGE IN THE LIFE OF THE
MIND
Hannah Arendt identiyes thinking as one of the primary mental fac- ulties which is different from, although often mixed up with the pursuit of knowledge.
This notion is in line with Reason (Vernunf.
, which, according to Kant.
Arendt considers to be different from Intellect (Verstan.
Intellect is related to cognition aimed at truthAiseeking certain and veriyable knowledgeAiwhile Reason is involved in the never-ending search for Thinking is the process of giving something its being, not asking what it is or if it exists, but Auwhat it means for it to be.
Ay13 In his recent article,14 Wout Cornelissen reconsiders ArendtAos last work and contends that thinking is to be seen as a Aupractice of orientationAyAia necessary mental function which helps to resist the mechanical, pre-digested responses that 13 Arendt.
The Life of the Mind, 57.
14 Wout Cornelissen.
AuSwitching Perspectives: Reading ArendtAos The Life of the Mind Anew,Ay Arendt Studies 9 .
: 21Ae49, https://doi.
org/10.
5840/arendtstudies202594.
DISKURSUS.
Volume 22.
Nomor 1.
April 2026: 131-156 characterize modern life.
This AuorientationAy is far from being a simple matter of cognition.
rather, it is an existential one demanding a steady position which is under continuous threat by the changes of late capitalism.
What drove Arendt to explore this question in The Life of the Mind was her experience observing Adolf Eichmann, a man whose crimes shocked her not because of any profound evil, but because of his total absence of She didnAot see a monster.
Instead, she saw someone disturbingly ordinary, indifferent, and unthinking.
Arendt described this as Auheedless recklessness or hopeless confusion or complacent repetition of AotruthsAo which have become trivial and empty.
Ay15 This realization led her to ask whether the very act of thinkingAiof questioning, reyecting, refusing to accept easy answersAihelps prevent people from committing evil, or perhaps even protects them from it.
Thinking removes us from the world of appearances16 and political activity.
It requires a genuine interruptionAia moment to Austop and thinkAy that blocks out everything else for a time.
17 This is the idea behind CatoAos words at the beginning of ArendtAos book: AuNumquam se plus agere quam nihil cum ageret, numquam minus solum esse quam cum solus esset,Ay meaning Aunever am I less alone than when I am by myself, never am I more active than when I do nothing.
Ay18 In short, thinking may seem like inactivity, but it is far from empty.
It is restless, ongoing, and never produces a ynal product.
Arendt describes it as a kind of windAiconstantly moving, continually thawing out rigid ideas, but never settling or building anything solid to grasp.
She likens it to PenelopeAos web: each day, you unravel what you completed the previous night.
19 Cognition, by contrast, 15 Hannah Arendt.
The Human Condition (Garden City.
NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1.
, 6.
16 By the Auworld of appearances,Ay Arendt refers to the public realmAithe space of Auhuman togethernessAy where individuals disclose their unique identities through speech and action.
To AuappearAy is to be seen and heard by others in a common world.
it is the domain of political life.
However, the mental act of thinking necessitates a temporary retreat from this surface world into the invisible, silent dialogue of the Autwo-in-oneAy 17 Arendt.
The Life of the Mind, 175.
18 Arendt.
The Life of the Mind, 216.
19 Arendt.
The Life of the Mind, 88.
The Banality of Necessity (Stefanus Galang Ardan.
provides us with a Autreasure of knowledgeAy20Aisomething lasting.
Thinking does not.
It slips outside normal space and time, allowing the mind to gather fragments of past and present into an Auenduring present.
Ay In this realm, the thinker is both nowhere and everywhereAiwhat Arendt calls nunc stans, a timeless suspension that enables the whole process.
The interaction with oneself here is not loneliness but rather the state of solitude, when awareness turns into an inner dialogue.
According to Arendt, in this mode of thinking the self splits into two entities.
Aume and myself,Ay that engage in a silent conversation.
22 This inner duality is a reyection of the fundamental human condition of plurality existing in the outer world.
In order for the conversation to proceed, the two sides must remain in a relation of friendship: the AumeAy should be capable of tolerating, questioning, and ynally living with the Auself.
Ay It is this relationship that, according to Arendt, gives rise to conscience.
Conscience, in her view, is nothing but Aubeing at peace with myself,Ay23 a state which stops the self from being a partner in evil or hypocrisy.
Since this inner dialogue is incessant and goes over the same points again and again, it prevents oneAos ideas from being too yrm, inyexible, or dogmatic.
