Comportment, not cognition: Contributions to a phenomenology of judgment

Current theoretical account of judgment has a difficult time saying anything positive about the experience of judging and, when they do offer positive accounts, they seem to overlook much that we know about the capacity already in our daily lives. Following the work of Martin Heidegger and Hubert Dreyfus, this article provides a phenomenological consideration of the structure of judging that considers judgment not as an intellectual act, but as a comportment. The article proceeds in two parts. The first offers a brief consideration of the assumptions of intellectualist accounts and shows why, ultimately, they may be unable to bring judging into focus. The second section offers a phenomenological account of judging. The argument of section two is that deliberate judgment (the subject of intellectualist accounts) is a continuation of the structure of judgment understood as comportment and, in turn, that intellectualist accounts come onto the scene too late. Contemporary Political Theory (2011) 10, 232-254. doi:10.1057/cpt.2010.20