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21
The Role of the Judging Spectator in Politics: Arendt's Approach
Maria Sidorova
Lecturer, Faculty of Pre-University Training, National Research University Higher School of Economics Address: Myasnitskaya Str., 20, Moscow, Russian Federation 101000 E-mail: [email protected]
We can find the opposition between the judging spectator and the judging actor in Arendt's unfinished theory of judgment. In analyzing this opposition, some interpreters have come to the conclusion that Arendt finally defines political judgment as the contemplative ability of the silent spectator who is not needed in public. This article argues against this interpretation of Arendt's approach to the judging spectator, and deals with the fact that Arendt gives the judging spectator the functions of the political narrator. The judging spectator cannot be interpreted only as a contemplative subject in her theory. Certainly, in Arendt's later texts, judgment is seen as an ability to evaluate the political content not so much of one's own actions, but the actions of the participants of common life. However, the spectator as the author of judgment cannot be silent since they are included in the political world. This article reveals Arendt's understanding of the judging spectator in connection to her practical approach to judgment. In the results of the research, it can be said that the judging spectator can be interpreted as a participant of the common political world because speech is needed. While analyzing Arendt's concept of speech as a part of her action theory, it is possible to state that the judging spectator is the narrator. This person is not the one who contemplates, but is the one who publicly speaks about the actions, and thus forms the political space.
Keywords: Arendt, judgment, judging spectator, action, speech, vita activa, vita contemplativa
The notion of the judging spectator plays an important role in Arendt's later approach to judgment. In reflecting on Kant's theory of judgment, Arendt contrasts the judging spectator to an actor in Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy (1970) and in the first volume of The Life of the Mind (1975). She concludes that not the actor, but the judging spectator understands the whole sense of the political world and makes a complete judgment about it. However, Arendt does not deny that the actor can judge. Moreover, she gives the actor the role of the judge in earlier texts, especially in Understanding and Politics (1953), and Crisis in Culture (1961). In analyzing this collision, some interpreters affirm that the opposition between the spectator and the actor is at the heart of Arendt's approach to judgment. It is here that shifts in her formulations of judgment are noted. Two of the most famous of these interpreters are R. Beiner and R. Bernshtein. They believe that Arendt's earlier approach to judgment as the special political ability of actor contradicts her later approach to judgement as to the contemplative faculty of the spectator (Bern© Sidorova M., 2019
© Centre for Fundamental Sociology, 2019 doi: 10.17323/1728-192X-2019-3-245-259
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shtein, 1986). These scientists change the tendency in the interpretation of her theory of judgment. Then, additional commentators try to show that Arendt's concept of judgment should not only be understood as a "bridge" between her action theory and her concept of the life of the mind. They conclude that it is a theory about vita contemplativa. For example, D. Villa tries to show that "Arendt's emphasis on the independent or autonomous judgment, while perhaps more pronounced in the later writings, in fact, underlies both phases" (Villa, 1999: 90). However, there is a tendency today to criticize Beiner and Bernshtein's position. Such interpreters, including O. Celik (2013), disagree that there is a contradiction between the judging spectator and the judging actor in Arendt's philosophy. Overall, it is possible to say that some shifts from the judging actor to the judging spectator in Arendt's philosophy can be found. However, it is not correct to accept Beiner's conclusion that Arendt finally defines political judgment as the contemplative ability of the silent spectator who is not needed in public (Beiner, 1992). The position of the latter can lead to the destruction of the main idea of Arendt's philosophy that political space is plural and public.
This article shows that the judging spectator cannot be interpreted only as a contemplative subject in Arendt's theory, and demonstrates that the judging spectator is understood by Arendt with connections to her practical approach to judgment. Firstly, it reveals a practical approach to judgment not only in Understanding and Politics and Crisis in Culture, but in Arendt's later texts as well. Secondly, it analyses Kant's influence on her understanding of the judging spectator. The paper demonstrates that Beiner's idea to separate Arendt's concept of judgment on practical and contemplative parts cannot be relevant. Thirdly, it presents the idea that the judging spectator can be understood as a participant of the political world because such a participant needs speech. In analyzing Arendt's concept of speech as a part of her action theory, it can be suggested that the judging spectator is the narrator.
1
The judging spectator is one of the notions in Arendt's theory of judgment. However, this theory is unwritten. Arendt planned to formulate it in The Life of the Mind, but she passed away on December 4, 1975, shortly after completing the second volume Willing without beginning the third volume, Judgment. The incompleteness of The Life of the Mind gives readers the opportunity to complete Arendt's theory of judgment (Young-Bruelh, 1982: 278). Some researchers argue that the theory of judgment would have been the culmination of Arendt's political philosophy if she had had time to write it down (Beiner, 1992: 117). Others point out that if Arendt had considered judgment as the basic concept of political philosophy, she wouldn't have hesitated to write a special work devoted to it (Deutscher, 2007: XV). Would the theory of judgment have changed Arendt's political philosophy dramatically? This question is still open to discussion. In this article, I will not reconstruct what Arendt didn't write about judgment and the judging spectator.
