Heidegger, Kant and ‘Dirty’ Politics

Abstract

This article begins with the hypothesis that much modern political thought can be understood according to a distinction between transcendent and immanent accounts of judgement. These two positions are analysed as to their correspondingly entailed accounts of the origin, legitimacy and nature of political community. Using Heidegger and a Heideggerian reading of Kant on the nature of judgement, it is then shown that both accounts of judgement are in fact metaphysically derivative (the ‘dirty’ of the title) and in precisely the same way. This observation then inaugurates the project of providing a fundamental ontological account of judgement. However, it is discovered that such an account carries no political implications: politics emerges in and as its ‘fall’ into this or that metaphysically derivative interpretation.