“The Only Inner Compass We Have” : The Concept of Imagination in Arendt

Abstract

  This article tries to situate Arendt's discussion of imagination both in her thought on “understanding” and her thought on “judgment.” The concept of imagination in Arendt has often been discussed in relation to “judgment,” but not in relation to “understanding.” In this article, we try to find the uniqueness of Arendt!; imagination in the ways in which she connects imagination to “understanding.” Especially, we focus on her conception of imagination as an “understanding heart” or “the only inner compass we have” presented in “Understanding and Politics.” For Arendt, imagination is the faculty that makes possible “understanding,” “an unending activity by which... we come to terms with and reconcile ourselves to reality.” Imagination is indispensable for our sense of direction by which we take our bearings in the world.

  Arendt's understanding of imagination is also characterized by her view that it essentially belongs to the spectator's mind. The connection between imagination and the spectator is already found in Kant. But we could say that Arendt took it from Kant and developed it in her own political thinking. Arendt observes that the spectator is situated in an intermediate position between the actor and the philosopher. While the spectator withdraws from the direct involvement with actions in “the world of appearances,” he or she does not leave “the world of appearances.” “The spectator's standpoint” is a peculiar standpoint which paradoxically withdraws from “the world of appearances” while staying in it.

  Both in her thought on “understanding” and in her thought on “judgment,” imagination grounds itself on “the spectator's standpoint.” In the context of “understanding,” imagination enables us to take “the spectator's standpoint” from which we can see the “meaning” of the events in our world and establish contact with the reality of our world by coming to terms with it. In the context of “judgment,” imagination enables us to obtain “the spectator's standpoint” which is based on “impartiality” and “generality,” that is to say, a viewpoint from which we form judgments. In other words, imagination provides us with what Kant calls “eine erweiterte Denkungsart,” a mentality accomplished by “comparing our judgment with the possible rather than the actual judgments of others, and by putting ourselves in the place of any other man.”

  Imagination is inseparable from this spectator's position which exists between thinking and politics. This leads us to think that the significance of imagination in Arendt's thought is found in the possibility that it connects the realm of thinking and that of political reality and thus overcomes what Arendt calls “the predicament” in which “thought and reality have parted.”