Rethinking political judgment: Arendt and existentialism

Abstract

Uses 20th century existentialism to confront the challenge of political judgement after moral absolutism. How can we reinvigorate the human capacity for political judgement as a practical activity capable of addressing the uncertainties of our postfoundational world? The book takes up this challenge by drawing on the historically attuned perspective of 20th-century philosophies of existence – in particular the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus and Hannah Arendt. Displacing the lingering rationalist temptations, Maša Mrovlje engages these thinkers' aesthetic sensibility to delve into the experiential reality of political judgement and revivify it as a worldly, ambiguous practice. The purpose is to illustrate the prescient political significance of existentialists' narrative imagination on two contemporary perplexities of political judgement: the problem of dirty hands and the challenge of transitional justice. This engagement reveals the distinctly resistant potential of worldly judgement in its ability to stimulate our capacities of coming to terms with and creatively confronting the tragedies of political action, rather than simply yielding to them as a necessary course of political life. Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 1. Political Judgement in the History of Political Thought and the Modern Crisis 22 2. Sartre and Beauvoir: The Ambiguity of Political Judgement and the Challenge of Freedom and Responsibility 51 3. Camus and Arendt: Confronting the Ambiguity of Political Judgement and Illuminating the Limits of the World 81 4. Political Judgement and Narrativity 115 5. Facing Up to the Tragedy of Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands 146 6. Times of Transition: Reconciling with the Tragic Nature of Political Affairs 183 Conclusion: Reclaiming Wonder at the World of Political Affairs 218 Bibliography 226 Index 256