The Epistemology of Politics

Abstract

Taking up the results of the previous chapters, this chapter examines the epistemological or experiential implications of Arendt’s understanding of the practice of politics. While these implications are not elaborately addressed in The Human Condition, they more clearly come to the fore in Arendt’s reflections in other texts on the concepts of judgment, common sense, and understanding. They indicate that politics as a field of experience is constituted by a peculiar “thinking of citizens ” which can be characterized as a worldly mental activity (1) of meaningfully integrating particulars, (2) of self-localization, (3) of assuming a We-perspective, and (4) of actualizing a bounded form of enlarged mentality.