Rereading Hannah Arendt's Kant Lectures

Abstract

This paper offers a restatement of the basic project of Hannah Arendt's Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, tries to trace its theoretical motivation, and presents some criticisms of Arendt's interpretation of Kant's Critique of Judgment. Arendt's political philosophy as a whole is an attempt to ground the idea of human dignity on the publicly displayed 'words and deeds' that con stitute the realm of human affairs. This project involves a philo sophical response both to Plato's impugning of the dignity of the polis and to Hegel's founding of modern historicism. The Kant Lectures bring this philosophical project to its completion because the enact ment of public deeds presupposes a company of judging spectators who draw meaning from the spectacle by judging and appreciating what is enacted. But this conception, precisely because it relates so deeply to Arendt's own theoretical impulse, leads to a sometimes onesided and misleading reading of Kant.

Visiting exemplars. An Arendtian exploration of educational judgement

“…This concerns also the question of whether we can understand judgement as a political activity. There are those who hold to the two-theories model (Beiner 1992(Beiner , 1997Benhabib 1988;D'Entreves 1994;Villa 2000), and those who contest this view and argue that Arendt, in fact, was consistent in her insistence that judging is not acting, but rather can be seen as a foundation or…”

“…No doubt, the third part on judging would have shed some light on how Arendt conceived the way in which mental processes inform the way we act in the world, but we are left guessing as to what she would have concluded. Usually attempts at figuring out what the final part might have contained start by exploring Arendt's lectures on Kant, and the way in which she politicises his idea of aesthetic judgement (see Beiner 1992Beiner , 1994Beiner , 1997Benhabib 1988). In these lectures, we certainly find hints and groundwork for a more extended exploration of judgement and its connection with action.…”

La potencialidad política del juicio estético: acerca de la reapropiación arendtiana de Kant

“…Véase al respecto su ensayo "El concepto de historia: antiguo y moderno" (Arendt, 1996, 49-100). 16 Esto ha sido caracterizado como una destrascendentalización o empirización de las nociones kantianas (Beiner, 1997;Yar, 2000), pero como advierte Degryse (2011, 353), esto no debe inducirnos a pensar que Arendt está confundiendo el juzgar con el diálogo efectivo con otros, sino que hace depender el funcionamiento de nuestras facultades mentales de la interacción con otros. En este sentido, entendemos que persiste cierto carácter trascendental en la lectura arendtiana, en la medida en que la pluralidad se vuelve condición de posibilidad del despliegue de nuestra facultad de juzgar.…”

Hannah Arendt on Judgement: Thinking for Politics

“…For the essays, see Kant, 1992;1983. 3 In a more recent essay, Beiner Beiner, 1997: 21-32. 4 See Disch, 1997: pp.…”

“…Ronald Beiner is central among scholars who contend that Arendt ultimately breaks with her earlier, politically relevant conceptualization of judgment. Beiner argues that in the 'Postscriptum' and the Kant Lectures, Arendt portrays judgment as a distinct and 'ordinary' mental faculty that may become politically relevant, but only in rare times of 'crisis' (Beiner 1982). This view of judgment, according to Beiner, 'reoriented' Arendt's interest in Kant's political philosophy, a reorientation which stimulated both her 'reformulation' of the relationship between judgment and politics and her subsequent depoliticization of judgment (1982).…”