By referring to Thinking and Willing and to Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, I will try to recognize what she has written about them.
The concept of judgment is not finished, but we can find a practical understanding of judgment in Arendt's philosophy. The sense of the practical is described by Arendt in The Human Condition. In dividing vita activa and vita contemplativa, she writes that such a distinction is rooted in the ancient Greek "conflict between the polis and philosopher" (Arendt, 1998: 16). According to Arendt, vita contemplativa is the life of philosophers who meditate but do not act. She tries to identify the action as a political part of vita activa. For Arendt, one of the most conditions of political life is plurality. She understands plurality as a common world of unique persons. "Plurality is not equal to multiplicity. Every living species is multiplied in a manifold of individual organisms, but human beings have the capacity for taking upon themselves both the naked fact of their otherness and the distinguishing features which individualize them. In other words, not only are they distinct, but they can distinguish themselves" (Taminiaux, 1986: 210). The action is always individual, but what is most important for Arendt is that it can be realized only among others. She claims that people are unique and have a common world at the same time. In her interpretation, plurality is realized in action, and therefore is a political phenomenon. Arendt writes that political public space is understood as an Aristotelian praxis, or as space for actions: "The chief difference between the Aristotelian and the later medieval use of the term is that the bios politicos denoted explicitly only the realm of human affairs, stressing the action, praxis, needed to establish and sustain it" (Arendt, 1998: 13). Praxis, or practical, means a common space of political actions. However, after writing The Human Condition, Arendt began to find a political or a practical sense not only in action, but in judgment, too. It is important to note that she tries to define judgment as a part of vita contemplativa which depends on the plurality of practical life. Furthermore, we are going to analyze Arendt's concept of judgment as a concept of plural and practical human ability.
Her first mention of judgment is connected to her recognition of what happened to politics in the twentieth century. According to Arendt, totalitarian regimes, Nazism, and genocide showed that people can lose the ability to make judgments. In Understanding and Politics (1953), she writes that totalitarianism "brought to light the ruin of our categories of thought and standards of judgment" (Arendt, 1953: 388), and that we should learn again "to understand without preconceived categories and to judge without the set of customary rules which is morality" (Ibid.: 391) in the common world. Arendt connects judgment to understanding the conventional consciousness that is divided between the "is" and the "ought": "If the judgment is severed from understanding, it can only reproduce the moral dichotomy of good and evil" (Fine, 2007: 166). Starting with this text, Arendt analyzes judgment as a practical or political ability. In particular, she describes the political sense of judgment in Crisis in Culture (1961). In this article, she recognizes judgment as "one of the fundamental abilities of man as a political being insofar as it enables him to orient himself in the public realm, in the common world" (Arendt, 1961b: 221). For Arendt, judgment can be realized only in a plural reality, because it is "the abil-
ity to see things, not only from one's own point of view but from the perspective of all those who happen to be present" (Ibid.). Such a practical and political sense of judgment is defined by Arendt in contradiction to speculative thinking. She shows that "the thinking process which is active in judging something is not, like the thought process of pure reasoning, a dialogue between me and myself, but finds itself always and primarily, even if I am quite alone in making up my mind, in an anticipated communication with others with whom I know I must finally come to some agreement" (Ibid.: 220). Unlike speculative thinking, judgment "cannot function in strict isolation or solitude; it needs the presence of others" (Ibid.). In other words, judging is realized in the political or practical plural world, not contemplative thinking.
To distinguish the practical sense of judgment from the speculative sense of thinking, Arendt compares judgment with phronesis. She understands contemplative thinking as the Aristotelian sophia which is raised above the political world, and recognizes judgment as the Aristotelian phronesis, in which it is rooted.1 In Arendt's interpretation, phronesis is an insight and understanding of matters that are good or bad: "The Greeks called this ability phronesis or insight, and they considered it the principal virtue or excellence of the statesman in distinction from the wisdom of the philosopher" (Ibid.: 221). If the philosopher tries to understand universal principles, then the statesman deals with the private. The concept of phronesis helps Arendt to define judgment as an ability to deal with the private, and to navigate where there are no known rules. However, this does not become the foundation for Arendt's theory of judgment. In her interpretation, phronesis is only the guess about the political sense of judgment. She finds a theory which can give more for understanding the political aspects of judgment. It is Kant's theory of aesthetic judgment. As E. Young-Bruelh notes, the reason of this choice is that "phronesis, in Arendt's understanding, was only a forerunner of the notion of judgment because it was tied to given ends and means, without the necessary recoil, and because it was tied to desire, a source of unfreedom. Kant's great achievement was to treat the judgment as something other than a kind of reason and something other than a ruler over desire" (Young-Bruelh, 1982: 294).
