Consuming the World: Hannah Arendt on Politics and the Environment

Abstract

What can Hannah Arendt's writings offer to current thinking on the environment? Although there are some obvious connections between her work and current issues in environmental ethics, not very much has been written on the topic. This article argues that Arendt's philosophy is particularly fruitful for environmental thinking because she explicitly links the material and biological conditions of human existence with the political conditions of human freedom. This is articulated in the article as the requirement of both constrained consumption and unconstrained deliberation. The article elaborates these notions before concluding that Arendt's philosophy uniquely combines the existential task of self-understanding with the practical task of confronting our environmental challenges.