Original scientific paper
HANNAH ARENDT AND KANT: AN ATTEMPT AT ESTABLISHING A “CRITIQUE OF THE POLITICAL FACULTY OF JUDGEMENT”
Goran Gretić
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Hannah Arendt pondered upon the meaning of the concept of the faculty of judgement from the philosophical angle in relation to a concrete historical phenomenon, the epoch she characterized as the “bankruptcy of human sanity” i.e. the epoch of national socialism. That bankruptcy was primarily manifested as a failure of the so called faculty of judgement, in an age which was witnessing some radical changes in the historical and social conditions of the totality of the practice of life. That is why Arendt is searching for a way out in the so called reflective faculty of judgements, an alternative for the deficiencies and difficulties of the determining faculty of judgement which it manifests at the time of sweeping crises. In Kant, Hannah Arendt finds the elements of political philosophy which could explain the problematics of the political. However, she does not find these elements in his political philosophy, as might be expected, but in his philosophy of the faculty of judgement.
Keywords
modernity crisis; determining faculty of judgement; reflective faculty of judgement; Immanuel Kant; common sense; national-socialism; the political
Hrčak ID:
22929
URI
Publication date:
16.7.2004.
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