Arendt wants to show that judgment is such a kind of ability to deal with the private which is necessary to the common world. For this, she turns to Kant's theory of aesthetic judgment.2 She ascribes political aspects to his concepts of taste and common sense. From Arendt's point of view, Kant knows about the political sense of taste because he recognizes the public quality of beauty (Arendt, 1961b: 222). Kant does not agree that "de gustibus
1. We can find Arendt's reference to the Aristotelian distinction between phronesis and sophia in the 14th note to Crisis in Culture: "Aristotle, who (Nicomachean Ethics, Book 6) deliberately set the insight of the statesman against the wisdom of the philosopher, was probably following, as he did so often in his political writings, the public opinion of the Athenian polis" (Arendt, 1961b: 240-241).
2. Arendt chooses Kantian aesthetic judgment over Kantian moral judgment because only the first mode includes the idea of common sense and can be realized in political life. According to Kant, moral or categorical imperative is a law for everybody but it does not need to be an actual human being. It is a formal logic procedure. On the contrary, aesthetic or reflective judgment needs to exist in the plural human world. It gives to everyone the ability to judge: "when I judge, I consider myself as a member of a certain community."
non disputandum est". For him, judgment of taste cannot be realized without public discussions because it "expects agreement from everyone else". According to Arendt, Kant's approach to taste is an attempt to show that the primary thing for judgment is neither a man's life, nor his self or private feelings, but the common sense. In her understanding, Kant's idea about common sense means sharing the world with others. This interpretation helps Arendt to affirm that judgment is always a judgment of taste about what is right and what is wrong in the common world: "Taste judges the world in its appearance and in its worldliness; its interest in the world is purely 'disinterested,' and that means that neither the life interests of the individual nor the moral interests of the self are involved here" (Ibid.). With Kant's help she comes to the conclusion that judgment realizes only in a plural world: "Judging is one, if not the most, important activity in which this sharing-the-world-with-others comes to pass" (Ibid.: 221).
We can find the practical approach to judgment in Arendt's later philosophy as well. In her last book, The Life of the Mind, judging is understood as a part of vita contemplativa. Arendt tries to show that the life of the mind (thinking, willing, and judging) is not only the life of the contemplative person, but it is the life of all people. The practical approach to thinking is the result of Arendt's reflections on the banality of evil. While analyzing the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, Arendt concludes that an evil deed is the result of its actor's inability to think. She argues that the most striking quality of Eichmann is his thoughtlessness.3 With reference to Eichmann's inability to think, Arendt introduces The Life of the Mind and asks the question: "Could the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining whatever happens to come to pass or to attract attention, regardless of results and specific content, could this activity be among the conditions that make people abstain from evil-doing or even actually 'condition' them against it?" (Arendt, 1978a: 5). Her answer is "Yes". Arendt attributes moral content to thinking. She recognizes conscience as a part of consciousness. For her, thinking is "the two-in-one of the soundless dialogue" (Arendt, 2003: 189). It means that we are solitary when we are thinking, but not lonely because we are always with ourselves. Arendt takes this practical approach to the mind from Socrates. His "two-in-one thinking" is realized as a dispute with himself. Arendt attributes moral content to Socratic "two-in-one thinking" since she analyses it as an example that conscience is a part of consciousness: "Conscience is the anticipation of fellow who awaits you if and when you come home" (Arendt, 1978a: 191).
This moral context of thinking, in Arendt's understanding, manifests itself in political life and connects with an ability to judge. In Thinking and the Moral Considerations (1971) and in The Life of the Mind (1975), Arendt insists upon the distinction between thinking and judgment. She frees judgment from such a part of thinking as theoretical and philosophical wisdom. According to her, judgment can be realized only in the common
3. Arendt was at the Eichmann trial in 1961, and wrote the article Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil in 1963. This trial became the compass which directed her to a view of the banality of evil (Yar-brough, Stern, 1981: 326). According to Arendt, Eichmann was neither demonic, nor filled with hate. He was simply a banal bureaucrat. His evil deeds were banality, because they were due to thoughtlessness. In Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship, Arendt concluded that Eichmann couldn't think, and that's why he could not understand his personal responsibility for his crimes (Arendt, 2003: 30-31).
