Arendt's Inheritance And Development Of Kant's Theory Of Aesthetic Judgmen

As one of the most original political thinkers in the 20 th century,Arendt spent most of his life in a "dark" and turbulent era.Her Jewish identity gave her a better perspective to observe and feel the political disasters in the 20 th century,and based on this,she constructed her own political philosophy.In her early years,she put forward the theory of political action,trying to save this badly squeezed and decaying political field,thus advocating a political attitude of active participation and initiative,and deeply reflecting and criticizing the whole philosophical tradition of avoiding the world.In his later years,after the trial of Eichmann,Arendt was deeply touched by Eichmann’s ignorance and numbness in the face of unprecedented evil.She began to realize that an independent judgment function has a guiding role in people’s external political actions.So her political philosophy took a big turn at this time,and Kant’s judgment theory just became the ideological source of her political philosophy in this period.In particular,the emphasis on social publicity in Kant’s theory of aesthetic judgment attracted her deeply,and finally prompted her to apply this theory to the political field,thus realizing the political turn of judgment aesthetics and establishing her own theory of political judgment.In the process of sorting out and reforming Kant’s theory of aesthetic judgment,Arendt did not adopt the transcendental concept in Kant’s aesthetics,but changed the purely philosophical concept of aesthetic judgment into a concept that can be applied to the field of political judgment.In addition,she also deeply analyzed and criticized some other elements in her philosophical theory,such as the self-discipline of aesthetic judgment,the transcendental nature of aesthetic judgment and its separation from political practice.Therefore,Arendt really inherited and developed his theory critically.This paper is divided into five parts,including introduction and summary,and introduces in detail the inextricable relationship between Arendt’s political judgment theory and Kant’s aesthetic judgment.Among them,the first part,as the introduction of the article,can be regarded as the preparatory work of the article,which mainly includes the writing background,research significance,research status,research methods and main research contents of this article.The second part introduces Arendt’s early action theory and the turn of his philosophical theory system.The content of this part is mainly divided into two aspects.One is Arendt’s early political action theory based on his active life and his political judgment interwoven with practical life;Secondly,it analyzes in detail the trigger reason and the specific content of Arendt’s philosophical theory system turn,including the analysis of Eichmann incident and the concentrated reflection on the performance of the following people in the dark age.It is for the above reasons that Arendt’s judgment theory in his later years has made a great turn,and the focus of his theory has shifted from Aristotle’s prudence theory to Kant’s independent aesthetic judgment theory.The third part of the article mainly analyzes and discusses Kant’s theory of judging beauty and the lack of political orientation in it As a purely philosophical aesthetic theory,Kant did not intend to base aesthetic judgment on any social and political basis,which led to the lack of theoretical consciousness of political application in his aesthetic theory.It is embodied in the separation of the aesthetic field from the political practice field,the transcendental nature of the concepts in the theory of aesthetic judgment and the self-discipline of the subject of aesthetic judgment.The fourth part mainly introduces Arendt’s political interpretation of Kant’s aesthetic judgment theory,trying to find the relationship between them.Arendt inherited and developed Kant’s aesthetic judgment theory in the following three aspects: independence,focusing on appearance and publicity.The last chapter of this paper focuses on the central issue of Arendt’s aesthetic politics in his later years-the reconciliation between universality and particularity,and introduces Arendt’s interpretation of teleological judgment in the second half of Kant’s judgment theory.Arendt is mainly critical of this part of the book.In Arendt’s view,it was Kant’s teleology that triggered the tendency of historicism in philosophy since then,thus depriving the individual subject of self-discipline.In the end,she chose to return to the contemplative life,and endowed the historical events with true value and significance with the retrospective judgment of plural bystanders.In a word,only by resorting to the joint action of various social factors in aesthetic judgment can we better help people fulfill and realize their personal responsibilities and freedoms in political life.