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Sensus communis as a foundation for men as political beings: Arendt's

reading of Kant's Critique of Judgment
Annelies Degryse
Philosophy Social Criticism 2011 37: 345
DOI: 10.1177/0191453710389452

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 Philosophy and Social Criticism
37(3) 345–358
Sensus communis as a ª The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/0191453710389452
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political beings:
Arendt’s reading of
Kant’s Critique of Judgment

Annelies Degryse
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

Abstract
In the literature on Hannah Arendt’s Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, two sorts of claim have
been made by different interpreters. First, there is Beiner’s observation that there is a shift in
Arendt’s thoughts on judgment, which has led to the idea that Arendt develops two distinct
theories of judgment. The second sort of claim concerns Arendt’s use of Kant’s transcendental
principles. At its core, it has led to the critique that Arendt detranscendentalizes – or empiricalizes
– Kant, by linking Kant’s judgments of taste to an empirical sociability. In this article, I argue
against both of these claims. Early fragments of Arendt’s on judgment make clear that she
develops only one theory of judgment. It is only that it is not until later in her life that she fully
elaborates it. Nor does Arendt confuse Kant’s idea of enlarged thinking with an actual dialogue
with others. In fact, Arendt introduces an interesting interdependence between judgment and
speech, or communication. I develop my argument by first outlining the problems Arendt hoped
to resolve via judgment. Through my reading of the Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, I show
how Arendt interprets Kant’s Critique of Judgment not as his theory of aesthetic judgments, but as
an answer to the more general question ‘How do I judge?’ I also clarify the difference Arendt
draws between common sense and community sense. With community sense, Arendt uncovers a
foundation not only for men as political beings but also for the idea of humanity. This finding is
often overlooked in the literature. I conclude with another Arendtian distinction that is often
overlooked, that between spectators and the solitary philosopher.

Keywords
Hannah Arendt, judgment, Immanuel Kant, political beings, sensus communis, spectators

Corresponding author:
Annelies Degryse, Kerkstraat 10, 3010 Kessel-Lo (Leuven), Belgium
Email: alies.degryse@gmail.com

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346 Philosophy and Social Criticism 37(3)

Arendt’s conception of judging has always been puzzling. In 1981, Richard Bernstein
already noted that there is a ‘flagrant contradiction’ in Arendt’s reflections on judgment:
‘Judging is at once the faculty par excellence of those who participate and engage in
action and the faculty of non-participating spectators’ (The Promise of Politics [1986:
95]). In 1982, Ronald Beiner published the Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy
(hereafter referred to in citations as LKP), in order to give us an idea of what Judging,
the intended but never completed third volume of The Life of the Mind, might have been
like. However, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy seems to make things even more
puzzling, giving rise to yet more questions on Arendt’s conception of judging. The lec-
tures form a tangle of different themes that are often hard to relate to Kant’s political
philosophy – despite the title, it is not until the 10th lecture that Arendt addresses Kant’s
Critique of Judgment directly.
To assist the reader, Ronald Beiner adds an interpretive essay to Lectures on Kant’s
Political Philosophy. More moderate than Bernstein, Beiner suggests that Arendt ‘offers
not one but two theories of judgment’ in her work. Beiner detects ‘two more or less dis-
tinct phases: early and late, practical and contemplative’ (1992: 91). According to
Beiner, in Arendt’s early work, judging is a feature of the political life, while in her later
formulations, ‘she is no longer concerned with judging as a feature of the political life as
such’ (ibid.: 92). Judging is thus a distinct mental activity. Many other authors since
Bernstein and Beiner have given their interpretations of Arendt’s Lectures on Kant’s
Political Philosophy: Seyla Benhabib, Peter Steinberger, Andrew Norris, Alessandro
Ferrara, George Kateb, Majid Yar and most recently Robert Fine, to name a few. In the
extensive literature on the topic, the two claims that Beiner makes have been repeated
more often than others. First, there is the claim already mentioned that Arendt has two
theories of judgment. Second, there is the claim that Arendt detranscendentalizes or
empiricalizes Kant’s transcendental notions, upon which he bases his theory of judg-
ment. In my view, however, both of these observations have led to a misreading of Lec-
tures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. Therefore, in this article, I argue against both. First,
I claim that there are not two distinct theories of judgment to be found in Arendt.
Although an evolution can be perceived in Arendt’s thoughts on judgments, this is an
evolution that characterizes her work in general. This general evolution, however, does
not entail a wholly different theory of judgment. Second, I claim that Arendt’s empiri-
calization must be understood differently than it has been thus far. Her interpretation
of Kant’s sensus communis especially is not only impressively original but also
extremely important for her philosophy in general, as it establishes human beings as
political beings. Unfortunately, her interpretation of sensus communis as community
sense has often been overlooked or misunderstood.
In order to make these points, I will first describe Arendt’s reasons for focusing on
Kant when dealing with judgment. Second, I will reconstruct Arendt’s description of the
mental process of judging. In the third part of this article, I will focus upon Arendt’s
understanding of sensus communis, as community sense. The importance of this ‘extra’
sense for Arendt cannot be overestimated. Among other functions, it establishes the
foundation for ‘men’ as political beings. In the fourth part, I will discuss the interdepen-
dence Arendt introduces between the mental process of judging and actual communica-
tion with others. This will bring me to the fifth part, in which I discuss the leading figures

