The Experiential Position of Political Theory

Abstract

According to Arendt, the mental activity of political theorizing on the one hand resembles the worldly practical logic of political experience as examined in the previous chapter. On the other hand, it at the same time is characterized by a gradual epistemological deviation and emancipation from the limited horizons of practical political understanding. This is realized by a practice of critical understanding which oscillates between genuinely political and genuinely philosophical experiences and which locates itself in a distinctly comparative and multi-contextual frame of reference. This account of a wandering type of theory has important implications for Arendt’s relation toward modernity, for her method of interpretation and conceptual construction and for the language of her political theory.