Unveiled Secrets: Hannah Arendt's Unheralded Cosmopolitical Perspectives

In Your Face: Lucy Benjamin's Planetary Politics

Lucy Benjamin, a fearless truth-teller with a knack for breaking down complex ideas, has penned Planetary Politics, a no-holds-barred exploration of the intimate bond between Earth's ecological Armageddon and Hannah Arendt's political thought.

This book stands out from the norm, available for all as an Open Access ebook.

Didn't Hear About This Already?You might think Planetary Politics just focuses on one particular goal. But think again, mate! In a scholarly sense, one could argue its primary objective is to shed light on amethod in Arendt's writing that's been sitting in the shadows. However, given the book's unwavering commitment to Arendt's perspective on thought as a force of action, and the fact that Arendt herself warned against the dangers of thinking isolated from the world, the true aim is to bring Arendt's wisdom into the realm of the tangible. If I had to sum up my goals for this book, I'd say its mission is to redefine the essence of political existence in the face of the climate apocalypse.

Hannah Arendt has had her fair share of being called a prophetess (see another title on our site for evidence). Her writings possess the power to break down barriers among academic disciplines and repeatedly reveal the radical impact of failing to think. Arendt was a force to be reckoned with; she was arrested by the Gestapo in '33, escaped Germany, was detained in a French prison camp, and remained stateless for 11 long years before obtaining U.S. citizenship. During that time, her thirst for activism grew - as did her suspicion of supposedly inviolable human rights. She touched on a plethora of topics, but back in 2018, there wasn't much written about combining Arendt's perspectives with the climate emergency.

And yet, as I started digging to bring Arendt's thinking into dialogue with this catastrophe, I found that she had already tackled the ethical responsibilities of earthly existence. Thus, what I quickly discovered in the early stages of this journey was that Arendt had already developed a robust understanding of the challenges we now must confront, albeit one that had been overshadowed.

What became clear to me was that Arendt's argument concerning the imagination's failure to stimulate critical reflection was made starkly evident in the era of climate chaos. In fact, it was my suspicion that the complacency defining our response to the urgency for global change had already been exposed and dissected in her work.

In Arendt's final work, The Life of the Mind, she defines the essence of political existence in light of our shared habitation on Earth, writing that "plurality is the law of the Earth." Plurality is one of Arendt's most frequently-used terms, encapsulating the inherent differences among human communities. This principle of equality through difference enables us to advocate for tolerance, understanding, and a unique notion of responsibility. However, it is also a term that derives meaning by virtue of the common ground upon which we all live and breathe: the Earth.

Arendt offers her first account of plurality in terms of human earthliness, in what is arguably her most well-read book, The Human Condition. Here she defines plurality as corresponding to the fact that humans, in their plurality rather than their singularity, "live on the Earth and inhabit the world." This shift from the givenness of life to the crafting of habitation represents the development of political organization and underscores the importance she places on the political force of action. What it also does is underscore the fact that political existence is intertwined with and shaped by its original relationship to the Earth. Taking this insight seriously means rethinking the political consequences of actions that impact the Earth, as in the necessity to mend the scars left by pollution or waste disposal. Instead, it makes clear that politics does not occur on Earth by chance; we only live political lives because we are Earthlings. If we truly embraced that reality, if we actively contemplated rivers, winds, trees, soil, and worms as the factors that determine our political lives instead of mere incidental elements of the environment, we might develop a new understanding of what it means to engage in political life.

The point of Planetary Politics isn't to divine how Arendt would have approached individual components of planetary existence as if she were some sort of divine oracle for our times. Instead, it is to pose a question: what might it mean to cultivate a meaningful politics, given that politics has always been bound to and defined by the Earth?

About the Author

Lucy Benjamin is a fierce firebrand who has been igniting minds with her insightful work. Hailing from Britain, she currently serves as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. She earned her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Royal Holloway, University of London in 2021. From 2022-2024, she was a postdoctoral fellow in philosophical architecture at the University of Melbourne, during which time she was also a visiting fellow at the Australian National University. In 2025, she was bestowed the Young Scholars Laureate by the Walter Benjamin Kolleg. Lucy's current research explores the politics of repair and the possibility of reinterpreting architectural theory through the lens of neglected feminist architectural thought. Her upcoming monograph will delve into Hannah Arendt's architectural and spatial thought.

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As Lucy Benjamin delves into the interplay between Hannah Arendt's political thought and the climate crisis, her new book, 'Planetary Politics', advocates for a lifestyle embodying sustainable living, emphasizing that education and self-development are essential tools for creating a habitable home-and-garden planet in the face of planetary Armageddon.
In her mission to bring Arendt's wisdom into the tangible and relevant, Lucy Benjamin's 'Planetary Politics' provides accessible, online education, breaking down barriers between academia and everyday life in order to inspire readers towards action.
In redefining the essence of political existence in the era of ecological Armageddon, Lucy Benjamin's 'Planetary Politics' encourages readers to cultivate a new way of thinking that integrates sustainability and education as cornerstones of a thriving, transformed home-and-garden, home planet.