Abstract

There are several senses of the "fall of judgment" which this dissertation investigates. The first is the downfall of judgment. Judgment, which is central to epistemology, ethics, and politics, has been traditionally understood as the subsumption of a particular under a universal. Universals, especially in the guise of what Jean-Francois Lyotard calls "over-arching metanarratives," have come under radical suspicion in postmodernity. This dissertation traces the "fall of judgment," emblematic of postmodernity, to the thematization of reflective judgment in Kant's Third Critique. ;A second sense of the "fall of judgment" construes "fall" in the sense of "offspring" or "litter." This dissertation investigates judgments as products or effects of the exercise of judgment, as that which is given birth to by judging. The formation and legitimation processes of judgments are conceived politically, rather than the usual conception of judgment as something that is solely "mental." ;A third sense of "fall" signifies time and place. This dissertation investigates the temporality and topography of the exercise of judgment. It asks to whom it falls to judge, and thus links the epistemological studies of Kant both to the political studies of judgment of Arendt and Ronald Beiner and to Oakeshott's conception of political education. ;It is the judgment of this dissertation that judgment is ubiquitous, that we cannot escape the effects of judgment, that who "we" are is itself a matter of judgment. Judgment requires finality, but judgment itself has the quality of non-finality: there is never an end to judgment, and final, or metaphysical, judgments are illusory. Further, all judgment is political in an originary sense. This dissertation, in fact, defines "the political" as the fall of judgment, the place where it happens that there is judgment. ;Lyotard, Rorty, and others--even the daily newspapers-- have made us acutely aware of the "tragedy" of judgment in these postmodern times. This dissertation, however, in its reconception of the centrality of judgment, points to a new "springtime" for judgment--after the fall