Still, this fundamental operation of the mindAiwhich is based on a step back and a silent conversation with oneselfAivery much relies on the fact that one has the time and the necessary distance from oneAos needs.
The capability to make a judgment and to engage in politics indirectly presupposes that Authe needs of the living organism have been provided Ay24 In order for a political actor to be Aufree for the world,Ay he or she has to be liberated from the requirements of survival.
Arendt observes that most people donAot spend much time thinkingAieither because theyAore too 20 Arendt.
The Life of the Mind, 62.
21 Arendt.
The Life of the Mind, 202.
22 Arendt.
The Life of the Mind, 64.
23 Peter D.
Burdon.
AuHannah Arendt: On Judgment and Responsibility,Ay Grifyth Law Review 24, no.
: 230.
24 Serena Parekh.
Hannah Arendt and the Challenge of Modernity: A Phenomenology of Human Rights (New York: Routledge, 2.
, 86.
DISKURSUS.
Volume 22.
Nomor 1.
April 2026: 131-156 occupied or simply donAot want to stop and reyect.
25 Historically, the possibility of a vita contemplativa depended on a sharp separation from vita activa.
26 Socrates, for instance, is seen by Arendt as the ideal thinker, but his dialogues were possible only because ancient Greek society maintained a strict boundary between the household, where daily needs were managed, and the political realm, where genuine freedom was exercised.
Thus.
ArendtAos ethics of thinking rests on a hidden material premise: one must yrst be liberated from the labour of survival before one can afford the luxury of conscience.
II.
ALIENATION AND THE LOSS OF THE INTERNAL
PARTNER
The whole idea of ArendtAos three-point conceptualization of thinkingAigoing oneAos way into solitude, the inner conversation of the two-inone, and the moment of stillness from which the reyection comesAiwas in the end dependent on the material and temporal conditions which MarxAos kind of alienated labour was destroying in a systematic way.
With the pressures of modern production, the subject is taken out of self by the external economic demands resulting in the capacity of autonomous reyection becoming a privilege and not a universal possibility anymore.
Reyective freedom, for the animal laboransAithe human being caught in the ceaseless biological necessityAiis structurally absent.
As explained above.
Arendtian thought is inherently based on solitude, a condition where the self, in silence, communicates with itself.
The division between AuIAy and AumyselfAy should always be there as a kind of inner alliance or Aufriendship,Ay which makes conscience and self-criticism Alienated labour, on the other hand, terribly disrupts this fragile internal duality by bringing a much more forceful external division.
25 Sophie Zadeh et al.
AuDialogue with The Life of the Mind,Ay Culture & Psychology 28, no.
: 155Ae65.
26 Charles Des Portes.
AuHannah ArendtAos Hidden Phenomenology of the Body,Ay Human Studies 45, no.
: 139Ae56.
27 William Tilleczek.
AuTraining the Philosopher King: Ancient Models of Political Action in Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault,Ay Journal of the Philosophy of History 18, no.
: 365Ae91.
The Banality of Necessity (Stefanus Galang Ardan.
As Marx points out, in alienated labour the worker is Auat home when he is not working, and when he is working he is not at home.
Ay28 Thus, productive activity is turned into nothing more than a means to keep life going.
Under capitalism, most individuals must Ausell their labour-power for subsistence,Ay reducing the worker to a mere Aubearer of labour-power.
Ay 29 This imposed divisionAithe one that we have to work to live and the one that is theoretically free and consciousAibasically rips the subject apart from the outer world.
In these kinds of situations, the internal dialogue which Arendt considers the grounding of moral life, cannot be supported.
The psychological freedom necessary for the two-in-one operationAithe freedom that requires independence, yrmness, and the ability to detachAi gets replaced by the constant demand for survival.
The inner AufriendAy with whom we have to keep the conversation cannot be upheld in the case of a severe and prolonged material dependency.
As a result.
ArendtAos thinking process is an escape from the outer world, a solitude state which should be separated from the negative isolation of loneliness.
It may be said that the thinking ego is Auwithout a home in an emphatic senseAy30 because it deals with universals rather than with however, this philosophical homelessness still assumes a stable earthly base, an Auinner refugeAy from where it is possible to reyect.
Arendt makes it clear that the disinterestedness required for judgment Aucannot arise unless we are in a position to forget ourselves, the cares and interests and urges of our lives.
Ay32 That is to say, the fulylment of basic biological needs is a precondition for the higher mental functions.
