Under loneliness, self-evident logical reasoning becomes a self-generating substitute for real thought

Evidence

The only capacity of the human mind which needs neither the self nor the other nor the world in order to function safely and which is as independent of experience as it is of thinking is the ability of logical reasoning whose premise is the self-evident. The elementary rules of cogent evidence, the truism that two and two equals four cannot be perverted even under the conditions of absolute loneliness. It is the only reliable “truth” human beings can fall back upon once they have lost the mutual guarantee, the common sense, men need in order to experience and live and know their way in a common world. But this “truth” is empty or rather no truth at all, because it does not reveal anything. (To define consistency as truth as some modern logicians do means to deny the existence of truth.) Under the conditions of loneliness, therefore, the self-evident is no longer just a means of the intellect and begins to be productive, to develop its own lines of “thought.” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1083

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the mechanism by which logical self-evidence, cut off from shared world and common sense, turns productive and begins generating ‘thought’ purely from its own deductions.
• DEEPTHINKING: The argument that pure logical consistency detached from a shared world is not truth but an empty productive machine chaining deductions is dense and paradigm-shifting — the kernel of why ideology can replace reality.
• XREF: Connects to the scaffolding goal: this is the mechanism by which ideological ‘logic’ becomes a self-contained world-building that later Islamophobia readings on ideology-as-epistemic-closure can build on. — connects to: Intellectual self-discipline resists impulses the thinker already harbors within himself; The obsolete individual becomes the lonely custodian of truth — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 154; Renouncing the knowing I actually produces the possibility of genuine decision — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1235