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Rethinking Political Judgement 55994411__MMrroovvlljjee..iinndddd ii 1144//1111//1188 55::2277 PPMM 55994411__MMrroovvlljjee..iinndddd iiii 1144//1111//1188 55::2277 PPMM Rethinking Political Judgement Arendt and Existentialism Maša Mrovlje 55994411__MMrroovvlljjee..iinndddd iiiiii 1144//1111//1188 55::2277 PPMM Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © Maša Mrovlje, 2019 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 11/13 Adobe Sabon by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and printed and bound in Great Britain. A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 2999 3 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 3715 8 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 3716 5 (epub) The right of Maša Mrovlje to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). 55994411__MMrroovvlljjee..iinndddd iivv 1144//1111//1188 55::2277 PPMM Contents Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 1. Political Judgement in the History of Political Thought and the Modern Crisis 22 2. Sartre and Beauvoir: The Ambiguity of Political Judgement and the Challenge of Freedom and Responsibility 51 3. Camus and Arendt: Confronting the Ambiguity of Political Judgement and Illuminating the Limits of the World 81 4. Political Judgement and Narrativity 115 5. Facing Up to the Tragedy of Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands 146 6. Times of Transition: Reconciling with the Tragic Nature of Political Affairs 183 Conclusion: Reclaiming Wonder at the World of Political Affairs 218 Bibliography 226 Index 256 55994411__MMrroovvlljjee..iinndddd vv 1144//1111//1188 55::2277 PPMM Acknowledgements This book began its journey as a PhD research project at the Uni- versity of St Andrews. My doctoral study would not have been possible without the support of the St Andrews’ School of Interna- tional Relations and the Slovene Human Resources Development and Scholarship Fund. I am highly indebted to my colleagues on the International Political Theory programme for their scholarly dedication, their intellectual openness and generosity of spirit. My greatest thanks go to Patrick Hayden, whose illuminating way of thinking and love for the thinkers addressed in this book has had a formative infl uence and continues to inspire. For the opportunity to study with him, for his invaluable guidance, and his persistent care and encouragement, I am forever grateful. I also thank Gabriella Slomp, Anthony Lang and Robert Fine for their attentive reading, important insights and supportive words at different stages of the project. The thesis matured into book form during my postdoctoral research on the Greyzone project at the University of Edinburgh. I consider myself extremely fortunate to be able to work with Mihaela Mihai, whose creativity and warmth have been an inex- tinguishable source of engaging new ideas and contributed signifi - cantly to building my confi dence as a scholar. For her thoughtful comments and good counsel, for her care and support through- out the revision process, I cannot thank her enough. To her, too, I owe my eternal gratitude. The colleagues at the School of Social and Political Science have provided a vibrant and welcoming intellectual environment, good companionship and many stimulating conversations, for which I cordially thank them. The book was completed with the support of the European Commission, ERC Starting Grant 637709-GREYZONE. vi 55994411__MMrroovvlljjee..iinndddd vvii 1144//1111//1188 55::2277 PPMM Acknowledgements Jenny Daly, David Lonergan and Camilla Rockwood at Edin- burgh University Press were exemplars of fi ne editorship and pro- fessionalism. I am most grateful as well to the four anonymous reviewers for their careful consideration and valuable suggestions for improvement. My very special thanks go to Gisli Vogler for generously reading the whole manuscript and for his discerning comments. His love and steadfast support, his comfort and good humour sustained me when it mattered most. Many friends have been there for me, offering their understanding, consolation and advice. For their friendship I am especially grateful to Ana, Nina, Polona and my cousin Luka – it has been one of their gifts to be able to turn the smaller or bigger tragedies of life into occasions for trust and laughter. Finally, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my parents and my late grandmothers whose unconditional love, affection and support elude proper expression in words. They have been my shelter into which to retreat and an example from which to begin. Nothing would matter without them. To them, I dedicate this book. Parts of Chapter 3 were previously published in ‘Narrating and Understanding’, in Patrick Hayden (ed.), Hannah Arendt: Key Concepts, London and New York: Routledge (2014), pp. 66–84. Segments of Chapter 4 appear in ‘Beyond Nussbaum’s Ethics of Reading: Camus, Arendt, and the Political Signifi cance of Narrative Imagination’, The European Legacy 24:2 (2019); published online: 8 November 2018, DOI: 10.1080/10848770.2018.1540514. I thank the publishers for their permission to reproduce this material. vii 55994411__MMrroovvlljjee..iinndddd vviiii 1144//1111//1188 55::2277 PPMM 55994411__MMrroovvlljjee..iinndddd vviiiiii 1144//1111//1188 55::2277 PPMM Introduction The [modern] loss of standards [. . .] is a catastrophe in the moral world only if one assumes that people are actually incapable of judg- ing things per se, that their faculty of judgement is inadequate for making original judgements, and that the most we can demand of it is the correct application of familiar rules derived from already estab- lished standards. Hannah Arendt, The Promise of Politics How are we to reinvigorate the human capacity for political judgement as a practical activity capable of confronting the plural and ambiguous character of our postfoundational world? In the face of pervasive injustice and suffering that continuously con- found our moral expectations, it is easy to feel overwhelmed and seek solace in despair. More often than not, our judgements and actions seem obliterated under the weight of larger forces and pro- cesses, to the point of making the most steadfast pursuit of moral ideals end in disaster. Even though increasingly interconnected across temporal and spatial boundaries, we hit upon walls of dif- ference, ideological division and hatred. These quandaries fore- ground political judgement as a topic of fundamental existential import, pertaining to the meaning of our lives and our relation- ship to the world and others. While political judgement has of late assumed increasing prominence in political theory, the questions of its concrete, human reality and signifi cance remain obscured under the preoccupation with proper standards or grounds. It is now more than fi fty years since another generation of thinkers awarded these questions the status of utmost philosophical rel- evance. Responding to their own horizon of betrayed hopes for universal human emancipation, twentieth-century philosophies of existence approached the dilemmas of political judgement as they 1 55994411__MMrroovvlljjee..iinndddd 11 1144//1111//1188 55::2277 PPMM