The Secret of Judgment in Hannah Arendt

摘要

According to revisiting what Arendt has written, this article brings out the secret of judgment in Arendt through investigating the relevant themes which involve freedom, opinion, and taste. Freedom, to be more specific, public freedom, is the context of judgment. Judgment is the activity that fits into the public realm where freedom becomes visible to all. Opinion constitutes the object of judgment. Judging, which is the representative thinking, makes the standpoints of others present to our minds, then to form an opinion means to judge a given issue basing on different viewpoints. The validity of judgment depends on the ability of taste. More precisely, taste; that is, the power of judgment; defines the specific validity of judgment which is distinguished from other validities of authority, force, strength, and violence. In summary, Arendt’s judgment is the power of taste which guarantees the validity of opinion in the context of public freedom.