« [M]oi, qui ne sçay rien, m’en suis voulu mesler » : Blaise de Monluc dit se « mêler » d’écrire l’histoire pour se distinguer des historiographes « lettrés », comme le font également, à la même époque, les frères du Bellay. Tous font cependant valoir leurs jugements sur l’action politique dans l’histoire : ils écrivent sur l’histoire plutôt qu’ils n’écrivent l’histoire. Ainsi Montaigne insiste, dans les Essais, sur la nécessité de savoir juger l’histoire et ses acteurs. La distinction générique qui oppose l’histoire aux Mémoires, aux « Commentaires » et aux « essais » s’avère peu opérante pour comprendre ces auteurs. Je propose d’aborder leur rapport à l’histoire sous l’angle de « l’histoire-jugement », une histoire écrite par ses acteurs, qui porte sur l’action politique (les « faits » et les « dits » dans la langue du XVIe siècle) et sur les « conseils », c’est-à-dire les intentions et délibérations des acteurs. La première partie explique l’importance qu’a prise l’histoire-jugement au temps de François Ier, en raison, d’abord, des idéologies et des pratiques de la monarchie contemporaine, puis par la « renaissance » de traditions philosophiques, rhétoriques et historiographiques qui associent le conseil au discernement (ou « discrétion »), aux discours (« concions » ou conciones) et à la franchise (ou parrêsia). Le règne de François Ier voit se nouer ces pratiques et ces traditions : les humanistes, la noblesse d’épée et l’État royal appellent de leurs vœux une histoire-jugement destinée à la formation des élites politiques. La deuxième partie montre qu’un auteur, Guillaume du Bellay de Langey, et une œuvre, ses Ogdoades, ont incarné cette aspiration, réunissant les lettres et les armes. Après avoir étudié la naissance de cette œuvre restée inachevée, j’analyse le Prologue des Ogdoades (ici édité), manifeste et méthode qui définit les rapports de la rhétorique, du jugement et de l’expérience politique dans l’historiographie ; puis j’étudie la mise en œuvre de cette méthode dans les fragments des Ogdoades. La troisième partie porte sur l’œuvre des deux plus importants héritiers de Langey : les Mémoires de son frère Martin du Bellay (qui comprennent une partie des Ogdoades) et les Commentaires de Monluc. Le discours sur l’historiographie, dans la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle, insiste sur la parrêsia de l’historien ; un tel discours n’est pas anti-rhétorique mais rejette une écriture de « clerc d’armes » parce qu’elle révèle l’inexpérience politique de l’historien. L’ars bene dicendi ne laisse pas de fasciner Martin du Bellay et Monluc, dont l’écriture se veut paradoxalement éloquente, parce que dépouillée des fastes de l’épidictique ; la parrêsia des conseils permet de dépasser l’opposition du bien dire et du bien faire à laquelle on résume souvent la poétique des Mémoires d’épée. Monluc et Martin du Bellay cherchent ainsi à comprendre la portée et les limites de leur capacité d’agir. La quatrième partie examine la place de l’histoire-jugement et l’héritage de Langey dans les Essais : on sait depuis longtemps les affinités de Montaigne avec Amyot et Bodin, mais on ignorait qu’il en eût avec les Du Bellay. La notion d’histoire-jugement permet de comprendre les jugements, synthétiques et pourtant circonstanciés, que porte Montaigne sur les acteurs de l’histoire. Cherchant dans l’histoire les voies d’une prudence lucide, l’essayiste s’interroge sur la possibilité d’agir et de parler librement, ce qui autorise à penser son rapport à la politique et à la rhétorique en termes de conseil et de « discrétion ». La conclusion esquisse un moment Guillaume du Bellay, où l’histoire fut comprise non comme une étude du passé mais comme le prolongement réflexif des délibérations des acteurs de l’histoire, comme le moyen de « dire sur ce qui peut advenir ». / “I, who know nothing, have wanted to meddle in it”: Blaise de Monluc says he “meddles” in historiography in order to distinguish himself from “scholar” historians, as did the Du Bellay brothers who wrote at the same time. But they all express their views about political action through history: they write on history instead of writing history. Therefore Montaigne, in his Essays, emphasizes that one needs to be able to judge between history and the actors of history. The distinction between literary genres that opposes history to memoirs, “commentaries” and “essays”, fails to explain these authors’ relationship to history. I propose to consider this relationship from the perspective of “judging-history”, – a history written by its actors, focusing on political action (“faits” and “dits” in XVIth-century French) and the conseils (“counsels”, i.e. the actors’ designs and deliberations). The first section explains the importance