Arendt’s Hermeneuticl Interpretation of Kantian Reflective Judgment

Abstract

Hannah Arendt's reading of reflective judgment in the philosophy of Kant deserves particular attention not only for her understanding of plurality but at least as much for its hermeneutical stance, although this last was neither her intention nor did she ever wrote specifically on that subject. As is well known, for Arendt The Critique of Judgment is the most political of all Kant's works. This unusual interpretation of the third critique is clearly exhibited in the general framework of Hannah Arendt's Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy.1 These lectures dating from 1970 are accepted as the core of her thoughts on judgment,2 which constituted the unwritten part of The Life of the Mind published in 1 974.3 This last and unfinished work can be regarded not only as an investigation between theoretical and practical reason, but also as bridging the gap between the vita activa and the vita contemplativa by the mediation of judgment. In this essay, I draw upon these lectures in order to examine aesthetical reflective judgments concentrating upon two of their general qualities: they are subjective judgments although they are dependent upon intersubjective judgments, and as I will indicate, they have a distinct hermeneutic significance. Surprisingly, very little attention has been paid to the importance Arendt places on the hermeneutic significance of reflective judgments. It is the argument of this essay that in light of these hermeneutic shifts such major components of Arendt's thought as plurality, speech and action, common sense, and understanding are connected organically with what she calls reconciliation in her Denktagebuch. My discussion will be presented in four stages. First, I will indicate Arendt's debt to Kant by examining their common critical attitude toward the traditions in which their respective reflections were rooted in order to clarify their respective conceptions of the phenomenon of a common world. Second, I will focus on the qualities of aesthetical reflective judgments in the Critique of Judgment, which will provide a general view of the way in which Arendt appropriated the third critique. Third, in relation to these qualities, I will delineate the meaning of publicness, enlarged thought, and common sense. In the final section, I will provide an analysis that demonstrates the influence of Kant's notion of common sense upon Arendt's understanding of judgment and reveals the hermeneutic scope of her political theory. Her position will become even clearer when interpretation is considered in its relation to understanding and reconciliation. These analyses aim to provide a ground for understanding the intrinsic connections between Arendt's investigations and the interpretative character of political judgments, and even of judgments in general. The Influences of Kant on Arendt and Arendt's Lectures on Kant Although there are always obvious difficulties and complexities in finding the influences of one thinker upon another, in this case the affinities and the differences are suggestive enough to venture certain connections with some confidence. It is, of course, beyond doubt that Kant and Arendt lived in completely different lifeworlds and many influences of these different worlds can be found in their works. Although they both wrote during and after transformative periods in Europe and both had undergone the experience of revolution,4 the most striking difference between them is their elaboration of reason and the direction that reason takes. This point can be regarded as a decisive one especially when their understanding of the individual is analysed. But this strikingly different viewpoint is immediately balanced by consideration of their critical attitude toward each of their traditions. Despite their different lifeworlds, they shared one absolutely fundamental belief, namely, that a critical manner is essential for the development of any understanding of an issue. This essential characteristic receives special emphasis in both thinkers' mature works. …