摘要：Recent studies of an empirical nature have demonstrated the important role that empathetic affections are called upon to play in the moral fi eld, primarily in the orbit of the so-called ‘moral judgments.’ Defi ned as “an affective response more appropriate to someone else’s situation than to one’s own situation” (Hoffman), what empathy develops in human beings is an imaginative ability to put ourselves in other person’s shoes by taking into account those unnoticed aspects of their lives that could be very relevant when judging their actions, attitudes or traits of character from an impartial point of view. In her Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, Hannah Arendt, aware of the incredible potential enclosed in the imaginative and refl ective abilities such as were explored in The Critique of Judgement, that is, as issues that demanded a purely aesthetic concern, made an attempt to re-appropriate the meaning of these notions by situating them in the practical (both political and moral) territory. However, unlike those empirical studies that in recent years came to rescue refl exivity and imagination, H. Arendt rejected empathy. Therefore, my main focus in this paper will be to explore the reasons that might have led her to this rejection, a task that I will not carry out without critically rebuilding her thought in such a manner that all the theoretical as well as the epistemological prejudices she had fi nally become visible. At the same time, I will try to show how a different perspective must have been, even for her, perfectly available.
