Exercises in Political Thinking

Abstract

Engages Arendt’s unique perspective on the practice of reflective judgment and Arendt’s suggestion on how to acquire, improve and exercise one’s ability of judgment. Arendt argues that reflective judgment needs to stand in for any firm orientation in political practices. Judgment remains an activity of the mind, political thinking, situated between the past, which that cannot give us firm guidance and the future, which we cannot foresee. Judgment’s relevance is thus universal and the authors here suggest that Arendt’s approach to politics consists in thinking about and rethinking political questions, and for this reason, the fact of her theory of judgment being unfinished is less a problem than an invitation to continue practicing reflective judgment as she outlined it.