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Earth and World 3 PLURALITY AS THE LAW OF THE EARTH Arendt Human beings in the true sense of the term can exist only where there is a world, and there can be a world in the true sense of the term only where the plurality of the human race is more than a simple multiplication of a single species. —HANNAH ARENDT, THE PROMISE OF POLITICS ike Kant’s doctrine of right, which is circumscribed by the spherical shape of the earth, Arendt’s notion of politics is similarly based on “the limited space for the Lmovement of men” determined by the surface of the earth (Arendt 1958a, 52). As we have seen in our analysis of Kant, however, the earth remains in excess of Kant’s doctrine of right insofar as it is based on private property. The earth cannot be contained within his theory of property. Indeed, the earth with all of its inhabitants exceeds his notion of the right to hospitality and his limited cosmopolitanism as guarantees for peace, or, more accurately, we might say Kant’s extraterrestrial relation to the earth makes his cosmopolitanism itself exceed the boundaries that he tries to set for it insofar as ultimately it requires that all rational beings, be they human or not, earthlings or not, throughout all of time and all of space, be united in a general will. Whereas Kant imagines a distant future in which the human species will have evolved into a peaceful race of citizens of the world, Arendt, respects the need for international law, even while she abhors cosmopolitanism, which she imagines as a nightmarish tyranny of one government over the “whole earth” (Arendt 1968a, 81). Like Kant, Arendt is more comfortable with a federation of nation-states than a world government. Furthermore, she warns against thinking of human beings as a species when talking about politics. Although, unlike Kant, Arendt makes the earth a central theme in her writings, the figure of the earth, and the work that it does in her philosophy, exceeds and outstrips the limitations of her political theory. Taking up the related themes of earth and world, home and statelessness, and witnessing and imagination helps to develop an ethics of earth conservation through analyzing, extending, and sometimes deconstructing those pairs in Arendt’s political philosophy. Analyzing Arendt’s comments about war and world, we can extend Arendt’s insistence on cohabitation and sharing the earth as the ground of politics into the sphere of ethics by putting pressure on her distinction between just war and total war. Finally, expanding Arendt’s notion of amor mundi, ultimately politics must be grounded not only on love of world, but also on love of earth, through which Arendt’s care for the world is extended to the Earth and all of its inhabitants. For, even if we do not share a world with others radically different from ourselves, we do share the earth. Arendt’s notion of plurality comes up against its limit when we consider the “right” to cohabit the earth. Our coexistence on earth is prior to Arendt’s “right to have rights.” Whatever the problems with Arendt’s theory of rights, taken to its limits, her insistence on plurality as “the law of the earth” entails embracing not only individual and cultural differences but also species difference and biodiversity. Moreover, the question of where to draw the line in terms of what constitutes plurality or a world becomes the sore spot in Arendt’s endorsement of just war. Engaging with Arendt’s arguments against what she calls “total war,” or genocide, as we did with Kant’s theory of property, pushes her theory to its limits by questioning what counts as plurality or “a people.” Whereas Kant’s justification for private property ultimately necessitates implicit acceptance by a general will that unites all rational beings not only on earth but also across the universe and time and space, which taken to its limit makes any justification for private property untenable, Arendt’s justification for war between nation-states ultimately rests on the destruction of any human being as the annihilation of a world, and perhaps even of “a people,” such that any justification for war becomes untenable. In other words, just as, once we follow Kant’s expanding universe, any defense of private property becomes questionable, once we follow Arendt’s shrinking world from “a people,” to a nation-state, to a family or perhaps a couple, to that singular newborn conjured by natality, any justification for killing even one human being becomes questionable. And, if we extend her notion of cohabitation and plurality to other species, then killing even one living being destroys not only a world but also the possibility of the world. For, “total war” is what Arendt calls a “mortal sin” precisely because it not only destroys a world but also threatens to destroy the very structure of world. Several scholars have used Arendt’s theories, particularly those of earth and world, along with their alienation, to discuss environmental ethics.1 This chapter takes another turn toward the role of Earth as both a limit concept and a concept of limit that has the potential not only to transform our thinking about political responsibility but also to ground politics in an ethical obligation conceptually, if not chronologically, prior to the possibility of politics. Arendt’s philosophy is essentially about limits and borders.2 It is about the borders between concepts, and it is about the limitations— even dangers—of importing a concept from one realm of life into another realm. It is about maintaining borders between nations and the dangers of abolishing nation- states, while, at the same time, it is about limiting state sovereignty and abolishing nationalism. It is about human freedom as necessarily a limited freedom.3 And, it is about protecting our private lives within the four walls of a home where we are safe. For Arendt, limits and borders provide protection from dangers on all sides. And protection is a central concern in her thinking, understandably, perhaps, given that she fled for her life first from Nazi Germany and then from Nazi-occupied France.4 PLURALITY OF WORLDS AS THE LAW OF THE EARTH Arendt opens The Human Condition with a description of the earth as “the very quintessence of the human condition” since it is most probably the only planet where we can “move and breathe without effort and artifice” (Arendt 1958a, 2). She defines the world, as opposed to the earth, as human artifice or what she calls our “man- made home erected on earth” (1958a, 134). In between earth and world, she introduces a third term, nature, which is associated with organic life “outside this artificial world,” and through which “man remains related to all other living organisms” (1958a, 2). Although the earth provides the raw materials with which man builds his home, and nature supports life, both are indifferent to the plight of humans. Only our created world shields us from this indifference and protects us from the many dangers inherent in life on earth. And for Arendt, protection, security, and safety are the building blocks of home, which come through a sense of belonging. The earth itself, then, is not our home until we make it home; before then (if we can imagine a time before the world, which would be a time when we were animals and not yet human) while we lived on the earth, it was not home. And although this is where we belong in the sense that our bodies cannot live any place else, in Arendt’s account, as animals, we do not yet have the sense of belonging inherent in feeling at home. Belonging, it seems, is a property of the world and not of the earth.5 And world is distinctive of humankind. In the end, Arendt’s sharp distinction between earth and world, particularly in terms of the association between earth and animal or body and world and human or mind, is problematic. In an important sense, for Arendt, we do not share the earth, but only the world. Again, as animals on the earth, we share the planet with other species, but for Arendt, like Heidegger, animals are never properly mit-sein, and therefore sharing, properly speaking, is reserved for the human world, which by its nature is necessarily shared (e.g., Arendt 1958a, 176). Whereas in relation to the earth, homo sapiens are an animal species living among other animal species, in relation to the world we are human beings relating in meaningful ways to other human subjects. The world is always plural and shared; there is no private world in isolation. Arendt says, “No human life, not even the life of the hermit in nature’s wilderness, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings. All human activities are conditioned by the fact that men live together” (1958a, 22). As an animal species, however, what she calls animal laborans, we are “worldless and herdlike” and therefore “incapable of building or inhabiting a public, worldly realm” (1958a, 160, my emphasis). As an animal species we live on the earth, and only as human beings do we inhabit a world. The world is what makes the earth a home for human beings. In other words, our life on earth—if we can imagine life apart from world—may be necessary for sheer survival, but only when we create a world is it a meaningful life. The world, says Arendt, “is what we have in common not only with those who live with us, but also with those who were here before and with those who will come after us” (1958a, 55).
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