| dc.description.abstract | Scholars are divided in their interpretation of Hannah Arendt’s writings on political judgment. Arendt appeared to change her mind on crucial aspects of political judgment, despite appealing to the same source – Kant’s aesthetic theory. Because Arendt did not live to complete them, it is not clear whether these writings present a unified, coherent, philosophical theory. Most commentators have argued that the differences in these writings suggests that she actually offered two distinct models of judgment – the so-called ‘actor model’ and ‘spectator model’ – or that the differences in these writings are superficial and that Arendt intended to offer one unified account.
I take a different approach in interpreting these writings. I trace the road that led Arendt to change her mind on important characteristics of the account of political judgment that she attempted to excavate from Kant’s writings. In the first two chapters, I discuss Arendt’s published writings on judgment in close detail. In the third chapter, I turn to a resource that has not figured prominently in scholarly commentary, her notebooks. These notebooks have not been translated into English. Using her untranslated notebooks, I offer plausible reasons for the noted divergence between many key elements of her published writings on judgment.
Ultimately, I argue that Arendt’s controversial analysis of Adolf Eichmann’s trial prompted her to change her mind on important parts of her account of political judgment. In the fourth chapter, I turn to her correspondence with her critics and demonstrate that she took herself to have exercised political judgment in her analysis of the Eichmann trial. In the fifth and sixth chapters, I argue that Arendt discovered a new model of judgment, that of the spectator, in her experience at Eichmann’s trial. Using literary resources, I offer a unique reading of Arendt’s analysis of Adolf Eichmann’s trial that demonstrates that Arendt’s own experiences were the source of the shift that marks her writings on political judgment. | en |
