The Research On Arendt's Political Judgment Theory

Political Judgment Theory is Arendt's Introspection on the practical political life,which is the reasonable results of her development of political philosophy to a certain extent.Arendt's entire life shuttled back and forth between philosophy and politics.It is a necessary course during Arendt's forming of her Judgment Theory to turn to Kant's theory of aesthetic judgment from Aristotle's practical spirit,and to turn to spectator's stand point from mover's stand point,which reveals the gradual maturity of her judgment theory.Judgment is the most political ability among human's mental capacity,it is more significant than thinking and will.To Arendt's mind,only judgment is the real and spiritual political activities.In order to present Arendt's political judgment theory deeply and in all directions,this paper will demonstrate a brief introduction of Arendt's judgment theory from the scattered ideas of her work about political judgment problem,the beginning,the relevant concept and retrospection of her Political judgment theory.In the first chapter,the paper presents the beginning of her political judgment theory mainly in three aspects: Aristotle's spirit of "practical",Kant's "aesthetic judgment” and the Eichmann trial events.As the beginning source of Arendt's political judgment theory,Aristotle " practical " spirit has influenced it most without doubt.After delving into Aristotle's " practical " spirit,Arendt found her theory has great disparity from Aristotle's,which led her to Kant's " aesthetic judgment”.Aesthetic Judgment impacted on Arendt's later judgment theory in several concepts.Then the third part of this chapter mentioned that the Eichmann trial events as the turning point when she started to focusing on her spiritual life,the discussion of her own thinking and the political significance of the judgment.Arendt spend her whole lifetime to light up a lamp for people lived in The totalitarian era.although it was not that bright,she truly hoped what she insisted could be the last defense against evil.Arendt wants political judgment can be used as a line of defense against the occurrence of "evil".In order to demonstrate the possibility of how political judgment works,she tried to expound various factors which constitute the political judgment.Therefore,this paper followed her guidance,demonstrated the concept of action,imagination,common sense and public sphere and their significance in political judgment in the second chapter.In the third chapter,this paper intended to retrospect Arendt's political judgment theory.In the beginning,it answered the question of the criteria standard of the spirit of expanding,then explained the relevance and tension of the judgments from two aspects: the spectator's stand point and the mover's stand point.In the end,Arendt found out human's judgment provided the possibility to compromise the relationship between philosophy and politics.