MarxAos portrayal of animal laborans, whose Aulife processAy is no longer tied and in fact Auabsorbs the whole body politic,Ay33 is a radical change that 28 Karl Marx.
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, trans.
Martin Milligan (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1.
, 66.
29 Onur Ulas Ince.
AuBringing the Economy Back In: Hannah Arendt.
Karl Marx, and the Politics of Capitalism,Ay The Journal of Politics 78, no.
: 411Ae26.
30 Arendt.
The Life of the Mind, 199.
31 Morgan.
AuHannah Arendt and the AoFreedomAo to Think,Ay 173Ae82.
32 Parekh.
Hannah Arendt and the Challenge of Modernity, 86.
33 Ince.
AuBringing the Economy Back In,Ay 411Ae26.
DISKURSUS.
Volume 22.
Nomor 1.
April 2026: 131-156 fundamentally overturns the existing situation.
A working subject, driven by necessityAia person who has to Aumake a livingAy forever 34Aidoes not get from a withdrawal the peace of solitude but only the painful exhaustion caused by the endless cycle of labour.
The worker instead of ynding an internal partner for reyection, realizes that his inner space has already been taken over by the Auurgency of the life process.
Ay35 There is no longer the grounded solitude necessary for the two-in-one dialogue, but rather the lonely despair of a self that is not able to secure even the smallest distance from necessity that thinking requires.
In addition.
Arendt distinguishes the process of thinking largely by its ability to Austop-and-think.
Ay This interruption is not a matter of choice but rather the very element of the reyective work.
In opposition to that, capitalist labour time, according to Arendt, exposes individuals to the unvarying rhythm of labour, which she refers to as Aucyclical, repetitive activities tied to biological necessities.
Ay36 Her contrast between Labor .
epetitive, instantly consume.
and Work .
roductive of durable objects and rooted in linear tim.
37 is a way of pointing out that contemporary capitalist production, in its very essence, merges all human activities into the temporality of labour.
Stopping this cycle, for those who live in material precarity, is simply not compatible with survival: to AustopAy is to give up subsistence.
The constant worry about how to meet oneAos most basic needs excludes the time or temporal freedom necessary for a deep and lasting reyection.
While Arendt associates political freedom with the ability to start overAito break the necessity38Aialienated labour keeps the worker in the continuous un34 Arendt.
The Human Conditoin, 110.
35 Parekh.
Hannah Arendt and the Challenge of Modernity, 96.
36 Lisa Herzog.
AuOld Facts.
New Beginnings: Thinking with Arendt about Algorithmic Decision-Making,Ay The Review of Politics 83, no.
: 565.
New Beginnings:
Thinking with Arendt about Algorithmic Decision-Making\\uc0\\u8217{}, {\\i{} The Review of Politic.
83, no.
: 565.
37 Katherine Davies.
AuThe Architecture of Appearance,Ay Arendt Studies 4 .
: 53Ae82.
38 Stefania Fantauzzi.
AuTaking Responsibility for the World,Ay Arendt Studies 3 .
133Ae51.
The Banality of Necessity (Stefanus Galang Ardan.
changeable biological metabolism rhythm.
The Aufreedom to think,Ay therefore, is a condition of having a temporal surplus, which the structurally constrained labourer cannot access, thus making reyective activity not only very difycult but also a materially forbidden luxury.
Finally.
Arendt links thoughtlessness to the failure of the person to use his or her critical faculties which is most obviously shown by the unreyective reliance on clichys and stock phrases.
39 However.
Fredric Jameson gives a materialist explanation of the same phenomenon, holding that non-thinking should not be considered as a moral fall but as a psychic defense that is part of the political unconscious.
40 In JamesonAos view, the deep structural contradictions of capitalismAiexploitation, alienation, and the compulsion to labourAipresent themselves to the reyective subject as a Aulogical scandalAy or an irresolvable double bind.
41 If there were really to be any self-examination, it would have to be the worker who, in that case, would be forced to face these unbearable contradictions and the ubiquitous suffering arising from a life dominated by necessity.
Hence thoughtlessness, according to the theory, becomes a manifestation of repression or ideological closure, an agent through which painful realities must be sealed off in order to survive.
42 The very routines and clichys that Arendt is against, are, therefore, psychological shields for people who live under chronic material pressure.
Material precarity, in this case, does not only limit the capacity for thought.
it actually makes thoughtlessness a necessary condition for psychic endurance under capitalism.
THE LITERARY CONSTELLATION OF THOUGHTLESSNESS
In order to support this materialist critique of ArendtAos ethics.
