Actualizing democratic citizenship: Hannah Arendt and classical rhetoric on judgment and persuasion

Abstract

[Excerpt] Hannah Arendt, undoubtedly one of the greatest political philosophers of our times, is known for the distinctiveness and originality of her vision. Trained as a philosopher, she came to develop along the years a pointedly critical stance toward the bulk of western philosophy, which she accused of a deep and generalized lack of sensibility toward politics, an entrenched inability to understand it in its proper terms. Of course, this doesn’t mean that Arendt was not influenced, and even profoundly, by important philosophers (we could mention for instance the names of Socrates, Aristotle, Augustine, Kant, Nietzsche, Jaspers, or Heidegger); but when it comes to politics, she saved but a few: namely, Socrates and Kant.