Rethinking Political Judgement
Arendt and Existentialism
Published on 4. December 2018
Book
Hardback
272 pages
978-1-4744-2999-3 (ISBN)
Description
How can we reinvigorate the human capacity for political judgement as a practical activity capable of addressing the uncertainties of our postfoundational world? The book takes up this challenge by drawing on the historically attuned perspective of 20th-century philosophies of existence - in particular the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus and Hannah Arendt. Displacing the lingering rationalist temptations, Masa Mrovlje engages these thinkers' aesthetic sensibility to delve into the experiential reality of political judgement and revivify it as a worldly, ambiguous practice. The purpose is to illustrate the prescient political significance of existentialists' narrative imagination on two contemporary perplexities of political judgement: the problem of dirty hands and the challenge of transitional justice. This engagement reveals the distinctly resistant potential of worldly judgement in its ability to stimulate our capacities of coming to terms with and creatively confronting the tragedies of political action, rather than simply yielding to them as a necessary course of political life.
Reviews / Votes
This book is a timely work that brings Arendt into conversation with Beauvoir, Camus, and Sartre, making a significant and valuable contribution to political theory and philosophy. It is an ambitious and extremely fruitful project concerning the need to reconsider political judgment by taking into account its ambiguous and tragic character. -- Marguerite La Caze, University of QueenslandMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 160 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
522 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4744-2999-3 (9781474429993)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Masa Mrovlje is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Edinburgh, working on the ERC-funded project 'Illuminating the Grey Zone'. Her research interests are oriented by the rubric of international political theory and the history of political thought, with a specific focus on 20th-century philosophies of existence, poststructuralist and critical theories, and their significance to issues of political judgement, responsibility, violence, resistance and transitional justice.
Content
Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Political Judgement in the History of Political Thought and the Modern Crises; 2. Sartre and Beauvoir: the Ambiguity of Political Judgement and the Challenge of Freedom and Responsibility; 3. Camus and Arendt: Confronting the Ambiguity of Political Judgement and Illuminating the Limits of the World; 4. Political Judgement and Narrativity; 5. Facing Up To the Tragedy of Political Action: the Problem of Dirty Hands; 6. Times of Transition: Reconciling With the Tragic Nature of Political Affairs; Conclusion: Reclaiming Wonder at the World of Political Affairs; Bibliography.