Hannah Arendt's Political Judgment

431 Pages·2014·3.73 MB·English

Hannah Arendt's Theory of Political Judgment
by
Jonathan Peter Schwartz

Department of Political Science
Duke University

Date:_______________________

Approved:

___________________________
Michael Gillespie, Supervisor

___________________________
Ruth Grant

___________________________
Thomas Spragens, Jr.

___________________________
Tracy B. Strong

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
in the Department of Political Science in the Graduate
School of Duke University.

2014
ABSTRACT

Hannah Arendt's Theory of Political Judgment
by
Jonathan Peter Schwartz

Department of Political Science
Duke University

Date:_______________________

Approved:

___________________________
Michael Gillespie, Supervisor

___________________________
Ruth Grant

___________________________
Thomas Spragens, Jr.

___________________________
Tracy B. Strong

An Abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor
of Philosophy in the Department of Political Science
in the Graduate School of Duke University.

2014
Copyright by
Jonathan Peter Schwartz
2014
Abstract
Hannah Arendt's theory of political judgment has been an ongoing perplexity
among scholars who have written on her. As a result, her theory of judgment is often
treated as a suggestive but unfinished aspect of her thought. Drawing on a wider array of
sources than is commonly utilized, I argue that her theory of political judgment was in
fact the heart of her work. Arendt's project, in other words, centered around
reestablishing the possibility of political judgment in a modern world that historically has
progressively undermined it. In the dissertation, I systematically develop an account of
Arendt's fundamentally political and non-sovereign notion of judgment. We discover
that individual judgment is not arbitrary, and that even in the complex circumstances of
the modern world there are valid structures of judgment which can be developed and
dependably relied upon. The result of this work articulates a theory of practical reason
which is highly compelling: it provides orientation for human agency which does not rob
it of its free and spontaneous character; shows how we can improve and cultivate our
political judgment; and points the way toward the profoundly intersubjective form of
political philosophy Arendt ultimately hoped to develop.

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Contents
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………...iv
Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………..vi
Chapter One: Hannah Arendt's Political Judgment………………………………………1
Chapter Two: Arendt on the Traditional Era of Western Politics…………………….…34
Chapter Three: A Genealogy of Modern Politics……………………………………..…89
Chapter Four: The Failure to Refound Freedom and its Consequences………………..131
Chapter Five: Thinking without a Bannister……………………………………………177
Chapter Six: Arendt's Essential Question: What is Political Philosophy?.......................231
Chapter Seven: Arendt's Theory of Political Judgment………………………………...275
Chapter Eight: Making Sense of Arendtian Political Judgment………………………..331
Epilogue………………………………………………………………………………...395
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………408
Biography……………………………………………………………………………….424

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Acknowledgements
Thanks must first go to my supervisor for this dissertation, Michael Gillespie,
who has superbly overseen the project. Professor Gillespie initially recognizing that my
real interest was with Arendt's theory of judgment, and suggesting I focus on it solely
instead of on a broader project. He has been an ongoing source of encouragement,
insight, and good counsel, and without his wide-ranging knowledge, open-mindedness,
and sensitivity to possibilities this study could not have been done.
I also want to thank the members of my committee, each of whom has been
invaluable for arriving at this point. Ruth Grant, along with her critical insight and
provision of crucial training in the field, was my first adviser at Duke. I have come to
recognize her a source of great common sense, and I have often sought to emulate her
approach to research in my own work. Thomas Spragens has been a source of
intellectual inspiration throughout my graduate studies: I have learned a great deal from
his classes and books, and above all from his intellectual generosity and practicality.
Finally, I want to thank Tracy Strong for graciously agreeing to serve on my committee
and to provide crucial oversight of the specific subject matter of this study. The several
classes I took from Professor Strong at UC San Diego sparked my interest in political
theory and, indeed, there is no doubt that my interests and work reflect what he taught
me.
I must also express my gratitude to those who have also at various times made
significant contributions to my intellectual development. I want to thank my thesis

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advisor at U.C. San Diego, Fonna Forman, who first guided and introduced me to the
activity of serious intellectual work. I would also be greatly remiss not to recognize
Babette Babich, Michael Feola, and, of course, Peter Euben, who though I studied with at
Duke more briefly was a great inspiration and example.
Thanks must also go my colleagues—particularly those who took part in the
Political Theory Writing Symposium—whose thoughtfulness, insight, and enthusiasm
have inspired and motivated me in our work together at Duke. I would like especially to
thank Darren Beatty, Aaron Roberts, Dominique Déry, Malina Swiatek, Matthew Cole,
Alexandra Oprea, Will Wittels, Ray Mercado, Luc Perkins, Samuel Bagg, and Ana
Guzman.
Finally, I want to express my very great appreciation to Duke University, the
Department of Political Science at Duke, and the Kenan Institute for Ethics, all of whom
generously provided both financial and institutional support for this work. Without their
support this project could certainly not have been completed.
Lastly, I would like to thank my family for trusting and believing in me while I
pursued this project. I would like especially to express my love and gratitude to my
children, Lavi and Ila, who kept me grounded in real life and tolerated the mysterious
babble I spoke during dinners or drives to school when they asked me what I was writing
about. Though they may not understand my work, it is enough for them to know that
they are what give it meaning.

