Abstract

In a number of studies, Jacques Taminiaux focuses on the Aristotelian concepts of bios politikos and phronêsis, that is, the intellectual excellence in the domain of praxis. Here I would like to address in particular his insightful and textually close commentary on Hannah Arendt’s essay entitled: “The Crisis in Culture: Its Social and Political Significance,” Chapter VI of Between Past and Future. There Taminiaux insists on the joint and finely articulated roles of the Ancients—Pericles, Aristotle, and Cicero—and of Kant in the development of Arendt’s notion of judgment. At my own risk, my present task involves exploring the possibility of deepening the Arendtian rapprochements between Aristotelian phronêsis and the Kantian judgment of taste, which, among other things, is the object of Taminiaux’s analysis.