Limits of the broad-minded? an interpretation of Arendt’s lectures on Kant's political philosophy

Abstract

In this paper I reconstruct the reflections of Hannah Arendt in her Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy. I’ll put the focus of attention specifically in the conception of broad-minded and how this conception relates to other ideas that Arendt recovered from the Critique of Judgment and end up merging with her philosophical proposal. At this point a problem arises that it is necessary to note. It is a contradiction produced in her Lectures between the Kantian idea of broad-minded and the exhortation of the author to actively choose our companies –both in politics, philosophy, art and our lives in general–. In the article I'll risk a hypothesis that would dissolve the contradiction: that while it is necessary, at critical moments, to have some kind of criteria on what perspective should be taken into account under an open mind –for example, the ability to judge–, when the time changes these criteria should be reviewed. Otherwise, we run the risk of restricting the Kantian idea of broad-minded to our preferences.