Opinion as Political World-Relation: dokei moi
摘要
The chapter analyzes how Arendt’s insight into the nature of opinion allows her to shed implicit remnants of a metaphysical conception of truth as binary—that is, of truths as absolute, not allowing for multiple opinions. The chapter explores how Arendt recognizes that doxai express the immediate way in which the world appears to the viewer. Yet, in contrast to the Platonic-Cartesian tradition, she underscores how the world of appearance is the common world we live in. Trying to go beyond this appearance creates the metaphysical bias that has disqualified opinion in Western tradition. The chapter then discusses how Arendt turns to Kant’s notion of reflective judgment to make sense of the mutual intelligibility of opinions. This leads her to the insight that common sense and mutual exchanges of opinion play a fundamental role in political judgment.