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Degryse 347

of Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy: the spectators. In her Lectures, Arendt

distinguishes the spectators (always in the plural) from actors, as well as from solitary
philosophers. Elaborating on this distinction will explain why Arendt empiricalizes
Kant’s notion of sensus communis.

1 Kant and Judging

As already mentioned in the introduction, Beiner notes two different theories of judg-
ment in Arendt’s writings. He does not describe both theories exactly, but rather confines
himself to pointing out a shift in emphasis ‘from the representative thought and enlarged
mentality of political agents to the spectatorship and retrospective judgment of historians
and storytellers’ (LKP, Beiner, 1992: 91). He dates this reorientation of Arendt to early
1970, and explains it as follows: ‘The more she reflected on the faculty of judgment, the
more inclined she was to regard it as the prerogative of the solitary (though public-spir-
ited) contemplator as opposed to the actor (whose activity is necessarily non-solitary)’
(ibid.: 92). At first glance, Beiner’s explanation sounds plausible. Arendt applies a sim-
ilar structure throughout her life: the active life of The Human Condition versus the con-
templative life of The Life of the Mind (hereafter referred to in citations as LoM).
However, Beiner’s choice of words is unfortunate. He uses precisely the opposition that
Arendt rejects. The Human Condition, as well as The Life of the Mind, is intended to
counter the traditional contradiction between the vita activa and the vita contemplativa.
In the former work, Arendt attempts to clarify the distinct activities labor, work and
action, and to revalue the political way of life, while in the latter work, she demonstrates
how the life of the mind has nothing to do with the passivity of contemplation. With
Cato, she claims: ‘Never am I less alone than when I am by myself, never am I more
active than when I do nothing’ (LKP, Beiner, 1992: 5). By employing the traditional dis-
tinction, Beiner disregards her own (typically Arendtian) distinction between the visible
and audible activities of men and the invisible activities of the life of the mind. But his
phasing is also inapt. Dating the early phase to the 1960s and the later phase to the 1970s,
he seems to forget what he himself writes in the introduction of Lectures on Kant’s Polit-
ical Philosophy, that Arendt was already teaching Kant’s political philosophy in 1964,
recapitulating parts out of these early lectures on Kant in 1965 and 1966, and the whole
series in 1970. Furthermore, one can already find fragments on prejudgments and judg-
ments in Was ist Politik? (published in English as The Promise of Politics [2005]), an
assembly of fragments written in the 1950s, where Arendt already refers to Kant when
discussing judgment. In one of the fragments, Arendt describes judgment as the sub-
sumption of the particular under the universal, a clear reference to Kant’s reflexive judg-
ment (1993: 20). And even in her later writings, Arendt refers to representative thought,
enlarged mentality and actors. The reorientation that Beiner detects is in fact a shift that
characterizes Arendt’s work in general, caused by her attendance at the Eichmann trial.
Through her observations of Eichmann’s thoughtlessness, Arendt begins to focus on the
invisible activities of men, wondering in particular how the visible activities, especially
action, are influenced by the invisible life of the mind.
As early fragments by Arendt on judgment make clear, Kant is, from the beginning,
central to her views on judgment. However, it is true that only later does Arendt make