of judging-history during the reign of Francis I, due to the prevalent ideologies and practices of French monarchy at the time, but also due to the contemporaneous revival of philosophical, rhetorical and historiographical traditions which link counsels with discernment (discrétion), speeches (concions) and sincerity (parrhesia). Under Francis I’s reign these practices and traditions were brought together. Indeed, humanists, the nobility of sword and the royal State called for a judging-history intended to train political elites. The second section demonstrates that an author, Guillaume du Bellay de Langey, and his work, the Ogdoades, embodied this hope, reconciling the pen and the sword. Having studied the birth of this unfinished work, I comment on the Ogdoades’s Prologue (edited in this thesis), a manifesto and method which defines the relationships between rhetoric, judgement and political experience within historiography. I then study this method’s implementation in the Ogdoades’s extant passages. The third section focuses on the works of two Langey’s most important heirs: his brother Martin du Bellay’s Memoirs and Monluc’s Commentaries. The artes historicae, in the second half of the XVIth century, emphasize the importance of parrhesia in historical writing: such a stance is not anti-rhetorical, but rather rejects the notion of authors writing as clercs d’armes (“clerks of arms”, i.e., scholars writing on military matters) because in their writings they reveal their lack of political experience. The ars bene dicendi continues to fascinate Martin du Bellay and Monluc, whose writing attempts to be paradoxically eloquent, because it has been stripped of epidictic pageantry; the counsels’ parrhesia make it possible to overcome the dichotomy between bien dire and bien faire – a dichotomy which is often supposed to characterize military memoirs’ poetics. Monluc et Martin du Bellay seek to understand the scope and limits of their own capacities for action. The fourth section examines the role of judging-history and Langey’s legacy in the Essays. For a long time we have known the affinities between Amyot, Bodin and Montaigne, but what we have ignored is Montaigne’s links with the Du Bellays. Such a notion as judging-history allows us to understand the synthetical and yet comprehensive judgments that Montaigne makes on the actors of history. Seeking a way to act in a clear-headed and prudent manner, the essayist examines the possibility to speak and act freely. Therefore, his relationship with politics and rhetoric should be rethought in terms of conseil and discrétion. My conclusion draws a Guillaume du Bellay moment when history was not considered as a study of the past but as the reflective extension of the actors of history’s deliberations and as a way to “dire sur ce qui peut advenir” (talk about what could happen next).

My dissertation draws upon ancient political philosophy (Plato and Aristotle) and 20th century hermeneutic thought (Heidegger and Gadamer) to argue that our judgment and understanding is always “situated” within a world, or horizon, shaped by the projects, practices, and traditions in which we are engaged. This means that judgment never starts from scratch. The exercise of judgment, in evaluating competing arguments in politics or law, in trying to understand a philosophical text, in deliberating about how to act in this or that circumstance, is always informed by preconceptions and commitments that we have not justified in advance. In this sense, our judgment is always “prejudiced.” But contrary to a familiar way of thinking, the prejudicial aspect of judgment is not some regrettable limitation. Certain prejudices, I argue, can actually enable good judgment rather than hinder it. The primary goal of the dissertation is to clarify the concept of prejudice and to draw out its implications for politics, ethics, and philosophy. What does it mean to reason from within the world? What room does such reasoning allow for human agency and political reform? By drawing upon Heidegger’s notion of “Being-in-the-World” and Gadamer’s notion of “horizon,” I develop the idea that our life circumstance is an intelligible perspective that informs our deliberation and judgment. Moreover, our life perspective provides the basis for a kind of situated agency. After elaborating the situated conception of understanding, I show that it is implicit in Aristotle’s notion of practical wisdom (phronesis) and in Plato’s notion of dialectic. My goal is to bring out a link that is often overlooked between their philosophy and 20th century hermeneutic thought. By reading each in light of the other, we gain a deeper understanding of what it means to reason from within the perspective of our lives.

