WORLDLINESS AND RESPECT FOR NATURE - AN ECOLOGICAL APPLICATION OF ARENDT,HANNAH CONCEPTION OF CULTURE

Arendt's conception of culture could supersede claims that nature's in trinsic value or human interests best ground environmental ethics. Fus ing ancient Greek notions of non-instrumental value and Roman concerns for cultivating and preserving worldly surroundings, culture supplies an ethic for the treatment of nonhuman things. Unlike a system of phi losophical propositions, an Arendtian ecology could only arise in publ ic deliberation, since culture's qualitative judgements are intrinsica lly linked to processes of political persuasion.