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348 Philosophy and Social Criticism 37(3)

clear why Kant plays a central role for her thought on judgment. In ‘Postscriptum to
Thinking’ she claims that ‘[n]ot till Kant’s Critique of Judgment did this faculty become
a major topic of a major thinker’ (LKP, Beiner, 1992: 4). However, along the same lines,
she also makes clear that Kant’s theory of judgment does not entirely fit with the
tripartite theory of the human mind that she wants to work out in The Life of the Mind.
Therefore, adjustments to Kant’s theory will be necessary: ‘[W]e shall have to ascribe to
it its own modus operandi, its own way of proceeding’ (LKP, Beiner, 1992: 4).
Her instructions already indicate that she will understand Kant in her own idiosyncratic
way. Her singular way of reading Kant is why arguments claiming that Arendt misunder-
stands Kant miss the point entirely. Arendt is not simply interpreting Kant, but is rather
using Kant in order to construct her own theory of judgment. Of course, this does make it
difficult to read Arendt’s Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy; it is hard to see where
Kant’s theory stops and Arendt’s begins. However, by focusing on the most striking
adjustments she makes to Kant, we can uncover what is central for Arendt.
Another reason that Arendt gives us for Kant’s central position further clarifies how
she understands Kant. In her biography, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl quotes Arendt from the
Toronto conference of 1972:

The reason why I believe so much in Kant’s Critique of Judgment is not because I am inter-
ested in aesthetics but because I believe that the way in which we say ‘that is right, that is
wrong’ is not very different from the way in which we say ‘this is beautiful, this is ugly.’
That is, we are now prepared to meet the phenomena, so to speak, head-on,without any pre-
conceived system. And please, including my own! (1982: 452; original emphases)

This quotation clarifies two different things. First, Arendt perceives an analogy between
aesthetic judgments and moral judgments. This moral component of judgment is also
explained in the introduction of The Life of the Mind. There, Arendt explains that the
immediate impulse for her preoccupation with mental activities was her attendance at
the Eichmann trial (LoM, 1978: 3). In his essay ‘The Elusiveness of Arendtian Judg-
ment’, Bryan Garsten outlines very nicely how Eichmann’s case was problematic for
Arendt (Garsten, 2007). At a certain point in his interrogation, Eichmann claimed that
he had always tried to obey the Kantian imperative. It squares with Arendt’s own expe-
rience that it was the respectable and obedient citizens who most readily exchanged their
traditional set of norms and values for a new, deadly ‘Nazi-morality’. This also explains
why Arendt rejects Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, since it puts too great an empha-
sis on obedience.
However, the quotation not only makes clear that Hannah Arendt sees an analogy
between aesthetics and morals; it also demonstrates that she understands the problem
of judgment in a wider context. Arendt does not focus exclusively on moral judgments,
but rather wonders how we can judge without a pre-given set or system of norms. Since
the advent of totalitarianism, not only do moral judgments face this problem, but history
does as well. Arendt already outlines the problem in Between Past and Future (2006).
Until totalitarianism, historical events were given a place in the thread of history. Since
the Enlightenment, this thread was understood in terms of progress. But totalitarianism
has broken the thread of history and has done away with the belief in progress. However,

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this has not stripped us of our obligation to insert ourselves in time between history and
the future. According to Arendt, each new generation, indeed, every new human being,
must insert himself or herself between an infinite past and an infinite future (Between
Past and Future, 2006: 13). Arendt is not mourning the break with the belief in progress.
As she makes clear at the end of Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, she finds this
belief to be in contradiction with human dignity, insofar as it precludes humankind’s
responsibility for history and denies us our capacity to ‘stand still and look back with the
backward glance of the historian’ (LKP, Beiner, 1992: 77). But how then are we to judge
events and history? How can we form moral judgments (among others) without a set of
norms? It is to this problem that she finds a solution in Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Her
summary of topics that the Critique deals with makes this clear:

[T]he topics of the Critique of Judgment – the particular, whether a fact of nature or an event
in history; the faculty of judgment as the faculty of man’s mind to deal with it; sociability of
men as the condition of the functioning of this faculty, that is, the insight that men are depen-
dent on their fellow men not only because of their having a body and physical needs but
precisely for their mental faculties. (LKP, Beiner, 1992: 14; emphases added)

So, from within Kant’s theory of aesthetic judgments, Arendt draws out how we can
come to judgments without a pre-given set of values. This gives rise to Arendt’s most
important modification of Kant: while Kant answers the question of how aesthetic judg-
ments are possible, Arendt reads his theory on aesthetic judgments as a theory of judg-
ments in general. For Arendt, the question of the third Critique is more general: ‘How do
I judge?’

