Helgard Mahrdt

Hannah Arendt nimmt in ihrer Rekonzeptualisierung von Politik vielfach Bezug auf Aristoteles. Für die Beziehung zwischen Handeln und Sprechen als unterschieden von Herstellen und Arbeiten und für das Verhältnis Philosophie und Politik war Heidegger als Vermittler oder besser Interpret von Aristoteles' praktischer Philosophie für sie von zentraler Bedeutung. Für Hannah Arendt stellte die aristotelische phronēsis die Achse von Buch VI der Nikomachischen Ethik dar. Es war Martin Heidegger, der bei seiner gründlichen Exegese dieses Buches deutlich herausarbeitete, dass es die Aufgabe der phronēsis ist, die Handlung, praxis, sich selbst durchsichtig zu machen. Phronēsis ist Einsicht in die je eigene Handlungssituation. Sie deckt die rechte Weise des jemeinigen Daseins auf. Man könnte sagen, dass Heidegger Aristoteles' phronēsis verstärkt. Dasselbe ließe sich berechtigt von Hannah Arendt sagen, in deren Denken phronēsis zur eigentlich „politischen Tugend” wird

In this article I examine the human capacity to judge. I start with Hannah Arendt’s reflections on the activity of thinking. It turns out that thinking is a dialogical process between the thinking ego and the self. Thinking has a liberating effect on the faculty of judgment. The two mental activities are closely related, but they are not the same. While thinking is an intercourse with myself and the self, judging anticipates the judgments of others, and potentially of all others. Judging has its own modus operandi and far more to do with making distinctions than with organizing and subsuming the particular under the general. I therefore turn to Arendt’s reception of Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Kant’s third critique provides her with a model of judging where one experiences belonging to a community whenever one is willing to judge. In exercising our ability to judge, we not only practice our membership in a world we have in common, we also contribute towards stabilizing our world. Therefore, it seems to me, we have good reason to say that exercising judgment is an important task for political education.

ABSTRACT I argue that educators, by introducing young people to various ways of responding to wrongdoing, help prepare them for the task of acting in and taking responsibility for the world. I begin by introducing Hannah Arendt’s understanding of the world, the characteristics of action as unpredictable, boundless and irreversible, i.e. the frailty of human affairs. I then move to what Arendt calls the ‘power of forgiveness.’ Forgiving is an action, and as such is free and unpredictable. Moreover, forgiving concerns the person not the deed. To understand the implications of this, I introduce Arendt’s understanding of being a person in distinction to being merely human. I then ask whether all deeds are forgivable, which brings me to the new crime against humanity. Finally, I ask whether one can be reconciled to acts, such as genocide and whether solidarity with the wrongdoer is possible.