Arendt after Marx: Rethinking the Dualism of Nature and World

Abstract

Hannah Arendt is rarely regarded as sympathetic to the ecological movement, an observation seemingly borne out by her critique of Marx's “naturalism” and by her apparently rigid and elitist distinction between nature and world. Here I challenge this reading, showing that Marx and Arendt had more in common than the latter presumed and that this commonality extends to a nonproductivist appreciation of nature, including the practices of labor and consumption that reproduce human life. Focusing on Arendt's theory of “worldliness” and her writings on the concept of culture, I note the importance Arendt attached to “taste,” which both judges and cares for the world, and how this cultured attitude originated in the careful tending of nature by the Romans. I argue for a more “conservationist” reading of Arendt, who theorized political action as a moderating dialogue between actors which brings to light the world of nature and artifice as a common concern.