2 The Mental Process of Judging

How do I judge? According to Arendt, this is the question that Kant deals with in his third
Critique, but it is not until the 12th session that she attempts to answer this question.
Here, Arendt describes the mental process of judging in general, loosely basing herself
on Kant. Her version of Kant’s theory of aesthetic judgments is definitely criticizable.
However, it should be read as her own theory of how an individual forms judgments, not
Kant’s. It is a description of how our mind functions on an individual level. Arendt
argues that ‘[t]here are two mental operations in judgment’: the operation of imagination
and the operation of reflection (LKP, Beiner, 1992: 68). The first operation is the oper-
ation of imagination. This operation makes an object or (as Arendt makes clear later on)
a situation present for what she calls our inner senses:

There is the operation of the imagination, in which one judges objects that are no longer
present, that are removed from immediate sense perception and therefore no longer affect
one directly, and yet, though the object is removed from one’s outward senses, it now
becomes an object for one’s inner senses. When one represents something to oneself that
is absent, one closes, as it were, those senses by which objects in their objectivity are given
to one. The sense of taste is a sense in which one, as it were, senses oneself; it is an inner
sense. (LKP, Beiner, 1992: 68; emphases added) 1

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350 Philosophy and Social Criticism 37(3)

By imagining an object, I can perceive an object without its physical presence. I can
imagine or see an object with the eyes of the mind. Through this inner representation,
I can distance myself from the physical object. This not only enables the second
operation, but also guarantees the impartiality or disinterestedness that is necessary for
judgment. Arendt expresses this as follows:

Only what touches, affects, one in representation, when one can no longer be affected by
the immediate presence – when one is uninvolved, like the spectator who was uninvolved
in the actual doings of the French Revolution – can be judged to be right or wrong,
important or irrelevant, beautiful or ugly, or something in between. One then speaks
of judgment and no longer of taste because though it still affects one like a matter of
taste, one now has, by means of representation, established the proper distance, the remo-
teness or uninvolvedness or disinterestedness, that is requisite for approbation and disap-
probation, for evaluating something at its proper worth. (LKP, Beiner, 1992: 67)

With ‘approbation and disapprobation’, Arendt here refers to the second operation, the
operation of reflection. This second operation is immediately preceded by a choice of the
inner senses. The judging subject that I am has no control over this decision. Our inner sense
immediately decides whether we like the object or not. However, this immediate feeling
evoked by taste is made ‘subject to still another choice: one can approve or disapprove of
the very fact of pleasing’. So, the immediate feeling of ‘it pleases’ or ‘it displeases’ is subject
to a second operation, that is, the operation of reflection, in which one approves or disap-
proves of the immediate feeling. This second operation, the approbation or disapprobation
of the immediate feeling, evokes an additional feeling of pleasure or displeasure:

In this additional pleasure it is no longer the object that pleases but that we judge it to be
pleasing. If we relate this to the whole of nature or the world, we can say: We are pleased
that the world or nature pleases us. The very act of approbation pleases, the very act of dis-
approbation displeases. (LKP, Beiner, 1992: 69; original emphasis)

It is this second, reflected feeling which is the operation of judgment, i.e. the actual activ-
ity of judging, according to Arendt. This second operation gives rise to the question:
‘How does one choose between approbation and disapprobation?’ The answer brings
Arendt to the crux of her reading of Kant: the concept of sensus communis.

3 Sensus Communis as Community Sense

According to Arendt, for Kant, the criterion for choosing between approbation and
disapprobation is sensus communis. Even more so than in her description of the mental
process of judging, Arendt here develops her own singular reading of this Kantian con-
cept. In the rest of the session, she argues that Kant makes a distinction between sensus
communis as common sense and sensus communis as community sense. She describes the
latter as following:

By using the Latin term, Kant indicates that here he means something different: an extra
sense – like an extra mental capability (German: Menschenverstand) – that fits us into a

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Degryse 351

community. . . . It is the capability by which men are distinguished from animals and from
gods. It is the very humanity of man that is manifest in this sense. The sensus communis is
the specifically human sense because communication, i.e., speech, depends on it. (LKP,
Beiner, 1992: 70; original emphases; underlining added)

