The poet and the spectator: Arendt’s conceptualization of publicness and judgment in context

Hannah Arendt did more than write philosophy and publishes books; she rescued conceptions of the public and recovered the problem of thinking and judging in politics as a manner to make sense of a world that shattered the political tradition. The current thesis will present a reading of Arendt’s political judgment and publicness by taking some elements of the Cambridge Intellectual History approach. The goal of using this approach is not a way of declaring itself as the true interpretation, but a manner of relating Arendt’s work to a proper understanding of her words and actions as part of a context for the enunciation. By using this method we are proposing a perspective of Arendt late work as a crucial shift in her notion of freedom and its relation with politics. This shift starts with some undeveloped intuitions from her early work, mostly The Origins of Totalitarianism and The human Condition, to her essays such as Between Past and Future and Responsibility and Judgment, to...Show moreHannah Arendt did more than write philosophy and publishes books; she rescued conceptions of the public and recovered the problem of thinking and judging in politics as a manner to make sense of a world that shattered the political tradition. The current thesis will present a reading of Arendt’s political judgment and publicness by taking some elements of the Cambridge Intellectual History approach. The goal of using this approach is not a way of declaring itself as the true interpretation, but a manner of relating Arendt’s work to a proper understanding of her words and actions as part of a context for the enunciation. By using this method we are proposing a perspective of Arendt late work as a crucial shift in her notion of freedom and its relation with politics. This shift starts with some undeveloped intuitions from her early work, mostly The Origins of Totalitarianism and The human Condition, to her essays such as Between Past and Future and Responsibility and Judgment, to finish in her later works such as On Revolution, Crises of the Republic, The Life of the Mind, and her Lectures on the Political Philosophy of Kant. We can notice a shift from narration to judgment in Arendt’s theory. By relating to this topics we propose a reading of publicness as a central element of Arendt’s work that appeals to the space of appearances that is opened in judgment and action, and at the same time a certain urge for courage required for politics; for leaving the comfort of the private space and take responsibility to appear with others and be judged and remembered in public. This notion of publicness changed or is complemented by a different one in her later work where we find instead a shift towards the attitude of the spectator and the disinterestedness of judgment. Disinterestedness is an aesthetical attitude that Arendt recovers from Kant’s discussion on his Third Critique and refers to a certain distance regarding interest and necessity. This notion is expressed in her appropriation of Kant’s idea of reflective judgment and her reflections on taste related to Kant’s concern with sensus communis and her own concept of common sense. In these elements we see judgment in the attitude of the spectator along with a certain taste and preoccupation for the human-made artifacts and the grounding for a space of appearances. These elements and shifts in Arendt’s work are discussed by using the Cambridge Intellectual Approach; we read Arendt texts in its relation to a context and as deeds as a way to answer the question regarding what was Arendt doing or performing while she was discussing publicness and judgment.Show less

Leiden University Student Repository

Documents

In Collections

The poet and the spectator: Arendt’s conceptualization of publicness and judgment in context