Judgment, Imagination, and Politics - by Jennifer Nedelsky (Paperback)

About the Book

Judgment, Imagination, and Politics brings together for the first time leading essays on the nature of judgment. Drawing from themes in Kant's Critique of Judgment and Hannah Arendt's discussion of judgment from Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, these essays deal with: ...

Book Synopsis

Judgment, Imagination, and Politics brings together for the first time leading essays on the nature of judgment. Drawing from themes in Kant's Critique of Judgment and Hannah Arendt's discussion of judgment from Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, these essays deal with: the role of imagination in judgment; judgment as a distinct human faculty; the nature of judgment in law and politics; and the many puzzles that arise from the 'enlarged mentality, ' the capacity to consider the perspectives of others that aren't in Kant treated as essential to judgment.

Review Quotes

A valuable scholarly resource: this volume collects, for the first time, the most important essays on judgment written in the last half century. With a clear, thorough, and very helpful introduction by Ronald Beiner and Jennifer Nedelsky.

Beiner and Nedelsky have put togther a fine volume that is a must-read for anyone interested in the problem of judgment. We make judgments every day in law, culture, and politics. And yet, in late modern plural societies it is harder than ever to account for those judgments. Why are they not mere expressions of the institutional power held by judges, critics, or statesmen? Taking Kant and Arendt as their points of departure, the essays in this timely and valuable volume answer that question by exploring the conditions and aspirations of judgment in late modernity.

This collection on Arendt's work is to be welcomed as a a scholarly and pedagogical tool. Beiner and Nedelsky have collected many probing essays that might otherwise be overlooked. And having all of these essays together allows one to easily see the sweep of issues that is entailed by Arendt's thoughts on judgment.

This lively volume offers much to readers interested in Arendt and the faculty of judgment.

About the Author

Ronald Beiner is professor of political science at the University of Toronto. Jennifer Nedelsky is professor of political science and women's studies at the University of Toronto.