This extra sense, this extra mental capability, is a specific human sense, the impor-
tance of which cannot be overestimated. First, it is what makes human beings capable
of broadening their minds. It makes us capable of thinking from the perspective of
others, that is, enlarged thinking. As such, it also enables us to speak to each other.
Only if we are capable of thinking from the other person’s standpoint are we able to
communicate. Without this capacity, we would not be capable of speaking in such a
way that another person would understand us (LKP, Beiner, 1992: 74). Otherwise,
I would be stuck in my own sense, my sensus privatus, as an insane person is (ibid.:
70). Thus, this community sense not only makes enlarged thinking possible, but also
communication itself.
This enlarged thinking is connected to judgment. The second feeling of pleasure (or
displeasure) becomes communicable through a reflection that takes the judgments of
others into account; that is enlarged thinking and, as such, it is based on sensus commu-
nis. This is what Arendt calls ‘political thought’ in ‘Truth and Politics’ (2006: 237).
Through imagination and reflection, we can free ourselves from the private circum-
stances that restrict us and thereby achieve the impartiality necessary for judgment (LKP,
Beiner, 1992: 73). In Arendt’s words: ‘This sensus communis is what judgment appeals
to in everyone, and it is this possible appeal that gives judgments their special validity’
(ibid.: 72). In this way, the concept of sensus communis plays a central role in Arendt’s
theory of judgment.
But its role goes far beyond the formation of judgments. Through speech and com-
munication, this extra sense not only makes politics possible; it also grounds humans
as political beings. It is this capability that distinguishes humankind from animals and
from gods. It is no coincidence that Arendt describes this capability in line with her
understanding of Aristotle’s zoön politikon. She understands the concept in her own,
very specific way, which can only be properly understood in light of her scattered
remarks on Kant. According to her reading, sensus communis proves that we do not
live together solely out of necessity. Our community sense shows that we are focused
on others a priori. ‘Kant stresses that at least one of our mental faculties, the faculty
of judgment, presupposes the presence of others’ (LKP, Beiner, 1992: 74). Or, as
Arendt puts it in the summary of topics already mentioned: ‘[T]he insight that men
are dependent on their fellow men not only because of their having a body and phys-
ical needs but precisely for their mental faculties’ (ibid.: 14). Based on this, she
rejects all contract theories, insofar as they base humans’ sociability solely on their
needs and wants. Arendt stresses that ‘a man’s’ necessities are only a partial explana-
tion for his sociability. More important is our mental interdependence. Our mental
faculties postulate plurality! The idea is not new to Arendt’s thought here. In The
Promise of Politics, one can already find: ‘Men not only exist in the plural as do all
earthly beings, but have an indication of this plurality within themselves’ (2005: 22).
In Kant’s sensus communis, Arendt finally finds a foundation for this idea. In a quote

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352 Philosophy and Social Criticism 37(3)

from Arendt that can be found in Beiner’s ‘Interpretive Essay’, one can read what
would qualify (for Arendt) as proof of the statement that men are political beings:

If it could be found that in the capacities and regulative traffic and intercourse between men
who are bound to each other by the common possession of a world (the earth) there exists an
a priori principle, then it would be proved that man is essentially a political being. (LKP,
Beiner, 1992: 141–2)

This a priori principle is exactly what she finds in Kant’s concept of the sensus com-
munis. For Arendt, it proves that ‘men’ are political beings. This is often overlooked
in the secondary literature, as it seems to contradict Arendt’s phrase that ‘Man is
apolitical’ (The Promise of Politics, 2005: 95). This is an unfortunate misinterpreta-
tion of Arendt. What Arendt rejects here is the traditional philosophical method of
deducing the essence of politics out of one individual. According to Arendt, this is
absurd, since politics and plurality are intrinsically bound. Politics arises only where
men live together, not from a single individual living alone.
Thus, Arendt also finds an alternative foundation for the idea of humanity. Along the
same lines in which she writes ‘Man is apolitical’, Arendt criticizes the traditional con-
cept of humanity as conceived of as one individual, which denies our multiplicity (The
Promise of Politics, 2005: 95). Arendt finds a way to conceive of humanity in a different
way, based on community sense:

One judges always as a member of a community, guided by one’s community sense, one’s
sensus communis. But in the last analysis, one is a member of a world community by the
sheer fact of being human; this is one’s ‘cosmopolitan existence’. When one judges and
when one acts in political matters, one is supposed to take one’s bearings from the idea, not
the actuality, of being a world citizen and, therefore, also a Weltbetrachter, a world spec-
tator. (LKP, Beiner, 1992: 75–6; original emphases;underlining added)