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Chapter One:
Introduction ~ Hannah Arendt's

Political Judgment

The Question of Political Judgment
Political judgment is an intrinsic element of all forms of human life with others,
and good judgment, although preeminently instrumental is one of the greatest human
goods. While there are many other goods that one might rank above it, including peace,
justice, virtue, happiness, or liberty, all of these depend in the long run on good political
judgment to bring them into being and sustain them. When we elect political leaders, it is
good judgment more than anything else that we hope they will exercise: while their
political ideology or party affiliation may be a factor or even the key factor in securing
our vote, their ideological position will be worthless to us if they lack the judgment to
bring that political vision into reality. Moreover, given the increasing
interconnectedness, complexity, and centralization of modern societies and economies,
the ecological challenges of our times, and the massive destructive power in the hands of
our regimes, political judgment today is perhaps more important than ever before. Yet,
despite the obvious importance of such judgment, we have a very difficult time
understanding exactly what it is. Very often we point to examples of good judgment, as
for example in the actions of Lincoln, Mandela, or Martin Luther King, and even more
often complain about instances of bad judgment too innumerable to need mentioning; yet,
it is difficult for us to put our finger on exactly what made one person effective, while so

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many others seem to fail. It is clearly not due to one person simply having more
knowledge, since two people may have roughly similar information of a given set of
circumstances and still arrive at better and worse judgments about the matter in question.
Good judgment seems rather to rest on a certain kind of insight into circumstances and an
ability to summon up just the right response to that insight: a kind of wisdom or
"common sense," that while potentially sharpened by greater knowledge is still
something separate from it—a kind of skill or ability to see not only more broadly but
more deeply. This is the subject which this dissertation aims to address—or at least to
begin addressing, since the topic vastly exceeds the bounds this project.
How then can we define good judgment?i Following Kant we might define
judgment as the ability to subsume particulars under "general rules."ii While this is a

iA growing body of literature over the last several years has begun to develop around the question of the
nature of good judgment. See for instance Ronald Beiner, Political Judgment, University of Chicago Press:
Chicago (1983); Richard Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and
Praxis, University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia (1983); Howard Caygill, Art of Judgment, Basil
Blackwell, Inc: Cambridge, MA (1989); Allessandro Ferrara, The Force of Example: Explorations in the
Paradigm of Judgment, Columbia University Press: New York (2008);Hans-Georg Gadamer; “Appendix:
Letter by Professor Hans-Georg Gadamer.” Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics,
and Praxis, University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia (1983); “Hermeneutics as Practical
Philosophy,” “On the Possibility of a Philosophical Ethics,” The Gadamer Reader: A Bouquet of his Later
Writings, Richard E. Palmer, editor and translator, Northwestern University Press: Evanston, IL (2007);
Truth and Method, 2nd, Revised Edition. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, trans. Continuum: New
York (1975); Klaus Gunther, The Sense of Appropriateness: Application Discourses in Morality and Law,
John Farrell, trans. SUNY Press: Albany, NY (1993); Low-Beer, F. H., Questions of Judgment, Prometheus
Books: Amherst, NY (1995); Rudolf A. Makkreel, “The Role of Judgment and Orientation in
Hermeneutics,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 34: 1-2 (2008), pp. 29-50; Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose
Justice? Which Rationality? University of Notre Dame Press: Notre Dame, IN (1988); Peter J. Steinberger,
The Concept of Political Judgment, University of Chicago Press: Chicago (1993); Charles Taylor,
"Explanation and Practical Reason," The Quality of Life, Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, eds. Oxford
University Press: Oxford and New York (1992); "Rationality," Philosophical Papers, Volumes 2,
Cambridge University Press: Cambridge (1985); Philip Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment: How Good is
It? How can We Know?, Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ (2005);Leslie Paul Thiele, The Heart
of Judgment: Practical Wisdom, Neuroscience, and Narrative, Cambridge University Press: New York
(2006).
ii Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A132/B171.

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simplistic and very abstract account, it captures our basic intuitions about the matter. The
most obvious case of such judgment in political life is a judge's ruling in court, deciding
whether the particular case before him can be "subsumed" under some law or precedent.
However, judgment, when conceived in the arena of politics, seems to extend further than
this. When we talk about the proverbial relationship between theory and practice, we are
discussing judgment. The fundamental question about this relationship, however, has
always been what constitutes "theory," what constitutes "practice," and how are they
related?iii But regardless of how we define them, at the very least we seem to have to
understand judgment as, in some sense, the establishment of a of relationship of our
mental activities with our activities in the actual world. This last characterization,
however, is so abstract that it does not give us a great deal of purchase on our question.
An analytic approach to this question can perhaps help us to orient ourselves in a general
way but it does not give us much to go on. Thus, in what follows I will take another
approach, examining the work of a thinker who devoted her life's work to concretely
understanding the true nature of this relationship: Hannah Arendt, whose theory of
political judgment, I believe, may be perhaps the most significant consideration of the
topic since Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Arendt believed that understanding the
nature of political judgment and the sources of its validity required a dramatic rethinking
of what theory and practice are, and how they are related to each other. An examination

iii For excellent discussions of the various ways the relationship between theory and practice has been
understood see Nicholas Lobkowicz, Theory and Practice: History of a Concept from Aristotle to Marx,
University of Notre Dame Press: Notre Dame (1967); Sheldon S. Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity
and Innovation in Western Political Thought, Expanded Edition, Princeton University Press: Princeton
(2004), pp. 3-4, 17-22; Richard J. Bernstein, Praxis and Action: Contemporary Philosophies of Human
Activity, University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia (1971), pp. ix-xii.

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