The actor does not judge

Hannah Arendt’s theory of judgement

Bibliographic Data

ID11342154
AuthorsShmuel Lederman (0000-0002-9270-4392, University of Haifa, Israel and the Open University of Israel, Israel, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume42
Issue7
Pages727-741
Publication date2016-09-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhilosophy & Social Criticism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0191-4537 • E-ISSN: 1461-734X
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0191453715587974
OpenAlexW2397899539
LanguageEN
Citations received7

Hannah Arendt’s conceptualization of political judgement has been a source of much scholarly investigation and debate in recent decades. Underlying the debate is the assumption that at least in her early writings, Arendt had an actor’s theory of judgement. In this article I challenge this common assumption. As I attempt to demonstrate, it relies on a misunderstanding, not only of Arendt’s conception of judgement, but also of her conception of agents in the public realm. Once we discard the assumption of an actor’s theory of judgement, I argue, some important issues in Arendt’s theory of judgement are resolved, enabling us to perceive it as a unified, rather than self-contradictory, theory of judgement

Conceptualization · Epistemology · Judgement · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Realm · Sociology · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Philosophy

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