Le troisième tome de La vie de l’esprit, ultime œuvre de Hannah Arendt, aurait dû être consacré à la faculté de juger. Notre recherche débute par la reconstitution partielle de cette théorie du jugement non écrite, mais dont on trouve des traces dans l’ensemble du corpus arendtien. En nous appuyant principalement sur les conférences données par Arendt sur la troisième Critique de Kant et sur les écrits non destinés à la publication comme le Journal de Pensée, notre travail soutient la thèse d’une unité profonde entre toutes les positions d’Arendt sur le jugement : faculté mentale et politique, fondement de la conscience morale. La prise en compte d’une multiplicité de perspectives, grâce au processus de la « mentalité élargie » exposé par Kant, confère au jugement une dimension de pluralité qui en fait le trait d’union entre pensée et action. Le désintéressement du sujet, rendu possible par l’imagination, fonde cette capacité. Nous discutons alors cette dernière affirmation, en confrontant la théorie arendtienne à la perspective pragmatiste incarnée par John Dewey. Par son analyse de la pensée comme enquête (inquiry), et de la valuation, Dewey met en lumière la dimension expérimentale présente dans la formation de nos jugements, sans pour autant les réduire à des décisions instrumentales. L’interaction individu/environnement efface ainsi la frontière artificielle qui subsiste chez Arendt entre intériorité du soi et extériorité des apparences. Nous pouvons alors mettre en évidence l’usage possible de la théorie arendtienne dans l’analyse des problèmes politiques contemporains : le rôle du jugement dans l’espace public démocratique, et les conditions de son éducation. / The third volume of The Life of the Mind, Hannah Arendt’s final work, was to be dedicated to the faculty of judging. Our research begins by partially reconstructing this unformulated theory of judgment, fragments of which can be traced back throughout Arendt’s works. Taking as our principal basis the lectures Arendt gave on Kant's third Critique, as well as her writings not destined for publication, such as the Thinking Diary (Denktagebuch), our thesis supports the existence of a profound unity of all of Arendt’s affirmations on judgment: a mental and political faculty, which at the same time forms the moral conscience. The awareness of a diversity of perspectives, thanks to the process of the “enlarged mentality” displayed by Kant, confers to judgment a dimension of pluralism, rendering it a link between thought and action; and the subject’s disinterestedness, made possible by imagination, sets the foundation for this ability. We then deliberate this last affirmation juxtaposing Arendt’s theory with the pragmatist perspective embodied in John Dewey. Through his analysis of thought as inquiry, and of valuation, Dewey brings to light the experimental dimension present in the formation of our judgments without, nevertheless, reducing them to instrumental decisions. Thus, the individual/environment interaction erases Arendt’s enduring artificial boundaries between the inwardness of the self and the outwardness of appearances. This way we can exhibit the possible uses of Arendt’s theory in the analysis of contemporary political issues: the role of judgment within the democratic public sphere and the conditions of its education.

[pt] Nosso trabalho buscou apresentar a concepção de juízo na obra de Hannah Arendt, cuja compreensão se apoia em uma livre interpretação do juízo reflexionante estético de Kant. As razões pelas quais Arendt teria se voltado para o tema refletem sua preocupação com o obscurecimento do mundo, cuja pluralidade esteve visivelmente ameaçada com o advento do totalitarismo. Para a pensadora, os acontecimentos sem precedentes decorrentes do totalitarismo fazem parte de um contexto em que a ausência de reflexão e uma consequente inabilidade para julgar o que se passava fizeram do século XX um dos mais sombrios períodos da história da humanidade. A faculdade do juízo reflexionante estético, capaz de refletir sobre o particular sem que exista um universal dado, foi pensada por Arendt em um contexto político, e suas características apontam para a necessidade de compreender sem corrimãos os assuntos mundanos que se apresentam na contemporaneidade. Poderíamos considerar uma teoria do juízo arendtiana apenas de um modo fragmentado, uma vez que esse foi um projeto de uma pesquisa teórica que não foi realizado integralmente por ela, e do qual temos um quebra-cabeça a ser montado. Suas peças podem ser resgatadas desde os seus primeiros ensaios, quando a ação política era o seu leit motif intelectual. Posteriormente, a partir do julgamento de Eichmann, quando ao cunhar a expressão banalidade do mal ela própria se tornou exemplar em seu juízo reflexionante. Julgar prospectivamente com uma mentalidade alargada ou retrospectivamente com desinteresse são, pois, lados possíveis da mesma moeda: o juízo de gosto, cujo resgate Arendt se esforçou em trazer à luz. Tal juízo possui as características da comunicabilidade e intersubjetividade que possibilitam a existência do mundo, entendido como o espaço entre homens e espaço de visibilidade do pensamento reflexivo. Por essa razão, a atividade de julgar assim compreendida é a única faculdade espiritual do homem capaz de estabelecer o horizonte da pluralidade. / [en] Our work intended to present the notion of judgment in the writings of Hannah Arendt, whose comprehension supports itself on a free interpretation of Kantian aesthetic reflective judgment. The reasons why Arendt would have turned herself to the theme reflect her concern about the darkening of the world, whose plurality had been visibly threatened by the advent of totalitarianism. For philosopher, the unprecedented events that came from totalitarianism are part of a context in which the lack of deliberation and a subsequent inability to judge what was happening made the 20th century one of the darkest periods of human history. Arendt studied the faculty of aesthetic reflective judgment, capable of deliberating about the particular without a given universal, in a political context, and its characteristics point to the necessity of comprehending without handrails the mundane topics that present themselves on contemporaneity. We are able to consider only a fragmented Arendtian theory of judgment, since this was a research project not done solely by herself, and of which we have a whole puzzle to assemble. The pieces of this puzzle can be found beginning on her first essays, when the political action was her intellectual leit motif. Later, from Eichmann s judgment on, when she became an example on her own reflective judgment after coining the expression banality of evil. Judging prospectively with an enlarged mentality or retrospectively with disinterest are, then, two possible sides of the same coin: the judgment of taste, something Arendt tried to rescue and bring to light. This judgment holds the same characteristics of communicability and intersubjectivity that make possible the existence of the world, understood as the space between men and space of visibility of reflective judgment. For this reason, the activity of judging, comprehended this way, is the only spiritual faculty of men capable of establishing the horizon of plurality.