Abstract
Hannah Arendt argues for a kind of public communicative responsibility grounded not in human nature but in the human condition of plurality and natality and in the nature of thinking itself. Responsibility so understood avoids many of the pitfalls associated with the intentional agency idea of responsibility. However, it raises additional issues. What motivates us to think? Is she privileging the private over the public? If so, is such a hierarchy ethically sound? If we are always to be judging and punishing others, are we not again reducing responsibility to accountability?
…the form of responsibility to think again; to think radically new discourses…
—J.-H. de Villiers
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- 1.
In this account, I have simplified Arendt’s discussion of judgment with a view to keeping the argument manageable and focused. In particular, I have not explored in detail Arendt’s notion that of storytelling and its relation to responsibility. This simplification does not affect the criticisms I level at her account. For a fuller account of the various elements of Arendtian judgment and the difficulties in reconciling these elements, see Benhabib (1988, 2003).
- 2.
It is unclear whether, in a strict sense, we can have Arendtian private interests. If individuality emerges within the public sphere; and if private interests belong to us qua individuals, even private interests are parasitic upon the public space.
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Koehn, D. (2019). Arendtian Communicative Responsibility. In: Toward a New (Old) Theory of Responsibility: Moving beyond Accountability. SpringerBriefs in Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16737-0_4
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