world, but thinking does not need others. However, Arendt also understands judgment as an ability to transfer the conscience into a common political being. Therefore, she affirms that judgment is "the manifestation of the wind of thought" (Arendt, 2003: 189).4 It is not because judgment is "in any sense the direct result of thought, but rather because thinking clears the space which makes it possible" (Villa, 1999: 101). From Arendt's point of view, judgment is the product of the liberating effect of thinking. Writing about this she understands thinking not as philosophical contemplation, but as Socratic thinking. For Arendt, Socrates becomes the model of a thinker who searches not for the truth, but for the meaning (Young-Bruelh, 1982: 279). In her interpretation, his thinking is thinking of "a man among men" (Arendt, 1978a: 167), because his dialectic method to think aims "not at destroying or transcending doxa, but rather at talking something through so that his partners in dialogue could clarify their perspective and improve their opinion" (Villa, 1999: 96). Consequently, the result of the comparison of judgment with thinking depends on Arendt's understanding of thinking. In defining thinking as contemplation, she contradicts judgment to thought; in analyzing thinking as Socratic thinking, she understands judging as the result of free thought.
Besides, Arendt's later practical approach to judgment connects with her understanding of willing. In both Some Questions of Moral Philosophy (1965) and in The Life of the Mind (1978), Arendt reveals that willing is interrelated with the person's ability to make a choice. She notes that the first philosophical definitions of willing give the understanding that will is an arbiter in the disputes of reason and desires: "The Will is the arbiter between reason and desire, and as such the will alone is free" (Arendt, 2003: 114). However, she analyzes "willing" as only a mental activity which cannot be a political phenomenon. "Willing" is a free choice, but its freedom is not political. In What is Freedom? Arendt contrasts free will and political freedom: "Freedom as related to politics is not a phenomenon of the will" (Arendt, 1961a: 151). If willing is needed in motives, then political freedom is spontaneity. Arendt compares the letter with the freedom of Brutus: "'That this shall be or we will fall for it' that is, the freedom to call something into being which did not exist before, which was not given, not even as an object of cognition or imagination, and which therefore, strictly speaking, could not be known" (Ibid.). For Arendt, political freedom is a characteristic of action. To prove it, she politically rethinks the Augustine idea of initium, and concludes that to act means to begin something new in the common world. She calls this ability natality. According to Arendt, natality of action is spontaneous and needs no motives or goals. Man is born free and capable of starting anew with action. In The Life of the Mind, Arendt comes to the conclusion that we are doomed to be free by the fact of our birth: "I am quite aware that the argument even in Augustinian version is somehow opaque, that it seems to tell us no more than we are doomed to be free by virtue of being born, no matter whether we like freedom or abhor its arbitrariness, are 'pleased' with it or prefer to escape its awesome responsibility by electing some form of fatalism" (Arendt, 1978b: 217). In Arendt's view, it is not "willing" but "judging" that is the
4. In Thinking (the first volume of The Life of the Mind), Arendt repeats this metaphor (Arendt, 1978a: 193).
only way out of this impasse of freedom since "judging" is "the true arbiter between right and wrong, beautiful and ugly, true and untrue" (Arendt, 2003: 137) in the political space. She was going to create the theory of judgment which would have clarified the principle of baseless free political action, but she did not have time to do so. This is why we cannot reconstruct her understanding of judgment's political role on the whole.
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Judgment plays the role of the most political faculty of the mind in Arendt's later philosophy (Arendt, 1978a: 192). This role is realized by spectators. If she considers that thinking and willing are always considered as the mental abilities of the acting subject, then the judgment is likely the one which is made by the spectator who evaluates and interprets actions, events of the common world, and political life. Arendt borrows the idea of the judging spectator from Kant's philosophy. In Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy,5 she considers his concept of judgment as a political theory. The reason for this political approach is that the aesthetic ability of judgment is understood by Kant as a prerogative of the public, but not as a prerogative of the genius creators: "Judgment, and especially judgments of taste, always reflects upon others and their taste, take their possible judgments into account" (Arendt, 1992: 67). In Arendt's interpretation, a genius is an actor, and spectators are those who make judgments about his actions because they form a common being with him. Arendt shows that we can find the distinction between the actor and the judging spectator in Kant's philosophy: "The spectator, because he is not involved, can perceive this design of providence or nature, which is hidden from the actor. So we have the spectacle and the spectator on one side, the actors and all the single events and contingent, haphazard happenings on the other" (Ibid.: 52). Then in The Life of the Mind, Arendt argues with Kant that "the spectator, not the actor, holds the clue to the meaning of human affairs" (Arendt, 1978a: 96). She affirms the retrospective approach to judgment. For her, actors have only a partial view of the political world, and therefore, only spectators can understand the meanings of their actions on the whole.
