Towards an Arendtian Conception of Justice

This article argues that Arendt’s rich account of the political necessarily involves an implicit, but never fully worked out, phenomenological articulation of justice in her work. Arendt’s unique articulation of the role of judgment in political action provides us with the outline of an Arendtian principle of justice that relieves the tension between idealist and realist theories of justice. Building on this role of judgment, I aim to emphasize the phenomenological premise of identifying the conditions for the possibility of the political in empirico-historical events rooted in her ideas of plurality and freedom. By showing that, for Arendt, justice is a phenomenon like power and equality, we can make progress on an implicit account of justice in her work. Taking seriously Arendt’s articulation of freedom-manifesting and principled political action, I will show that a principle of justice guides political action based on political judgment that is affectively oriented to the world.