Towards a Political Foundation: Imagination and Sensus Communis in Hannah Arendt’s Reading of Kant

In her engagement with Immanuel Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment, Hannah Arendt discerned more than an aesthetics of beauty. She read the work through a distinct lens, uncovering the political dimensions latent in Kant’s reflections. Concepts such as imagination, the faculty of judgment, amor mundi (love of the world), communication, and sensus communis (the shared sense of community) were reinterpreted by Arendt in ways that opened new vistas for political thought. From this re-reading, Arendt developed ideas that later became both influential and essential to political thought: thoughtlessness (Gedankenlosigkeit), the “banality of evil”, the tension between truth and falsehood, and the principle of solidarity.

It is this intricate intellectual constellation that Dr. Fitzerald K. Sitorus will explore in his lecture, situating Arendt’s political insights in dialogue with Kant’s critical philosophy. The event forms part of the ongoing commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of Arendt’s death, organized by the Goethe-Institut Indonesien in collaboration with STF Driyarkara. The session will be moderated by Maulida Sri Handayani, researcher and philosophy lecturer.

For Arendt, political philosophy was never a matter of abstract theorizing or metaphysical speculation. Rather, it was concerned with the human condition as such: with our capacity to act and speak together in the world. She warned of the dangers of totalitarianism, of the corrosive power of falsehood in politics, and of the ever-present temptation to reduce politics to domination. Against this, she insisted on the public realm as a space of appearance, where citizens deliberate, dispute, and act in common. In her view, power does not reside in rulers but emerges whenever people come together, articulate the concerns of the world, and shape collective decisions through dialogue.

In the light of today’s political climate—marked by corruption, the manipulation of power, fake news, fragile democratic institutions, political spin, the post-truth condition, social polarization, and widespread thoughtlessness—Arendt’s reflections on a “pure concept of the political” acquire renewed urgency. They remind us that politics, at its core, is not the struggle for power but the practice of freedom in concert with others. Arendt thereby offers a striking optimism: that even amidst crisis, the new can emerge in and through political action itself.