In addition, Arendt tries to show that Kant applies his retrospective concept of judgment to history. She references his analysis of the French Revolution in which political judgment, like aesthetic judgment, is reserved to the spectator (Kant, 1963: 145-146). She concludes that Kant understands history as a performance for the spectator: "The spectacle before the spectator-enacted, as it were, for his judgment-is history as a whole, and the true hero of this spectacle is mankind in the 'series of generations proceeding' into some 'infinity'" (Arendt, 1992: 58). Referring to Kant's understanding of history in Lec-
5. The purpose of these Lectures is to reconstruct Kant's political thought. Some interpreters believe that Arendt's reconstruction of Kant's political philosophy is significant for the interpretation of his approach to judgment. For example, L. Biskowski writes about this significance (Biskowski, 1993: 870). We can find references to Arendt's reconstruction of Kant's political philosophy in Ricoeur's interpretation of his judgment theory. Ricoeur, after Arendt, suggests that there is an unwritten Kantian political philosophy. But he does not agree at all with Arendt's approach to Kant. For example, "Ricoeur considers Arendt's attempt as flawed by an excessive aestheticization of human affairs" (Pucci, 1995: 130).
tures and then in The Life of the Mind, Arendt binds the idea of judging spectator with her own concept of history. She comes to the conclusion that the sense of history is made not by actors, but by historians (Arendt, 1978a: 96). However, we can find this idea not only in Arendt's later philosophy, but in her earlier texts as well. It already appears when she begins to create her concept of political action. For example, in The Human Condition, she writes that a historian "always knows better what it was all about than the participants" (Arendt, 1998: 192). She defines the historian as a spectator and as a narrator of history. In an Arendtian interpretation, the historian becomes the author of the action's meaning: "Even though stories are the inevitable results of action, it is not actor but the storyteller who perceives and 'makes' the story" (Ibid.). In the beginning, in fact, Arendt includes the idea that judging spectator makes political or historical sense of action in her theory of action. However, of course, the recognition of Kant's retrospective approach to history helps her to connect her early ideas of judging historians with her later concept of judging spectators.
Another important Kantian notion for Arendt's understanding of judging the spectator's political role is common sense (sensus communis). Kant believes that for judgment to be valid we should transcend our subjective conditions in favor of public ones; we are able to do this by appealing to our sensus communis. Arendt recognizes this when she writes "The common sense with which I judge is a general sense, and to the question: "How can anyone judge according to common sense as he contemplates the object according to his private sense?" Kant would reply that the community among people produces a common sense. The validity of common sense grows out of the intercourse with people — just as we say that thought grows out of the intercourse with myself" (Arendt, 2003: 141). According to Arendt, sensus communis is something that unites people because they live in common world: "Common sense . . . discloses to us the nature of the world insofar as it is a common world" (Arendt, 1961b: 221). This common world is a political space. Consequently, when its participants are experiencing sensus communis, they realize their capability of judging what is happening in political life (Weidenfeld, 2013: 261).
Moreover, Kant's approach to common sense helps Arendt conclude that the judging spectator is included in both the political and practical worlds. In Some Questions of Moral Philosophy, she writes that "Common sense for Kant did not mean a sense common to all of us, but strictly that sense which fits us into a community with others" (Arendt, 2003: 139). For her, the judging spectator should be guided by a community sense with others (Arendt, 1992: 72). In Arendt's philosophy, common sense is a condition for the existence of general rules on which the judging spectator must rely. At the same time, she believes that they should take responsibility for the construction of these general rules of judgment. The responsibility is assumed to be that judgment is always a first-person statement: "Furthermore, while I take into account others when judging, this does not mean that I conform in my judgment to theirs. I still speak with my own voice and I do not count noses in order to arrive at what I think is right" (Arendt, 2003: 140-141). This is why, according to Arendt, the judging spectator is one who integrates into the common
world and political life, and makes judgments from their own person at the same time. They can't judge alone; common rules are needed, but there is a personal responsibility for personal judgments.
