From Animal Laborans to Animal Agora: Hannah Arendt and the Political Turn in Animal Ethics

Cris van der Hoek, in her chapter, “From Animal Laborans to Animal Agora: Hannah Arendt and the Political Turn in Animal Ethics,” goes into how Arendt’s political-philosophical thinking can be a source of inspiration for the so-called “political turn” in animal ethics that is advocated by many animal activists and eco-philosophers. At first sight, such inspiration is not at all evident. In Arendt’s The Human Condition, the animal is only addressed in relation to the (biological) activity of (reproductive) labor. Political action is the sole preserve of human beings, as the ability to act is explicitly related to plurality and the public sphere, in which humans appear to each other and disclose themselves in word and deed. In Arendt’s later work, however, plurality is no longer merely conceived as a human condition. Rather, as Arendt writes, it constitutes the law of the earth itself. Reading Arendt’s thinking alongside the work of Donna Haraway and Sue Donaldson, it could be deployed to enrich and deepen our thoughts concerning both the encounter between human and non-human animals and the appearance of animals in the public space.