Arendt, Kant, and the Enigma of Judgment

Hannah Arendt's book "Origins of Totalitarianism" rose to the top of best-seller lists due to the triumph of Trumpism. "Arendt, Kant, and the Enigma of Judgment" directs our attention to her later thought, Lectures on Kants Political Philosophy, which outlines her theory of judgment for the twentieth century. Blumenthal-Barby suggests that Arendt's drawing and redrawing of conceptual distinctions is an enactment of judgment, a process that challenges and complicates what she says at every turn. This book reminds us why a shared reality matters in a time of intense political polarization and why the democratic project depends on it.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 160 pages
Publication date: 15 October 2022
Publisher: Northwestern University Press

More than a half century after its initial publication, Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism surged to the top of best-seller lists as readers grappled with the triumph of Trumpism. Arendt, Kant, and the Enigma of Judgment directs our attention to her later thought, the posthumously published and highly provocative Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy. Martin Blumenthal-Barby places this work in dialogue with Arendt's other writings, including her notes on Kant's Critique of Judgment, to outline her theory of judgment for the twentieth century. The idea that authentic judgment—for example, the ability to distinguish right from wrong—is incommensurable with abstract, automated processes lies at the center of Arendt's late work and at the fore of our collective reckoning in an era of post-truths and artificial intelligence.

Rather than presenting us with a fixed account, Blumenthal-Barby suggests, Arendt's drawing and redrawing of conceptual distinctions is itself an enactment of judgment, a process that challenges and complicates what she says at every turn. In so doing, Arendt, in thoroughly Kantian fashion, establishes judgment as a performative category that can never be taught but only demonstrated. As sharp as it is timely, this incisive book reminds us why a shared reality matters in a time of intense political polarization and why the democratic project, vulnerable as it may appear today, crucially depends on it.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780810145474