Kant's Appreciation Determine How To Help Arendt Solve The Problem Of Its Political Judgment

After a comprehensive view of foreign scholars’ studies, as well as domestic scholars’ studies, about Arendt’s theory of judgment and Arendt herself describe, we found that studying into Arendt’s theory of judgment cannot be avoided to explore the philosophy of Kant, especially its discussion of judgment of taste, which has support Arendt’s political judgment. In Arendt’s political thinking, she has always believed that a description of political events is much stronger than any political theories. Judgment as one of the most important political ability and concern by Arendt can be traced back to her study of totalitarianism. In-depth analysis of the disaster caused by the European totalitarianism, Arendt pointed out that the tradition of Western civilization has been destroyed by the ethical, moral, political catastrophe, which caused by the totalitarian. The fracture of tradition show that we cannot resolve the plight of human judgment by a moral mean, which has also become the plight of Arendt’t thinking. After that Arendt lived through the Eichmann trial, she found the original ethical standards and judgment rules had no longer work under totalitarianism. Humans are just following orders without thinking, without their own judgment, and conscience will not feel. This is a terrible "unthinking" which Arendt said "Banality of evil". Arendt, thus, expanded the thinking of "thinking". From the concern of political life, she turned to study the life of mind. At the same time, she found that the construct of the "public domain" cannot live without the study of "intersubjectivity". The thinking process about the life of mind and "intersubjectivity" guide Arendt to back to Kant’s concept about "the judgment of taste" and "common sense". And finally, she found the meeting point between Kant’s judgments of taste and her political judgment. After the resolve of her problem, Arendt had to face the solution of the plight of ethics.