Hannah Arendt: nature–human, sacred, and stateless

Abstract

The following essay appears in two sections, the first arguing that Hannah Arendt's work-understood in the context of Martin Heidegger's interrogation of western metaphysical traditions-follows Heidegger in describing the history of hwnanism and its supporting metaphysical philosophies as an accumulation of a world of appearances, a "world view," that only appears to be natural. "Nature" signifies a link between Arendt's and Heidegger's texts. Human ways of knowing have taken nature's gifts out of their "natural" surroundings, and habitual uses of the word "nature" have, historically, supported domination of nature on the part of humankind, in the name of research. Nature is humankind's way of representing to itself the whole world.1