I rely on literature as a Aucognitive laboratory.
Ay By means of a phenomenolog39 Ashley N.
Biser.
AuCalibrating Our AoInner CompassAo: Arendt on Thinking and the Dangers of Disorientation,Ay Political Theory 42, no.
: 519Ae42.
40 Fredric Jameson.
The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (London: Routledge, 2.
, 22Ae24.
41 Jameson.
The Political Unconscious, 68.
42 Lauren Berlant.
Cruel Optimism (Durham.
NC: Duke University Press, 2.
, 222.
DISKURSUS.
Volume 22.
Nomor 1.
April 2026: 131-156 ical reading of Ahmad Tohari.
Kazuo Ishiguro, and Franz Kafka.
I come to understand that AuthoughtlessnessAy is not an ill of individualAos mind, but is a structural conditionAiresulting from the total consumption of the body (Tohar.
, the alienation of the soul (Ishigir.
, and the colonization of time (Kafk.
THE EXHAUSTED BODY: ORANG-ORANG PROYEK
The phenomenology of labor in Ahmad TohariAos Orang-Orang Proyek is a detailed description of how the workers are affected by the structures that limit their ability to think.
The river dam construction in Cibawor is the place where, according to the author, the concept of pure necessity can be observed in its most ruthless form.
It is the impersonal force against which man has to struggle without rest, man and nature locked in a yght to the death, as the authors dramatically puts it.
He does not depict the river as a source of inspiration but rather a destructive agent:
Pagi ini Sungai Cibawor kelihatan letihAAir yang semula jernih mulai mengeruh di pagi hari, meninggi dan segera menggelora setengah jam This turbidity represents the confusion of the subjectAos own mind.
The workers are immersed in an environment of lumpur that weighs down their every move, physically showing the heaviness of necessity.
The continuous noise of the project also removes the option of the silent two-in-one dialogue.
The mechanical cacophonyAiAuDeru mesin trukA dentam godam kuli yang sedang memecah batuAy44Aiis taking over the sound space that is needed for thought.
In this domain, the workers .
uli-kul.
become MarxAos animal laboransAiorganisms whose being is essentially the nonstop labour and consumption cycle that is required for their survival.
According to Tohari, their lives are controlled by what he calls the perut, they are driven by the yrst and foremost fear for their survival.
They are a Augenerasi yang malangAy 43 Ahmad Tohari.
Orang-Orang Proyek (Jakarta: PT Gramedia Pustaka Utama, 2.
, 5.
44 Tohari.
Orang-Orang Proyek, 24.
The Banality of Necessity (Stefanus Galang Ardan.
who quit school early Audemi perut.
Ay45 Becoming biological functions only, it makes them AuworldlessAy in the Arendtian sense.
they are not able to go beyond the necessity realm and get into the freedom one.
Their time belongs not to them.
it is determined by the external political imperatives, for instance, the hurry to ynish the bridge before the 1992 General Election (Pemil.
46 This political deadline shortens their temporal existence to the extent that they have to go into lembur .
in order to meet it and thus their bodies are literally pushed to the point of tearing:
Wah, sayang.
Pak Tarya.
Sampai proyek ini selesai, jangan-jangan saya tak punya waktu lowong, kecuali malam hari bila pas tidak ada Proyek ini memang sedang dikebut.
Demi pemilu, kan?47 Here, the Aurealm of freedomAy .
ree tim.
is totally dominated by the Aurealm of necessityAy .
abor tim.
48 The rupture of the internal partner even for the educated subject is shown through the tragic example of Kabul the engineer who, technically, is part of the intellectual class.
In contrast to the AuthoughtlessAy Eichmann who chose not to think.
Kabul is inhibited from thinking.
The overwhelming force of necessityAimade worse by the mental torment of having to deal with systemic corruption49 .
Aitakes up all of his cognitive horizon:
Mak Sumeh, pekerjaan di proyek ini menyita seluruh perhatian dan Jadi, aku belum bisa memikirkan hal lain.
Such an admission marks the characteristic feature of the animal laborans.
KabulAos extremely intense physical output and his handling of structural deceit show him as a being whose existence is governed by the metabolic cycle.
In fact, even eating, which could have been a moment of rest or communal bonding, has been taken away from humans, the quotation 45 Tohari.
Orang-Orang Proyek, 68.
46 Tohari.
Orang-Orang Proyek, 11.
47 Tohari.
Orang-Orang Proyek, 155Ae56.
48 Arendt.
The Human Condition, 90.
