Human Condition - Universalmuseum Joanneum

202 — 203
Sophie Loidolt
Immanuel Kant
(1724­1804)
15 Cf. Trawny, Denkbarer
Holocaust, p. 76.
16 Cf. Kant, Kritik der
Urteilskraft, B 158.
can take place only in plurality – and that for Arendt “meaning” or “sense” is not about
an absolute truth but the fact that people can be “at home” in a world, know the ropes,
and be reconciled to what has happened by the very act of coming to a judgment about
it. That is why it is about “thinking for oneself” and “coming to a conclusion,” just as in
the process of exchange and discussion with Others. Arendt ascribes above all to poets
(we might perhaps say in a broader sense, artists) an outstanding capacity for the
first narration. They are most likely to be able to grasp the sense of the action because
(ideally) they are free, i.e. because they are independent of both the scientific and
the social consensus.15 But the power of judgment belongs to us all. This is not just a
matter of being affected but of a first emancipation, a self­liberation for judgment. The
empathy of understanding emancipates us to the extent that we can assume different
positions in our thinking.
2. Emancipation: thinking, acting, judging
“Judge” here does not mean “condemn” or even “pass sentence.” Nor does it not merely
mean to have an opinion considered your own. Judging is more of an active process,
going through and weighing up many different points of view, pondering on your own
perspective and taking in other people’s. Mental effort, imagination and reflection
are required before you arrive at a judgment, having thought through your considered
position and formed an opinion (as opposed to opinions that just occur to you or more
or less burst out of you).
Arendt develops her theory of judgment on the basis of the first part of Kant’s Critique
of Judgement, which is about aesthetic judgments – because Kant was aware that in
“judgments of taste” you can’t just simply apply categories to “cases,” realising that
judgment here fulfils a very special, “reflective” task. That is why he calls these judgments
where there are no general benchmarks for assessment “reflective judgments”
as opposed to “determinative judgments,” which merely subsume and to that extent
do not represent any challenge to one’s powers of judgement. Arendt is now of the
opinion that basically the same criterion should apply to both aesthetic and political
judgments, i.e. judgments about human affairs. In both cases, individual cases are
involved. There is no striving for absolute truth. It is a widely disputed point, but
although there can be no objective opinion, it is not all purely subjective, random and
arbitrary, either.
Reflective judgments are not in fact just a statement of a personal feeling, but very
much emancipation from my direct affectedness so as to allow me a wider perspective,
Kant’s erweiterte Denkungsart (expanded thinking).16 Arendt sticks closely to Kant
here, who distinguishes between “sensory taste” and “reflective (considered) taste.”
Sensory taste merely a personal feeling limited to my (or whoever’s) individual sensuality
and expresses my arbitrary direct response to what affects me (for example, I
like spinach). I’m not making a judgment here in a strict sense but just reproducing my
state, confirming and asserting it – I am not distancing myself in any way from what
directly appeals to me or repels me. Reflective (considered) taste, however, demands
something quite different from me. It is not a direct response to a stimulus, but sets
off a thought process in me, the result of which is a judgment that lays claim to intersubjective
agreement (not absolute truth!). Only here am I really judging – I should
really be speaking in the plural – only here is there something worth arguing about,
which can be an object of communication over and beyond our personal sensuality. The
communication is in fact not just about personal pleasurable sensations (which would
become uninteresting very quickly – I like blue, you like yellow), but about things
we can share, because or inasmuch as all of us have a detached attitude. The object or
event is now seen from several sides. It is not a matter of reaching an objective truth