Arendt Studies

published on December 7, 2023

On Arendt’s Reading of Kant’s Third Critique
What Politics Can (and Cannot) Learn from Aesthetics

Arendt’s reading of Kant’s aesthetics as political theory has proven contentious, as exegesis regarding the Critique of the Power of Judgment and still more as description of the concerns and norms of political action. Although Arendt’s politicisation of aesthetics is more fraught than she at times admits (but less reckless than some of her critics maintain while also more anarchic than some of her defenders acknowledge), I argue her insight into the republican promise of the model of non–conformist sociability that Kant discerns among aesthetic judges is worth securing. Arendt appeals to Kant’s sensus communis, pure aesthetic judgement, impure aesthetic judgement and works of art in order to make sense of a mode of political sociability that avoids both atomisation and uniformity. For Arendt, the various ways political history and philosophy have conceived political bodies have been less adroit at preserving the openness of the political than Kant’s aesthetic community.