In this article I reconstruct Hannah Arendt's theory of judgment around a number of key themes. After having distinguished two models of judgment, one based on the standpoint of the actor, the other on the standpoint of the spectator, I go on to examine their most distinctive features, in particular the link between judgment, the imagination, and the ability to think ?representatively.? I also examine the philosophical sources of Arendt's theory of judgment, namely, Kant's theory of aesthetic judgment and Aristotle's (...) notion of phronesis. In the final section I address the question of judgment and its criteria of validity.1. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the question—Is evil banal?—is badly formulated because it invites serious misinterpretations of Arendt. The question is objectionable for three reasons. First, the question suggests that Arendt has a general theory or thesis about the nature of evil. This is absolutely false. Over and over again she insisted that she was not proposing a general theory when she spoke about the banality of evil. Second, the question obscures the most important aspect of Arendt's thinking about evil. Third, (...) the question obscures a distinction that is crucial for Arendt—the distinction between the doer and the deeds. (shrink)

Two central strands in Arendt's thought are the reflection on the evil of Auschwitz and the rethinking in terms of politics of Heidegger's critique of metaphysics. Given Heidegger's taciturnity regarding Auschwitz and Arendt's own taciturnity regarding the philosophical implications of Heidegger's political engagement in 1933, to set out how these strands interrelate is to examine the coherence of Arendt's thought and its potential for a critique of Heidegger. By refusing to countenance a theological conception of the evil of Auschwitz, Arendt (...) consolidates the break with theology that Heidegger attempts through his analysis of the essential finitude of Dasein. In the light of Arendt's account of evil, it is possible to see the theological vestiges in Heidegger's ontology. Heidegger's resumption of the question concerning the categorical interconnections of the ways of Being entails an abandonment of finitude: he accommodates and tacitly justifies that which can have no human justification. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt's well-known examinations of the problem of evil are not contradictory and they are central to her corpus. Evil can be banal in some cases (Adolf Eichmann) and radical (the phenomenon of totalitarianism) in others. But behind all expressions of evil, in Arendt's formulations, is the imperative that it be confronted by thinking subjects and thoroughly historicized. This led her away from a view of evil as radical to one of evil as banal. Arendt's ruminations on evil are illuminated, (...) in part, by concerns that she shared with her fellow New York intellectuals about the withering effects of mass culture upon individual volition and understanding. In confronting the challenges of evil, Arendt functioned as a suggesting profitable ways that historians might look at history from a moral perspective. Indeed, her work may be viewed as anticipating a currently afoot in the historical profession. (shrink)

Abstract. — This article argues that the reading of Plato has had an influence on the development of Hannah Arendt’s (1906-1975) political philosophy. It sketches H. Arendt’s profile of the “political Plato” and shows how Plato’s philosophy inspired H. Arendt’s philosophical project. It pays a special attention to the subject of totalitarianism. It shows that H. Arendt’s reading was greatly influenced by the ideological interpretations of Plato of the 1930’s and 1940’s, and by the work and the method of interpretation (...) developed by Martin Heidegger. Résumé. — Cet article pose que la lecture de Platon a influencé le développement de la philosophie politique d’Hannah Arendt (1906-1975). Il esquisse le profil du « Platon politique » arendtien et met en lumière les inspirations que l’oeuvre platonicienne a insufflées au projet philosophique d’H. Arendt, en portant une attention particulière au thème du totalitarisme. Il démontre que la lecture d’H. Arendt a été fortement influencée par les interprétations idéologiques de Platon des années 1930 et 1940, et par les travaux et la méthode d’interprétation développée par Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

Although Arendt is usually read as a theorist of participatory democracy, her writings on judgment also offer a way of thinking about the role of citizens who do not actively participate, citizens who are more spectators than actors. The difficulties and ambiguities in her account of judgment especially, the elusiveness of standards of judgment arise from her effort to insure that individuals take full responsibility for their judgments.