Abstract

Understandings of rationality are partly constitutive of important political notions like citizenship. Narrow, instrumentalist understandings of rationality conflict with older understandings of citizenship and civic virtue, and have been widely criticized for lending support and credence to a largely bureaucratic or technocratic politics, including a rather weak and devalued notion of citizenship. But critics of this understanding of rationality, whether "foundationalists" or "anti-foundationalists," have thus far been unable to offer a fully satisfactory alternative, and in some cases have turned away from political and public manifestations of reason entirely. Aristotle's concept of phronesis provides a much closer approximation to a conception of rationality faithful to the special conditions and features of politics, but falls short because it is based in part on Aristotle's teleological metaphysics, Logos-centered cosmology, and substantive conception of human well-being. Properly understood, Hannah Arendt's theory of action and concept of "world" provide better "foundations" for political rationality. Arendt's unfinished theory of political judgment, based on Kantian aesthetics, needs to be reinterpreted in light of this earlier, more expressly political work. Aristotle and Arendt help us to focus our attention on the unique characteristics of political rationality, and thereby can both enrich our understanding of citizenship and inform the dialogues and strategies necessary for making our political institutions and processes more civil, humane, and just