ABSTRACT
An alternative reading of the enlarged mentality that does place emphasis on a world in common will still fail to enlighten the politics of present-day issues to the extent that it remains faithful to certain anti-modern tendencies in Hannah Arendt's thought. A postphenomenological understanding of science and technology can counter Arendt's vision of modern science as a moment of world-alienation with one of science as the means through which natural phenomena can be brought to human attention. Arendt's most sustained consideration of judgement took place in the context of an investigation into the vita contemplativa, leading interpreters of Arendtian judgement to concern themselves more with the importance of a common world of words and deeds than with material objects. Arendt's thesis of 'world-alienation' and her emphasis on the relating and separating power of the world is essential to a revision of the manner in which enlarged thought has been adopted in subsequent political theory.