Some interpreters analyzing Kant's influence on Arendt's concept of judgment conclude that her later idea of the judging spectator denies her an earlier understanding of judgment. As D. Marshall notes, they "have asked whether there existed in Arendt's work a deep contradiction between judgment as an active, agonal capacity to decide and judgment as a passive, consensual capacity to discern" (Marshall, 2010: 369). One of the most famous interpreters is R. Beiner. He affirms that we can find two opposing approaches to judgment in Arendt's philosophy. The early approach means that judgment is a phenomenon of vita activa, or the ability of actors. The later approach means that it is a phenomenon of vita contemplativa, or the ability of the spectators. According to Beiner, in the last years of Arendt's life, "judgment had become for her a part of concern very different from the original one, which had been a concern with the vita activa, the life of politics. 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-spirited) contemplator as opposed to the actor (whose activity is necessarily nonsolitary)" (Beiner, 1992: 92). Certainly, Beiner is correct that we can find shifts in Arendt's understanding of judgment. In Crisis in the Culture, she recognizes judgment as a prerogative of political actors, and after reading Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, she begins to understand judgment as a prerogative of spectators. However, I cannot agree with Beiner that her final resolution is to exclude any reference to the vita activa within the concept of judgment and to understand judging spectators only within the ambit of the life of the mind (Ibid.: 139). In The Life of the Mind, we can find shreds of evidence that Arendt has included the judging spectator in the sphere of praxis or political common life. The first piece of evidence is a disconnection between the thinking spectator and the judging spectator. According to Arendt, the metaphor of spectating means a withdrawal from the world. She describes the thinking spectator as a philosopher who radically leaves vita activa for contemplation. However, she understands the judging spectator as a person who removes themselves from the common world only temporarily with the intention to return to it: "The withdrawal of judgment is obviously very different from the withdrawal of the philosopher. It does not leave the world of appearances but retires from active involvement in it to a privileged position in order to contemplate the whole" (Arendt, 1978a: 94). In other words, the judging spectator does not leave the practical life. The second piece of evidence is that Arendt understands the common being as not only a condition of action but a condition of judgment, too. Some of Arendt's commentators are confident that "for like action, and in contrast to thinking, judgment depends on the company of other people and involves particular objects or events" (Yarbrough, Stern, 1981: 337). Of course, Arendt disconnects the judging spectator from the actor. As D. Villa denotes, "if, in the end, the standpoint of the spectator takes precedence over that of the actor for Arendt, it is because the former is more distanced and impartial, and thus more open to the particularity of an event or phenomenon" (Villa, 1999: 103). However, Arendt recognizes plurality as a common con-
dition within them: "The spectators, although disengaged from the characteristic of the actor, are not solitary" (Arendt, 1978a: 94). If thinking is realized in solitude, judgment is connected to plurality because its verdicts are dependent on the views of others. As O. Celik notes, "in terms of Arendt's theory of judgment, the spectator is a non-solitary person who constitutes a public with other spectators" (Celik, 2013: 103). Accordingly, judging spectators are participants of the public and common world.
In addition, Arendt tries to find the idea of the public political world as common for both actors and spectators in Kant's philosophy. For this, she connects his concept of common sense with his idea of the united mankind. As Young-Bruelh denotes, she "tried to show that judging and acting have the same principle, which is not transcendental, but empirical: We must act and judge in ways that do not violate the actually existing solidarity of mankind" (Young-Bruelh, 1982: 302). Arendt writes that "it is by virtue of this idea of mankind, present in every single man, that men are human, and they can be called civilized or humane to the extent that this idea becomes the principle not only of their judgments but of their actions. It is at this point that actor and spectator become united; the maxim of the actor and the maxim, the 'standard,' according to which the spectator judges the spectacle of the world, become one" (Arendt, 1992: 75). Consequently, it can be said that judging spectator proceeds from the standpoint of the actor in Arendt's later philosophy. Her later definitions of the judging spectator can be connected to her practical approach to judgment since she does not forget that the public sphere as a space of judgment in The Life of the Mind.
iii
Arendt understands the judging spectator as the narrator who is included in the political world. Before finding proof of the connections of the judging and the speaking, let us remember Arendt's approach to speech. In her philosophy, the concept of speech is endowed with two meanings. Firstly, Arendt regards speech as a kind of action when she writes that "finding the right words at the right moment, quite apart from the information or communication they may convey, is action" (Arendt, 1998: 26). Arendt believes that such conditions of action as plurality and natality are also conditions of speech. According to Arendt, speech is possible only between people or in human plurality: "Action and speech go on between men" (Ibid.: 182). The space of speech is "the web of relationships". Arendt offers to consider speech in the meaning of an action which contributes to the assertion of the public image of its author. Public discourse with others encourages the person to separate themselves from its own inner world (Tchir, 2011: 55). Another condition of speech as action is natality. For Arendt, speech realizes the human ability to "be born", which means to start one's own life: "With word and deed we insert ourselves into the human world, and this insertion is like a second birth" (Arendt, 1998: 176). Moreover, as J. Taminiaux points out, Arendt's idea of natality is also connected with the concept of speech because newcomers use speech to assert themselves among others who are equally capable of acting (Taminiaux, 1986: 210).
