POL 380 - Earth, Nature, World

Hannah Arendt called earth “the quintessence of the human condition” and a “free gift from nowhere.” With the invention of the atom bomb the launch of Sputnik, she worried about the fate of the world amidst accelerating earth alienation. This course takes up those fears (and looks for hope) in relation to contemporary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource depletion. We begin with conceptions of nature in Aristotle, Bacon, Vico, and Spinoza. We then turn to contemporary debates about the relationship between humans and nature, organized around the concepts of representation and justice. Finally, we consider how the concepts of the Anthropocene and technosphere are reconfiguring our understanding of Earth, and the “world picture” coming into view through the lens of Earth Systems Science, climate modeling, and astrobiology. We will read essays from Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt alongside literature from the “planetary turn” in the humanities and social sciences. Political theory has been called a “mongrel discipline” and the same can be said of Environmental Humanities. So we will keep in mind methodological and substantive questions about the relationship of the humanities to the natural and social sciences.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
Prerequisite(s): Sophomore standing
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.