When we judge, we always judge as members of a community, guided by what we

all have in common; that is our community sense according to Arendt. Through our
community sense, we belong to a global community (LKP, Beiner, 1992: 72). Based
on this sense, we are world citizens, and it is as world citizens that we must judge
political matters. This means that when we judge political matters, we must enlarge
our thinking as widely as possible, taking the perspective of a world spectator.
It is clear that Arendt’s understanding of sensus communis is quite different from
Kant’s. Andrew Norris expresses this nicely: ‘While both Kant and Arendt contend that
the sensus communis makes experience possible, the relation involved in Kant is one
between the faculties, and not, as in Arendt, one that transpires in the plurality of the
polis’ (1996: 187). Arendt’s understanding of sensus communis (among other elements
of her reading) has led to the critique that Arendt detranscendentalizes – or empiricalizes
– Kant’s philosophy (see, for example, Beiner, 1997). By linking Kant’s judgments of
taste to an empirical sociability, Arendt turns Kant’s transcendental notions into empiri-
cal ones. Majid Yar goes so as far to say that ‘Arendt (mis)takes this ‘‘broadened think-
ing’’ to denote an actual dialogue with real others’ (2000: 21). In sharp contrast to this,

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Degryse 353

I claim in the next section that this is in fact our misinterpretation of Arendt, not her
misinterpretation of Kant.

4 Testing Judgments
In Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, Arendt stresses several times that one should
not confuse the enlarged thought based on sensus communis, that is, taking into account
the possible judgments of others, with taking into account the actual judgments of others
or confuse it with an actual dialogue with others (LKP, Beiner, 1992: 43, 71). But how
then should we understand her references to actual dialogue with others, which are
mostly discussed in the 7th session? Arendt claims, for example, the following:

[U]nless you can somehow communicate and expose to the test of others, either orally or in
writing, whatever you may have found out when you were alone, this faculty [of enlarged
thinking] exerted in solitude will disappear. (LKP, Beiner, 1992: 40; emphases added)

Arendt’s argument is in fact in line with Kant’s insight, for which she finds him
exceptional: our mental faculties call for others. Taking into account the possible judg-
ments of others allows us to form judgments. But it does not stop here. We have to dis-
cuss our judgments and opinions with others in order to keep our mental faculties intact.
Basing herself on Kant again, Arendt claims that our judgments, resulting from the men-
tal process of judging, must be communicated to others, either orally or in writing.
‘[O]ne cannot learn without publicity, without the testing that arises from contact with
other people’s thinking’ (LKP, Beiner, 1992: 42). A neglect of the testing of one’s opi-
nions can even cause the disappearance of one’s mental faculties. Arendt again ascribes
this original insight to Kant, insofar as Kant understood freedom of speech and thought
differently than we do: its purpose is not to persuade one another, but rather to have a
testing ground for one’s opinions and judgments.

He [Kant] believes that the very faculty of thinking depends on its public use; without
‘the test of free and open examination,’ no thinking and no opinion-formation are possible.
Reason is not made ‘to isolate itself but to get into community with others.’ (LKP, Beiner,
1992: 40) 2

In this way, we need a community in which our judgments and opinions can be tested. By
making the testing of one’s judgments a condition for maintaining the capacity of judg-
ment, Arendt introduces an interesting interdependence between judgment and speech,
or, in other words, between The Human Condition and The Life of the Mind.3 Arendt
relates the individual mental level with the existential level of speech and communica-
tion, and, as such, also with plurality. But it is also this interdependence that gives rise to
Arendt’s detranscendentalization. Arendt stresses, with Kant, that we can lose our
faculty of enlarged thinking without communication and interaction with one another.
One can lose one’s sensus communis, ‘the only general symptom of insanity’ (LKP,
Beiner, 1992: 70). Is Arendt not making things more complicated than necessary? Why
does she make our community sense dependent of actual communication? This question

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brings me to the leading figures of Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy: the

spectators.

5 The Spectators
As we have already seen, Arendt introduces an interdependence between the mental pro-
cess of judging and actual communication with others. The question we have yet to
answer is why Arendt establishes an interdependence between the two, why she detran-
scendentalizes Kant’s notion, as it seems to make matters more complicated than neces-
sary. The answer to these questions lies in the spectators (always in the plural). These
figures are not entirely new to Arendt’s philosophy. They were implicitly present in The
Human Condition, as action and speech always imply an audience (although the neces-
sary audience for action and speech could also be formed by other actors). However, in
Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, without a doubt, they play the leading role,
resulting in often surprising statements by Arendt. Arendt’s views on the spectators form
the most original part of her Lectures.
First, Arendt explains the relation between action and judgment through the figures of
the spectators. Referring to Kant’s distinction between genius and taste, Arendt asks
which faculty is more important. According to Arendt, Kant chose taste because
although without genius there would be no art to judge, art would remain unrecognized
without taste. Without taste, genius would never be discovered. Arendt then adopts
Kant’s preference, when making the analogy between action and judgment. She explains
this as follows:

