Practical Foundations for Political Judgment: Arendt on Action and World

Abstract

Critics of Hannah Arendt's conception of political judgment typically either neglect the complex connections between her theory of judgment and the rest of her substantive political theory or wrongly assume that such foundations for morality and judgment as might be consistent with Arendtian democratic politics may be derived only from her nostalgic and not altogether accurate account of Greek politics. I argue that a much different political ethic may be found in Arendt's work: Arendt's theory of action and concept of "world" provide criteria that may serve as practical foundations for making political judgments. Conceiving and exploring Arendt's theory in this way provide a clearer and more useful way of thinking about the theoretical and practical problems associated with democratic politics and political judgment in a postmodern or post-Nietzschean world characterized by the absence of universal standards or foundations.