Arendt y el valor político de los ejemplos literarios: el caso de Billy Budd, Sailor

Elisa Goyenechea

doi:10.3989/isegoria.2025.72.1562

Authors

Elisa Goyenechea Universidad Católica Argentina https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0219-8957

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3989/isegoria.2025.72.1562

Keywords:

Arendt, Kant, Billy Budd, Example, Judgment

Abstract

The article examines Arendt's use of aesthetic judgment based on her consideration, ten years before her Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, of the exemplary nature of certain literary characters such as Billy Budd, protagonist of Herman Melville's novel of the same name. In this paper, we expose Arendt's displacement of aesthetic judgment into the political realm and suggest that Billy Budd's exemplary validity goes beyond her position on the place of compassion in politics and evidences the irresolvable tension of nature and human artifice. Finally, we explore the extent to which William Spanos's exegesis of Billy Budd, Sailor in The Exceptionalist State and the State of Exception contributes to clarifying Melville's and Arendt's positions in relation to exceptionalism, as well as the scope of political judgment.

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