Hannah Arendt designs her political philosophy against the background of a totalitarian society in which both independent thinking and the common space of reference for political action have been systematically disintegrated. This centers around the existential basic conditions of spontaneity, natality and plurality. The power of judgment is developed as a decidedly political ability, because whoever judges must learn to think and weigh independently, but must also remain oriented towards the public, take other points of view and views into account in order to understand the world and actively shape it.