Jason Frederick Lambacher’s work featured in The New Republic

IAS faculty member Jason Frederick Lambacher’s work on Hannah Arendt and green civic republicanism was featured in Win McCormack’s April 2019 Res Publica editorial in The New Republic, “How Green Was My Virtue?” Lambacher uses Arendt, and other civic republicans such as Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Madison, to explore civic republican ideas of public goods, agonistic dialogue, and political freedom as they apply to environmental issues such as species loss and climate change.

Generally speaking, the civic republican tradition links individual freedom with civic participation that promotes the common good. On this view, green civic republicanism stresses our interconnections as a community and our deep relations to other lifeforms and ecosystems. A focus on the common good is a powerful antidote at the moment to the individualizing pressures of consumer capitalism and the liberal institutions that prevent meaningful environmental action, entrench inequality, and discourage political engagement. Win McCormack picks up on these themes as he argues for clamorous political participation and Arendtian-style dialogue centered on green civic republican ideals.