ABSTRACT

Hannah Arendt focuses on the problem of judgment from a practical and philosophical point of view throughout her work. She distinguishes between the judgment of the spectator, who tends to take a historical view, and that of the actor, who has to take decisions in the midst of events. Her description of the methods of the reasonable statesperson is one that is relevant to everyone making a judgment about what action to take. As she says in the interview with Gnter Gaus, the difference between the statesman and the man in the street is in principle not very great. Arendts reason for thinking that conscience is only important in extreme situations is that normally it is enough for people to adhere to the common morality or mores of the day (RJ, 104). Only when these mores become perverted, as they were under Stalin and even more under Hitler, is conscience crucial.