49 Tohari.
Orang-Orang Proyek, 30Ae31.
50 Tohari.
Orang-Orang Proyek, 54.
DISKURSUS.
Volume 22.
Nomor 1.
April 2026: 131-156 goes: Makan menjadi hal yang sangat mekanis.
51 The result is psychological:
the individualAos inner voice is silenced not due to a moral failure, but because the mental energy needed to keep it has already been consumed by the necessity of the life process.
THE BUREAUCRATIC SOUL: THE REMAINS OF THE DAY
While Tohari can be seen as representing the exhausted body.
Kazuo IshiguroAos Stevens can be seen as the soul that is, alienated from the self by Stevens is a complicated examination of structural alienation and the disintegration of the internal moral framework due to the inyuence of professional ideology.
His character becomes a clear example of the huge break described by MarxAithe transaction not only of labour power but of selfhoodAiand thus a literary forerunner of ArendtAos account of the unthinking nature of bureaucracy.
One way in which Stevens essentially separates himself from his own personality is by his yxation on AuDignity.
Ay In order to do this, he forcibly superimposes a very strict and unemotional professional mask which deliberately excludes the possibility of looking into oneAos own self.
The model of dignity which is at its very core binary opposed to the moral nature of the human mind.
Stevens puts forward a kind of model that a really digniyed butler should carry his professional duties Auto the utmost,Ay and see his intimate self as a weakness that has to be repressed:
AoDignityAo has to do crucially with a butlerAos ability not to abandon the professional being he inhabitsAThey wear their professionalism as a decent gentleman will wear his suit: he will not let rufyans or circumstance tear it off him in the public gaze.
he will discard it when, and only when, he wills to do so, and this will invariably be when he is entirely alone.
By limiting the Auprivate selfAyAithe only place where the Arendtian two-in-one can happenAito cases of absolute isolation.
Stevens basically removes conscience from the public sphere.
He considers emotions and 51 Tohari.
Orang-Orang Proyek, 214.
52 Kazuo Ishiguro.
The Remains of the Day (New York: Knopf, 1.
, 42Ae43.
The Banality of Necessity (Stefanus Galang Ardan.
feelings as inferior, dangerous and thus keeps his whole being strictly under the control of the professional rule.
Thus, even in situations of his personal misfortunes, such as the death of his father or the loss of Miss Kenton, he goes back to the AusuitAy of his profession.
When crying after the death of his father is spotted by Lord Darlington.
Stevens quickly brings in a professional alibi: AuI laughed and taking out a handkerchief, quickly wiped my face.
AoIAom very sorry, sir.
The strains of a hard day.
AoAy53 This is the Marxist self-mortiycation.
he rejects his own human side in order to be the perfect instrument for another.
The most prominent instance of this self-alienation is when Stevens actually sells his inner voice.
It is his frugal, deliberate refusal to use moral or political judgment that shows the self-alienation most clearly.
Stevens not only represses his power of critical thought but also he hands over the whole faculty of judgment to his master.
On encountering the political intrigues of Lord Darlington .
ho is seeking Nazi appeasemen.
Stevens reacts with absolute rejection, saying that it was Aunot my place to be curious about such matters, sir.
Ay54 This refusal is not simply humility.
it is an ontological surrender.
He exchanges professional duty for internal deliberation, thereby quieting the conscience whose voice comes only from the inner duality.
This thoughtlessness, in fact, escalates to its climax point during the yring of the Jewish maids.
Miss Kenton, when protesting against the unfairness of the act, is met by Stevens, who instead of having a moral debate with himself, merely changes his refuge to the language of routine He mockingly rebukes Miss Kenton for her being carried away by her emotions while she interfered with the Auwishes of our employerAy55:
Miss Kenton, let me suggest to you that you are hardly well placed to be passing judgements of such a high and mighty natureAour best course will always be to put our trust in an employer we judge to be 53 Ishiguro.
The Remains of the Day, 105.
54 Ishiguro.
The Remains of the Day, 222.
55 Ishiguro.
The Remains of the Day, 149.
DISKURSUS.
Volume 22.
Nomor 1.
April 2026: 131-156 wise and honourable, and to devote our energies to the task of serving him to the best of our ability.
Steven reaches ArendtAos Eichmann analysis in a very direct and clear Similar to the bureaucrat who insisted that he was Aujust following orders,Ay Stevens contends that his obligation is Aunot to our own foibles and sentimentsAy57Aiwhich is his own way of referring to human conscienceAibut to the objective function of the household.