The public realm is constituted by the critics and the spectators, not by the actors and the
makers. And this critic and spectator sits in every actor and fabricator, without this critical,
judging faculty the doer or maker would be so isolated from the spectator, that he would not
even be perceived. Or, to put it another way, still in Kantian terms: the very originality of the
artist (or the very novelty of the actor) depends on his making himself understood by those
who are not artists (or actors). And while one can speak of genius in the singular because of
his originality, one can never speak, as Pythagoras did, in the same way of the spectator.
Spectators exist only in the plural. The spectator is not involved in the act, but he is always
involved with fellow spectators. He does not share the faculty of genius, originality, with the
maker or the faculty of novelty with the actor; the faculty they have in common is the
faculty of judgment. (LKP, Beiner, 1992: 63)

In this long passage, Arendt explains the relation between artists and critics, but also
between actors and spectators, by making use of Kant’s distinction between genius and
taste. Kant’s reasoning that genius would not be recognized without taste is taken up by
Arendt with respect to the relation between action and judgment. Arendt claims that
actors as well as spectators share the ability to judge. Without it, spectators would not
be capable of perceiving action. What the actors have in addition to the ability to judge,
is the faculty of novelty, which is absent from the spectators.
By making this analogy, Arendt stresses, with Kant, the importance of the spectators.
Although without actors there would be no spectacle to judge, Arendt surprisingly seems

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to subordinate the actors, since without the spectators, action would remain unseen and
unheard. Arendt explains her preference by once again referring to Kant, in this case to
his ambiguous attitude towards the French Revolution. According to Arendt, his view on
the French Revolution again displays his preference for the spectators:

[W]hat counted in the French Revolution, what made it a world-historical event, a phenom-
enon not to be forgotten, were not the deeds and misdeeds of the actors but the opinions, the
enthusiastic approbation, of the spectators, of persons who themselves were not involved.
(LKP, Beiner, 1992: 65)

Although without the actors the French Revolution would not have taken place, it was
the enthusiastic reaction of the spectators that gave the event its place in world history.4
Through the spectators, Arendt also discusses a second relation: the relation between
thinking and judging. Arendt already distinguishes both in Thinking, the first volume of
The Life of the Mind, by discussing Pythagoras’ parable. In the parable, life is compared
with a festival: some compete with one another, others ply their trade, while still others
‘come as spectators’ (LKP, Beiner, 1992: 55). According to Arendt, Pythagoras confuses
the spectators with the philosophers:

Pythagoras’ spectators are members of an audience and therefore quite unlike the philoso-
pher who begins his bios theoretikos by leaving the company of his fellow-men and their
uncertain opinions, their doxai that can only express an it-seems-to-me. Hence the specta-
tor’s verdict, while impartial and freed from the interests of gain or fame, is not independent
of the views of others – on the contrary, according to Kant, an ‘enlarged mentality’ has to
take them into account. The spectators, although disengaged from the particularity charac-
teristic of the actor, are not solitary. (LoM, Thinking: 1978: 94; emphases added)

Although the spectators are not involved in action, they are not solitary, as the philoso-
phers are. According to Arendt, both the spectators and the philosophers withdraw, since
all mental activities entail a withdrawal from participation. However, each withdraws
into a different region. The region of withdrawal for the spectators is ‘clearly located
within our ordinary world, the reflexivity of the faculty notwithstanding’ (LoM, Think-
ing: 1978: 97).5 Philosophers, on the other hand, withdraw from the world of human
affairs into the world of thought. While the latter think in solitude and in silence, the for-
mer watch the spectacle together, discussing the events.
As Arendt explains in her speech for Heidegger’s 80th birthday, we all are capable of
withdrawing into the world of thought now and then. However, only exceptional men
and women can make it their place of residence. And making it one’s place of residence
comes with a price and a risk: the price for this withdrawal into the world of thought is
the abandonment of the world of affairs. In turn, this abandonment can lead to a de´for-
mation professionelle: the fondness for tyrants and despots. Plato and Heidegger were
such exceptional men, residing in the world of thought, but also suffering from this
‘occupational hazard’ of philosophers.
In ‘Philosophy and Politics’, an essay from 1954, Arendt explains the same phenom-
enon differently, referring to Plato’s allegory of the cave:

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356 Philosophy and Social Criticism 37(3)

Why philosophers do not know what is good for them – and how they are alienated from the
affairs of men – is grasped in this metaphor: they can no longer see in the darkness of the
cave, they have lost their sense of orientation, they have lost what we would call their com-
mon sense. (1990a: 94)

Philosophers are no longer capable of feeling at home in the cave because they have lost
their sense of orientation, their common sense. At this point, Arendt has not yet made a
distinction between common sense and community sense. However, the underlying idea
remains the same: philosophers are alienated from the world of human affairs and have
lost their sensus communis.
In my view, this explains why Arendt detranscendentalizes Kant’s concept of sensus
communis. The idea of losing one’s sensus communis explains not only in general why
some men lack the ability to judge, but also why some professional thinkers failed to
judge events properly, while others, like Karl Jaspers, did not.

