From actor to spectator: Hannah Arendt's 'two theories' of political judgment.

Yar, M. (2000) From actor to spectator: Hannah Arendt's 'two theories' of political judgment. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 26 (2). pp. 1-27. ISSN 1461-734X

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Abstract

The question of judgment has become one of the central problems in recent social, political and ethical thought. This paper explores Hannah Arendt's decisive contribution to this debate by attempting to reconstruct analytically two distinctive perspectives on judgment from the corpus of her writings. By exploring her relation to Aristotelian and Kantian sources, and by uncovering debts and parallels to key thinkers such as Benjamin and Heidegger, it is argued that Arendt's work pinpoints the key antinomy within political judgment itself, that between the viewpoints of the political actor and the political spectator. The paper concludes by highlighting some lacunae and difficulties in the development of Arendt's account, difficulties that set challenges for those theorists (such as Seyla Benhabib and Alessandro Ferrara) who wish to appropriate and extend Arendt's contribution into the field of contemporary critical theory.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Philosophy and Social Criticism
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3312
Subjects:
?? action • aesthetics • community • freedom • history • judgment • reflectionsociology and political sciencephilosophyb philosophy (general) ??
ID Code:
14407
Deposited By:
Users 810 not found.
Deposited On:
17 Oct 2008 08:27
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
15 Jul 2024 09:33