By systematically shutting down the internal ethical debate, this action leaves no room for ArendtAos two-in-one ygure, as it essentially demolishes the conditions required for this concept.
He turns into Aua new kind of personAy brought about by modernity, as deyned by Arendt, someone who carries out the policy with Auzeal and the most meticulous careAy yet stays absolutely indifferent to the moral aspect of the things done.
This unfortunate separation from oneself is only made clear when the AusuitAy is taken off and Stevens understands that in the act of selling his labour power, he has also given away his life.
The time just before his retirement, he makes a statement that his AudignityAy was something superycial.
To an unknown person, he reveals that his faithfulness to Lord Darlington was not a principled decision but rather a kind of instinct which took up his whole being:
AoThe fact is, of course,Ao I said after a while.
AoI have my best to Lord Darlington.
I gave him the very best I had to give, and nowAiwellAiI ynd I do not have a great deal more left to give.
Ao59 The ultimate conclusion is that Stevens removes any human elements from himself and becomes a mere procedural function.
His lack of empathy was deynitely not a mistake.
it was the outcome of a way of living that was indifferent to him, focused on the employerAos goal rather than his fellow human beings.
He divided his inner self with his employer, 56 Ishiguro.
The Remains of the Day, 149 & 201.
57 Ishiguro.
The Remains of the Day, 149.
58 Shmuel Lederman.
AuOrdinary Men and the Banality of Evil: Recovering the Conversation between Arendt and Browning,Ay Holocaust Studies .
: 1Ae19.
59 Ishiguro.
The Remains of the Day, 242.
The Banality of Necessity (Stefanus Galang Ardan.
thereby abandoning himself, in the end, he was left with no one to talk toAian empty man in a yawless suit.
THE VIOLENCE OF TIME: THE TRIAL
Joseph K.
, the main character in Franz KafkaAos The Trial, is a stark illustration of how the structures that surround us can, through sheer chronological inevitability, destroy our very ability to think critically.
His situation shows that the active life, and more speciycally the inherently circular and self-reinforcing drive of the wage earner to reproduce both himself and his position, leaves no room for the contemplative withdrawal necessary for self-reyection.
The fall of the very possibility of ArendtAos timeless nunc stans from which self-reyection is possible, is what substantiates Fredric JamesonAos notion of the political unconscious being revealed in the form of defensive busyness.
Aos dissociation from his own reyective nature is a result of the continuous temporal compression that is imposed on him by the modern work-world.
Arendt sees thinking as a process that cannot be done without coming out from appearances, ynding a space that separates time from the stream of the day.
For K.
such coming out was made impossible due to his total functional absorption in his professional role.
His life at the bank was the epitome of being tightly scheduled and worrying about oneAos reputation.
throughout the novel is obsessed with the clock, he looks at his watch not to ynd his way in the world, but to make sure that he is in sync with the economic machine.
Even at the time of his arrestAia situation which should have disrupted his routineAihis reaction was to control his punctuality:
Down below he decided, his watch in his hand, to take a taxi so as to save any further delay in reaching the Bank, for he was already half an hour late.
This obsessive following of instrumental time is completely against the idea of thinking.
One of the most important things is that the AuCourtAy 60 Franz Kafka.
The Trial, trans.
Willa Muir and Edwin Muir (New York: The Modern Library, 1.
, 22.
DISKURSUS.
Volume 22.
Nomor 1.
April 2026: 131-156 .
hich stands for the existential crisi.
is also using the same capitalist time logic as the Bank.
It decides to carry out the investigations on Sundays mainly Auso that K.
might not be disturbed in his professional Ay61 By violating the Sabbath, the Court announces the total colonization of time.
is given no moment of temporal refuge .
in which he could have gotten away from the world of appearances.
Although in a technical sense he is even free.
is still bound to his role and during his own interrogation he makes a self-contradictory statement AuI am pressed for time and must leave very soonAy62 which he utters while lamenting.
The continuous effort to deal with his case at the same time keep his professional appearance is, in a way, a JamesonAos political unconsciousAia kind of a shared psychological shield against the threat of facing the structural emptiness of his life.
Jameson implies that this unconscious acts like Aua symbolic resolution of a real contradiction.
Ay63 In the case of K.
, the conyict is between the ideal of a reasoned legal system and the ridiculousness of the actual judicial process.
is deceiving himself that he can apply the same methodical way that led to his promotion at the bank to efyciently solve his existential case:
He had managed to work himself up to his present high position in the BankAsurely if the abilities which had made this possible were to be applied to the unraveling of his own case, there was no doubt that it would go well.