The thesis inquires into the theme of political judgement and aims to rethink it from the perspective of twentieth-century philosophies of existence. It seeks to take up the contemporary challenge of political judgement that remains inadequately addressed within recent theorizing: how, given the modern breakdown of metaphysical absolutes, to reinvigorate the human capacity for political judgement as a practical activity able to confront the ambiguous, plural and complex character of our postfoundational world. Against this background, the thesis aspires to reclaim the distinctly historical orientation of twentieth-century existentialism, in particular the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus and Hannah Arendt. It draws on their aesthetic sensibility to resuscitate the human judging ability in its worldly ambiguity and point towards an account of political judgement capable of facing up to the challenges of our plural and uncertain political reality. Retrieving their vigilant assumption of the situated, worldly condition of human political existence and the attendant perplexity of judging politically, the aim of the thesis is to suggest how the existentialists' insights can be brought to bear on contemporary problematics of political judgement that seem to elude the grasp of abstract standards and predetermined yardsticks.

Esta dissertação apresenta a concepção de juízo político de Hannah Arendt. Afastando-se de uma leitura ortodoxa dos textos kantianos, Arendt vislumbra no juízo reflexionante estético de Kant a estrutura do juízo político. Em um constante diálogo com a obra kantiana a autora se apropria de vários conceitos, tanto conceitos constantes na Crítica da faculdade do juízo, que é a obra que ela afirma conter a verdadeira filosofia política de Kant, como conceitos de outras importantes obras kantianas. No decorrer deste texto, quando entendemos que ocorre uma apropriação conceitual buscamos situar minimamente o conceito no contexto da obra kantiana para compreendermos a concepção e o gesto interpretativo de Arendt. Através da análise de seus escritos mostramos como ela compreende o modo de funcionamento da faculdade humana de julgar os eventos políticos, por meio da exposição e discussão dos principais conceitos envolvidos em sua teoria. Assim, apresentamos as condições de possibilidade do juízo representadas pelas faculdades da imaginação e do senso comum, bem como as duas perspectivas pelas quais essa faculdade se manifesta no mundo público, o juízo do ator e o juízo do espectador. Depois, analisamos a conexão entre as faculdades de pensamento e juízo para extrair as implicações éticas da faculdade humana de julgar. Estas reflexões são uma tentativa de compreender como, para Arendt, opera a faculdade de julgar; por que ela considera esta faculdade a mais política das habilidades espirituais do homem, e qual é a relevância política desta atividade do espírito. / This dissertation presents the conception of Hannah Arendt’s political judgment. Moving away from an orthodox reading of Kantian texts, Arendt glimpses in the aesthetic reflective judgment of Kant, the structure of the political judgment. In one constant dialogue with Kantian Work the author appropriates several concepts, as concepts constant in the Critique of judgment, which is the Work that she affirms that contains the true Kant’s political philosophy, as concepts of other important Kantian Works. In elapsing of this text, when we understand that a conceptual appropriation occurs, we try to situate the concept in the context of the Kantian Work to understand Arendt’s conception and the interpretation gesture. Through the analysis of her writings we show as she understands the way of functioning of the human faculty to judge the political events, by the exposition and debate of the main involved concepts in her theory. So, we present the conditions of judgment possibility represented by the faculties of the imagination and the common sense, as well as the two perspectives for which manifests this faculty in the public world, the judgment of the actor and the judgment of the spectator. After that, we analyze the connection between the faculties of thought and judgment to extract the ethical implications of the human faculty to judge. These reflections are an attempt to understand how does the faculty of judge operate for Arendt; why does she consider this faculty the most political of men’s mental abilities, and what is the politic relevance of this spirit’s activity.

