Arendt, Kant, and the Enigma of Judgment

A nuanced extrapolation of Hannah Arendts theory of judgment through her highly provocative reading of Immanuel Kant More than a half century after it was first published, Hannah Arendts Origins of Totalitarianism rose to the top of best-seller lists as readers grappled with the triumph of Trumpism. Arendt, Kant, and the Enigma of Judgment directs our attention to her later thought, the posthumously published and highly provocative Lectures on Kants Political Philosophy. Martin Blumenthal-Barby puts this work in dialogue with Arendts other writings, including her notes on Kants Critique of Judgment, to outline her theory of judgment for the twentieth century. The idea that authentic judgmentfor example, the ability to distinguish right from wrongis incommensurable with abstract, automated processes lies at the center of Arendts late work and at the fore of our collective reckoning in an era of post-truths and artificial intelligence. Rather than presenting us with a fixed account, Blumenthal-Barby suggests, Arendts drawing and redrawing of conceptual distinctions is itself an enactment of judgment, a process that challenges and complicates what she says at every turn. In so doing, Arendt, in thoroughly Kantian fashion, establishes judgment as a performative category that can never be taught but only demonstrated. As sharp as it is timely, this incisive book reminds us why a shared reality matters in a time of intense political polarization and why the democratic project, vulnerable as it may appear today, crucially depends on it.