When Great Ancestors Make Good Neighbors: An Arendtian Evaluation of Green Civic Republicanism.

ABSTRACT: This paper looks at the concept of green civic republicanism and proceeds to discuss four key elements of republican thought - concern for the common good, virtue, participation, and the aesthetic imagination of community - and how they may be read with ecological considerations in mind. Accordingly, green civic republicanism can provide critical resources to help us picture one way in which ecological communities may be possible. It then examines an Arendtian contribution to this conversation by first outlining her theory of political action and shows how it allows us to critique green republicanism. I argue that the Arendtian account of political freedom is wise counsel to a green civic republican version of ecological responsibility because she moves it in the direction of democratic freedom. People are more willing to accept the tectonic social shifts required by the move to ecological responsibility - gentler lifestyles, more benign technologies, a re-thinking of economic development - if decisions are made from a condition of freedom they help to manifest. However, tough questions remain about the value of Arendtian and republican distinctions between "public" and "private" from a green point of view, as well as whether the republican approach and its Arendtian variant can adequately to cope with the global nature of many ecological problems. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]