Action, Judgment, and Imagination in Hannah Arendt’s Thought

Abstract

This article presents a conception of imagination that emerges from Hannah Arendt’s writings on action, judgment, and responsibility. Imagination, for Arendt, is central to the processes of action and judgment, as it enables political actors and spectators to imagine a new world that could look differently from the world that exists. Importantly, though, this imagined world needs to bear some resemblance to the world that actually exists to avoid losing touch with reality and factual truth. The loss of reality and factual truth risks judgments that are inattentive and actions that are destructive and tyrannical. Imagination must be bounded, for Arendt, to ensure that action and judgment remain tied to reality. The article first offers this novel interpretation of Arendtian imagination before discussing its relationship to contemporary research on political participation, moral conviction, and attitude certainty.