‘To Think Representatively’: Arendt on Judgment and the Imagination

Abstract

In this article I reconstruct Hannah Arendt's theory of judgment around a number of key themes. After having distinguished two models of judgment, one based on the standpoint of the actor, the other on the standpoint of the spectator, I go on to examine their most distinctive features, in particular the link between judgment, the imagination, and the ability to think ‘representatively.’ I also examine the philosophical sources of Arendt's theory of judgment, namely, Kant's theory of aesthetic judgment and Aristotle's notion of phronesis. In the final section I address the question of judgment and its criteria of validity.1