6 Conclusion
In conclusion, let us revisit the two common claims about Arendt’s Lectures on Kant’s
Political Philosophy that I have argued against. With Beiner, interpreters like Maurizio
Passerin d’Entrèves and Majid Yar have suggested reading two theories of judgment into
Arendt. I argue against such a reading. Even in her early thoughts on judgment, Kant
already plays a central role. The evolution that Beiner and others detect is an evolution
in Arendt’s thought in general. Arendt develops only one theory of judgment. However,
it is not until later in her life that she fully elaborates it. Judging does in fact become more
important in her thought. Arendt realizes that the capacity to judge is central for every
human being, not only for the actors. Therefore, in the Lectures, she explains the relation
between actors and spectators by making the analogy with Kant’s preference for taste
over genius. She also outlines how we mentally come to judgments. In doing so, she
interprets Kant’s concept of sensus communis, in a very singular way, as community
sense. In this way, it establishes men as human beings and the idea of humanity in gen-
eral. But while it is a transcendental principle for Kant, Arendt understands it as an extra
sense we might lose. This can be described as Arendt’s detranscendentalization or
empiricalization. Although it is true that Arendt detranscendentalizes Kant’s principle
of sensus communis, she is not confusing potential with actual dialogue. Her reading
of Kant is much more subtle than this. Arendt claims that without testing our judgments
against the judgments of others, we might lose our community sense and, as such, our
capacity to judge. She makes the mental process of judging dependent on actual speech
and communication. In this way, she clarifies the link between action and the mental
activity of judgment.

Notes
Thanks to all members of CESPF and members of Iohannah. Special thanks to Bart Raymaekers,
Ronald Tinnevelt, Helder De Schutter, Anya Topolski, Hauke Brunkhorst, Remi Peeters, Seyla
Benhabib and Ralph Palm.

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1. It is remarkable that Arendt refers to representation in this context, since for Arendt
representation stands in opposition to action and participation and is therefore a sign of the
absence of or even an indifference towards the political (see Arendt, 1990b: 273). In this con-
text, representation is a condition for impartiality. See also my article, ‘The Sovereign and the
Social: Arendt’s Understanding of Hobbes’, Ethical Perspectives 15(2) (June 2008): 239–58.
2. In all the passages on publicity, Kant is actually referring to the capacity to think. As Arendt
makes use of these passages, in order to make judging dependent on speech, she confuses her
own distinction between judging and thinking, which she tries to resolve by understanding
Kant’s concept of thinking as critical thinking. This critical thinking implies ‘applying critical
standards to one’s own thought’ and ‘this application one cannot learn without publicity, with-
out the testing that arises from contact with other people’s thinking’ (LKP, Beiner, 1992: 42).
3. This interdependence is not as new to Arendt’s thought as one might think. Arendt also links the
other two mental faculties to the existential level. The mental activity of thinking is also linked
to speech, and willing is linked to originality, and, as such, prepares the ground for action (LoM,
Thinking, 1978: 98 and LoM, Willing, 1978: 101, 200).
4. This aspect has been picked up by Bryan Garsten in his essay ‘The Elusiveness of Arendtian
Judgment’. In his article, Garsten defends ‘a kind of citizenship that is closer to what most cit-
izens do in modern liberal democracies’. He claims that many citizens who do not participate in
politics, are not entirely passive either: ‘A certain type of watching and judging is . . . a defen-
sible way of being a democratic citizen’ (2007: 1072). He suggests that ‘Hannah Arendt’s
reflections on judgment can fruitfully be read as part of such a defense of the spectator-judge’
(ibid.), with which I agree.
5. Arendt again ascribes the distinction between thinking and judging to Kant. But she also refers
to Kant’s belief in progress, describing it as what he forgot, that is: ‘[T]he audiences would
change from generation to generation; nor would a fresh audience be likely to arrive at the con-
clusions handed down by tradition as to what an unchanging play has to say’ (LoM, Thinking,
1978: 98). Here, Arendt is referring to the right (or obligation) of every generation to judge the
past events and to inscribe itself in time.

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