Certainly, this is a case of confusing categories.
tries to apply Verstand, which is the intellectual side of the mind responsible for rational and bureaucratic understanding, to a problem that is inherently related to Vernunft, the realm of sense.
His ceaseless activity is a kind of psychic he drowns himself in Aupressing workAy65 just to be able to escape the terribly sad recognition of the systemAos basic nihilism.
Anytime he is 61 Kafka.
The Trial, 40.
62 Kafka.
The Trial, 57.
63 Jameson.
The Political Unconscious, 65.
64 Kafka.
The Trial, 158.
65 Kafka.
The Trial, 23.
The Banality of Necessity (Stefanus Galang Ardan.
on the verge of being paralyzed with fear, he summons the machinery of his ofyce to get himself going again: AuAlmost involuntarily, simply to make an end of it, he put his ynger on the button which rang the bell in the waiting-room.
Ay66 The bell thus becomes a sort of deybrillator for the animal laborans, hurling him back into the reyexive, compulsive work which is a form of intellectual evasion.
The greatest misfortune of this yeeting conyict in time is the one that happens at the Cathedral.
It is the scene in which the Priest tries to communicate to K.
a parable regarding the Law (Meanin.
, and K.
, out of reyex, looks at his watch.
When the Priest invites him to discontinue his Aualbum of sightsAyAiwhich was a metaphor for his being occupiedAiK.
only discards it, but also AuviolentlyAy67 scratches his head with the gesture, and, without losing a moment, he returns to his work:
IAom the Chief Clerk of a Bank, theyAore waiting for me.
I only came here to show a business friend from abroad round the Cathedral.
In this situation, the AuBankAy (Capitalis.
is closing off in a very formal manner any real meeting with the AuCourtAy (Conscienc.
is not allowed to stay in the nunc stans of the parable as he is always Auwaiting forAy clients in the linear temporality of instrumental reason.
The problem is clearly stated: K.
Aos continual running around is not a sign of him having power but rather that he is imprisoned.
He is still caught in the bureaucratic double bind because if he were to Austop and thinkAy it would mean that he has to admit that the Law he is looking for is not thereAia recognition that is too overwhelming to face.
THE ONTOLOGICAL ENCLOSURE OF THE SUBJECT
The literary constellation of Tohari.
Ishiguro, and Kafka does not operate as a mere set of loosely connected instances of the phenomenon, but rather as a deep analysis of the way the late capitalist structures inyuence the subjectAos ontological enclosure.
When these stories are consid66 Kafka.
The Trial, 161.
67 Kafka.
The Trial, 264.
68 Kafka.
The Trial, 277.
DISKURSUS.
Volume 22.
Nomor 1.
April 2026: 131-156 ered together, they proclaim that the ability of authentic thinkingAione that, according to Arendt, is a single, reyective mental operation, hence solitary in natureAishould not be regarded as a natural biological endowment, but rather a delicate political accomplishment that the prevailing economic system gradually tears down.
The texts, in particular, show the manner in which late capitalism destroys the three conditions that Arendt considers necessary for thought:
the area from which one can withdraw .
he bod.
, the wholeness of the inner companion .
he sou.
, and the suspension of time .
As a result, thinking stops being a capability of all humans and turns into a risky, class-dependent privilege.
The combined argument of these three case studies forces us to reconsider the Arendtian problem in a different way.
All three literary case studies demonstrate that in late capitalism, the primary failure of the subject is not just an AuunwillingnessAy to thinkAithe very yrst assumption of the Aubanality of evilAyAibut a deep structural incapacity to do so.
Consequently, the banality of evil is redeveloped into the banality of necessity: a situation in which economico-psychological and time-related factors preclude the option of moral judgment.
In all these examples, the infrastructureAiwhether it is the dam project, the mansion, or the bureaucratic courtAiserves as an ontological enclosure that maintains conformity by dissolving the conditions of self-criticality.
The city of Kabul and the kuli-kuli are AukilledAy by material necessity.
thus, no caloric or spatial surplus is left for philosophical distance.
Stevens deliberately destroys his own self, thereby removing the internal partner, by replacing professional roles with conscience.
is killed by the harshness of time, caught in a bureaucratic stream that eliminates the nunc stans necessary for reyection.
If thinking is able to survive, it is only in system-generated cracks for these subjects, and it thus calls for a difycult, often momentary.
Aurecessive actionAy against the overwhelming yow of structural demands.