Secondly, Arendt defines speech as a story about the action that contributes to the disclosure of its meaning. She believes that the story is another condition for action in addition to plurality and natality. The story is a condition for the action's interpretation and understanding. In this case, Arendt reduces the function of the story not so much to describe the meaning of the action, but rather to create it. For her, the action becomes meaningful only through stories (Thiele, 2009). In The Human Condition, Arendt writes that "Action reveals itself fully only to the storyteller" (Arendt, 1998: 192). According to Benhabib, Arendt believes that the existence of action depends on the narrative fixation of its meaning, saying "Actions, unlike things and natural objects, only live in the narratives of those who perform them and the narratives of those who understand, interpret, and recall them" (Benhabib, 1990: 187).
According to Arendt, speech as a story about the action turns out to be an ability to portray a public political "who". For her, in talking about the action, people create its public sense and the public image of its author. Thus, they form the image of the acting "who"; she writes that "on the contrary, it is more than likely that the 'who,' which appears so clearly and unmistakably to others, remains hidden from the person himself, like the Aai^wv in Greek religion which accompanies each man throughout his life, always looking over his shoulder from behind and thus visible only to those he encounters" (Arendt, 1998: 179-180). While recognizing the public "who" of the action, Arendt does not forget the individuality of the actor. However, she assumes that the self-understanding of the actor depends on the speaking others. For her, the acting subject is like Achilles who needs the public talking about his actions (Pitkin, 1981: 338). He is a political subject who wants to gain immortality in stories about his deeds and about his public "who".6 In this way, speech is a condition for public or political space and its meanings. What is more, it is a form of political action.
But how is the judgment connected to speech in Arendt's later philosophy? There are three facts which confirmed the connections between them in her later texts. Firstly, Arendt's definitions of judgment contain notions related in meaning to the category of speech. For example, in The Life of the Mind, judgment is defined not only as the ability to distinguish right from wrong but as "the ability to say "this is wrong", "this is beautiful" (Arendt, 1978a: 193).7 Arendt also compares judgment with the ancient Greek notion of "ndGsv", which denotes persuasive speech. It is the persuasive judgment which "corresponds closely to what the Greeks called ndGsv, the convincing and persuading speech which they regarded as the typical political form of people talking with one another" (Arendt, 1961b: 222).
Secondly, Arendt contrasts judgment to thinking. In her last book, she wrote that "If thinking, the two-in-one of the soundless dialogue, actualizes the difference within our identity as given in consciousness and thereby results in conscience as its by-product,
6. Arendt borrows this model of understanding of the action Arendt borrows from the ancient Greek culture and Aristotelian politics. According to her, the ancient Greeks strove to achieve immortality by accomplishing acts in the political sphere in such a way that the polis spoke about them (Arendt, 1998: 176).
7. We can already find these words in Thinking and the Moral Considerations (Arendt, 2003: 189).
then judging, the by-product of the liberating effect of thinking, realizes thinking, makes it manifest in the world of appearances, where I am never alone and always much too busy to be able to think" (Arendt, 1978a: 193).8 According to her, thinking is a personal, inner dialogue of the Ego with oneself and with the conscience.9 On the contrary, judgment cannot exist in an inner dialogue for it needs others. Arendt concludes that the inner dialogue of thinking is opposed to judgment as the ability, which is realized in a common being "where I am never alone". At the same time, Arendt views the common being or the world "in-between" people as a space for speech (Arendt, 1998: 182). Therefore, in my opinion, we can affirm that the idea of distinguishing conversation with oneself from public speech lies at the heart of the opposition between thinking and judging. As D. Villa notes, it is Arendt's belief that "to judge is to engage in rational public dialogue, deliberating with others with whom I must finally come to an agreement and decision" (Villa, 1999: 98).
