An Internalized Spectator: Judgment in Arendt’s Kant Lectures

Abstract

In this paper I revisit a perplexing question about Arendt’s theory of judgment: what is the relationship between the normative function of judgment and the perspective of the vita contemplativa in her Kant Lectures. Pace the scholars who conceive the perspective of the vita contemplativa as a perspective irrelevant to guiding our activities and appraisal, I suppose that the perspective of the vita contemplativa is intrinsic to Arendt’s project to study the normative function of judgment. I will argue that Arendt’s quest for intersubjectivity is not adequate if it is not completed by a robust criterion to tell the justified right to demand universal assent from the spurious ones. Therefore, she has to find a perspective with reference to which this condition could be specified. Now the perspective of the vita contemplativa plays this role.