The Banality of Necessity (Stefanus Galang Ardan.
CONCLUSION Thoughtlessness, the condition that is often lamented as tuna pikir, is a structural phenomenon that should not be understood as an individualAos moral failing.
This extensive psychological depletion is not only the result of a mere refusal to engage in the Socratic internal dialogue, the two-in-one.
rather, it is a consequence of the systematic denial of both material and temporal resources necessary for such a dialogue.
Arendt, in a very conclusive manner, sets the conditions for political participation and judgment when she points out that disinterestednessAia primary condition for reyective thoughtAicannot be the case unless the needs of the living organism have been already taken care of.
Political life does not produce economic sufyciency, but rather, the latter is a condition for political life.
The existence that is precarious and characterized by the mass casualization of lab or and the omnipresence of anxiety over the question of where the next meal will come from makes the thinking subject devoid of the material ground for critical independence.
Poverty, which is driven by bodily needs, is a levelling agent that cancels out plurality and hinders political engagement.
The literary instances provide proof for this materialist enclosure which involves the breakdown of vita contemplativa and its political potential in a very detailed and systematic way.
Through the characters of Tohari, we see the process in which physical weariness demolishes the primary material base of thought and consequently the subject is always reduced to the cyclical, repetitive biological labour.
The read of Ishiguro unveils the changes in a personAos identity to be sold under the capitalistic demand that this breaks the basic duality of the thinking-I, thus the dialogue between the two sides in Socratic being replaced by the senselessness of professional identity.
In addition to that.
KafkaAos psychic collapse records show how temporal anxietyAithe non-stop hyperactivity and uneasiness of a precarious lifeAimakes it impossible to have an enduring present which is the basis for contemplative thought.
This over-the-top, lonely tiredness is, in Byung-Chul HanAos words.
DISKURSUS.
Volume 22.
Nomor 1.
April 2026: 131-156 Auworldless, world-destroying.
Ay69 In sum, these stories reveal the complete conynement of the thinking subject who is solely caught between the biological imperative of the animal laborans and the instrumentalizing mechanism of capital with no Auspace betweenAy70 for critical appearance The structural condition here necessitates the introduction of a new analytical category: The Banality of Necessity.
This idea exists as the most important element that contrasts with ArendtAos AuBanality of Evil.
Ay According to Arendt, the Banality of Evil comes from a lack of thinking, being without roots, and superycialityAian evil which is very difycult to conceive because it has no depth.
The Banality of Necessity is a complete reversal of it.
Necessity doesnAot escape consideration due to superyciality.
it actually silences the very ability to think by taking over life completely with the consumption/reproduction cycle of labour.
While evil came from not looking at the matter (EichmannAos non-thinkin.
Necessity comes from the absolute impossibility of disengagement needed for the inner dialogue.
71 The continuous demand of biological survival, which Marx explained as the workerAos life becoming hostile and alien to him,72 is substituting political appearance with the univocal and prepolitical cry for bread.
This makes the precarious subject discard the broadened mentality that is necessary for reyective judgment.
The structural survival imperative leads to the surrender of autonomy, thus the subject is ensured to be stuck in performing mechanical tasks and not in a position to initiate something new and unpredictable.
Necessity is a banality as it is completely normal and everyday in appearance, however, it goes on demolishing the human potential for critical interaction systematically.
69 Byung-Chul Han.
The Burnout Society, trans.
Erik Butler (Stanford: Stanford Briefs, 2.
, 32.
70 Hans Teerds.
AuAoThe Space betweenAo: An Architectural Examination of Hannah ArendtAos Notions of AoPublic SpaceAo and AoWorldAo,Ay The Journal of Architecture 27, nos.
5Ae6 .
757Ae77.
71 Zadeh et al.
AuDialogue with The Life of the Mind,Ay 155Ae65.
72 Marx.
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, 64.
The Banality of Necessity (Stefanus Galang Ardan.
As a result, the legitimate question about tuna pikir essentially has to change its target.
Using the argument that the person should Authink for oneselfAy while at the same time maintaining structural violence, which closes the material conditions for thought, is an ideological strategy of The use of moral judgment and conscience cannot replace the yght for the public sphere.
If one does not change the material and temporal conditions of life, the command to think becomes powerless, it serves only to ynd the structural failure in the individual as guilt or lack of something.
The fundamental structural limitations of praxis have to be answered by providing the material basis that is necessary for freedom to There is no intellectual freedom without material freedom.
REFERENCES