Thirdly, the connection between judgment and speech is confirmed by the fact that Arendt ascribes the same goal, namely, fixing the "who" of the acting subject in the space of the common being to the judging spectator and the public speaker (the historian). Arendt writes about this function of speech in The Human Condition (Arendt, 1998: 178-179). She concludes that historians fix the acting "who" in public narratives (Ibid.: 192). Summarizing what was said above, we can state that she defines historians as narrators. Her understanding of judging as an ability to determine the "who" of actions can be reconstructed from her Personal Responsibility under the Dictatorship (1964) as well as from her Collective Responsibility (1968). The task of these texts is to answer the question whether we can judge the events of the past in which we did not take part (Arendt, 2003: 18-19). In Arendt's view, "no historiography and no courtroom procedure would be possible at all if we denied ourselves this capability" (Ibid.: 19). She comes to this conclusion in analyzing the crimes of the Nazis against humanity. Arendt argues that members of the post-war society are obliged to make judgments about the acts of Nazism, thereby, in effect, to determine their authors, and, in other words, their "who" For Arendt, the crime that destroys the foundations of political life becomes an example, which shows the necessity of discovering the "who" of an action by means of judgment. In analyzing the trial of Eichmann, Arendt concludes that it is only through public judgments about the crime that we can prove the personal responsibility of its author. If we do not use the judgment to identify the malfeasant "who" then the place of personal responsibility for the deed will be occupied by a meaningless phenomenon of collective guilt: "Where all are guilty, nobody is" (Ibid.: 147). In this way, we can say that her idea of fixing the malfeasant "who" with the help of the judging spectator is identical with her idea of fixing the acting "who" with the help of public speakers, or historians. In addition, when Arendt speaks and writes about Eichmann, she plays the role of the judging spectator and
8. Arendt Writes firstly says this phrase for the first time in Thinking and the Moral Considerations (Arendt, 2003: 189).
9. Conscience is defined by Arendt as a kind of thinking and as a symbol of practical wisdom (Arendt, 2003: 30-31).
formulates the public "who" of Eichmann. As many scholars note, the article Eichmann in Jerusalem can be considered as her retrospective judgment on the case of Eichmann and on the problem of finding those responsible for the crimes of Nazism (Beiner, 1992: 101; Villa, 1999: 105). Arendt does not forget about her judging spectator's role in her last book. She begins The Life of Mind with remembering about her own retrospective judgment about Eichmann (Arendt, 1978a: 5). In other words, she begins her last conversation about judgment as the judging spectator.
Based on the similarities between Arendt's approaches to judgment and speech, it can be concluded that she interprets the judging spectator as the political narrator. In her later philosophy, the judging spectator is the one who, through speech, fixes the public meaning of the action. They are the one who realizes the ability to judge on behalf of the whole community, proceeding from the common sense and hence, from the common being. The judging spectator always tries to preserve the common world and to reconstruct the political space. In this way, the definition of judgment as the prerogative of the spectator does not bring the idea of the irresistibility of vita activa and vita contemplativa to Arendt's philosophy, but, on the contrary, implies the interconnection of mental abilities with practical life.
Conclusion
Arendt not only separates the political actor from the judging spectator, but includes a spectator in the political world. In her later texts, the common political being is understood as the space of judging and the judgment itself is seen as the ability to evaluate the political content not so much of one's own actions, but as the actions of the participants of common life. This retrospective judgment about the common being needs to be public speech. Therefore, the judging spectator isn't the one who contemplates, but is the one who openly speaks about events and forms the political space. They become a participant of political life due to the reason that they create the meanings of the political actions and the public "who" of actions. However, Arendt does not include the faculty of judgment in vita activa. She defines it as the faculty of vita contemplativa, but which is the most political ability. It means that judgment is a "bridge" between vita activa and vita contemplativa, and the judging spectator plays this connective function in her later texts.
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Роль судящего зрителя в пространстве политического: подход Х. Арендт
Мария Сидорова
Преподаватель факультета довузовской подготовки Национального исследовательского университета «Высшая школа экономики»
Адрес: ул. Мясницкая, д. 20, г. Москва, Российская Федерация 101000 E-mail: [email protected]
В незаконченной теории суждения Арендт судящий зритель противопоставляется действующему субъекту. Анализируя это противопоставление, некоторые исследователи приходят к выводу, что Арендт, определяя политическое суждение как разновидность «жизни ума», считает его автора сторонним зрителем, а не участником публичного пространства. В данной статье рассмотрена иная, менее распространённая интерпретация подхода Арендт к судящему зрителю: представление Арендт о судящем зрителе проанализировано в связи с её практическим подходом к суждению. В ней показано, что Арендт наделяет судящего зрителя признаками автора политичекого действия, а именно — автора речи как действия. В философии Арендт судящий зритель предстаёт не в роли субъекта созерцания политического, а в роли его активного участника. Разумеется, в поздних текстах Арендт суждение рассматривается как способность оценивать политическое содержание не столько действий самого судящего, сколько действий участников совместной жизни. Однако зритель как автор суждения не может одновременно не быть автором политического нарратива. В статье высказывается идея, что судящий зритель — это нуждающийся в говорении участник совместного политического бытия. На основе анализа концепции речи Арендт как части её теории действия в статье делается вывод, что судящий зритель является рассказчиком. Он — не тот, кто созерцает, а тот, кто публично высказывается о действиях и тем самым формирует политическое пространство. Ключевые слова: Арендт, суждение, судящий зритель, действие, речь, vita activa, vita contemplativa