Esta dissertação apresenta a concepção de juízo político de Hannah Arendt. Afastando-se de uma leitura ortodoxa dos textos kantianos, Arendt vislumbra no juízo reflexionante estético de Kant a estrutura do juízo político. Em um constante diálogo com a obra kantiana a autora se apropria de vários conceitos, tanto conceitos constantes na Crítica da faculdade do juízo, que é a obra que ela afirma conter a verdadeira filosofia política de Kant, como conceitos de outras importantes obras kantianas. No decorrer deste texto, quando entendemos que ocorre uma apropriação conceitual buscamos situar minimamente o conceito no contexto da obra kantiana para compreendermos a concepção e o gesto interpretativo de Arendt. Através da análise de seus escritos mostramos como ela compreende o modo de funcionamento da faculdade humana de julgar os eventos políticos, por meio da exposição e discussão dos principais conceitos envolvidos em sua teoria. Assim, apresentamos as condições de possibilidade do juízo representadas pelas faculdades da imaginação e do senso comum, bem como as duas perspectivas pelas quais essa faculdade se manifesta no mundo público, o juízo do ator e o juízo do espectador. Depois, analisamos a conexão entre as faculdades de pensamento e juízo para extrair as implicações éticas da faculdade humana de julgar. Estas reflexões são uma tentativa de compreender como, para Arendt, opera a faculdade de julgar; por que ela considera esta faculdade a mais política das habilidades espirituais do homem, e qual é a relevância política desta atividade do espírito. / This dissertation presents the conception of Hannah Arendt’s political judgment. Moving away from an orthodox reading of Kantian texts, Arendt glimpses in the aesthetic reflective judgment of Kant, the structure of the political judgment. In one constant dialogue with Kantian Work the author appropriates several concepts, as concepts constant in the Critique of judgment, which is the Work that she affirms that contains the true Kant’s political philosophy, as concepts of other important Kantian Works. In elapsing of this text, when we understand that a conceptual appropriation occurs, we try to situate the concept in the context of the Kantian Work to understand Arendt’s conception and the interpretation gesture. Through the analysis of her writings we show as she understands the way of functioning of the human faculty to judge the political events, by the exposition and debate of the main involved concepts in her theory. So, we present the conditions of judgment possibility represented by the faculties of the imagination and the common sense, as well as the two perspectives for which manifests this faculty in the public world, the judgment of the actor and the judgment of the spectator. After that, we analyze the connection between the faculties of thought and judgment to extract the ethical implications of the human faculty to judge. These reflections are an attempt to understand how does the faculty of judge operate for Arendt; why does she consider this faculty the most political of men’s mental abilities, and what is the politic relevance of this spirit’s activity.

Esta dissertação apresenta a concepção de juízo político de Hannah Arendt. Afastando-se de uma leitura ortodoxa dos textos kantianos, Arendt vislumbra no juízo reflexionante estético de Kant a estrutura do juízo político. Em um constante diálogo com a obra kantiana a autora se apropria de vários conceitos, tanto conceitos constantes na Crítica da faculdade do juízo, que é a obra que ela afirma conter a verdadeira filosofia política de Kant, como conceitos de outras importantes obras kantianas. No decorrer deste texto, quando entendemos que ocorre uma apropriação conceitual buscamos situar minimamente o conceito no contexto da obra kantiana para compreendermos a concepção e o gesto interpretativo de Arendt. Através da análise de seus escritos mostramos como ela compreende o modo de funcionamento da faculdade humana de julgar os eventos políticos, por meio da exposição e discussão dos principais conceitos envolvidos em sua teoria. Assim, apresentamos as condições de possibilidade do juízo representadas pelas faculdades da imaginação e do senso comum, bem como as duas perspectivas pelas quais essa faculdade se manifesta no mundo público, o juízo do ator e o juízo do espectador. Depois, analisamos a conexão entre as faculdades de pensamento e juízo para extrair as implicações éticas da faculdade humana de julgar. Estas reflexões são uma tentativa de compreender como, para Arendt, opera a faculdade de julgar; por que ela considera esta faculdade a mais política das habilidades espirituais do homem, e qual é a relevância política desta atividade do espírito. / This dissertation presents the conception of Hannah Arendt’s political judgment. Moving away from an orthodox reading of Kantian texts, Arendt glimpses in the aesthetic reflective judgment of Kant, the structure of the political judgment. In one constant dialogue with Kantian Work the author appropriates several concepts, as concepts constant in the Critique of judgment, which is the Work that she affirms that contains the true Kant’s political philosophy, as concepts of other important Kantian Works. In elapsing of this text, when we understand that a conceptual appropriation occurs, we try to situate the concept in the context of the Kantian Work to understand Arendt’s conception and the interpretation gesture. Through the analysis of her writings we show as she understands the way of functioning of the human faculty to judge the political events, by the exposition and debate of the main involved concepts in her theory. So, we present the conditions of judgment possibility represented by the faculties of the imagination and the common sense, as well as the two perspectives for which manifests this faculty in the public world, the judgment of the actor and the judgment of the spectator. After that, we analyze the connection between the faculties of thought and judgment to extract the ethical implications of the human faculty to judge. These reflections are an attempt to understand how does the faculty of judge operate for Arendt; why does she consider this faculty the most political of men’s mental abilities, and what is the politic relevance of this spirit’s activity.