Abstract
An important branch of environmental theory frames the climate crisis as a moral problem in need of a moral solution: human hubris is responsible for environmental degradation and must be atoned for through humility. Politically indeterminate, however, such argumentation is vulnerable to de-politicizing and mal-politicizing capture. In an effort to fend off the threat of either, this paper turns to the history of political thought and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who theorized the environment as both a moral and a political domain. I examine how Rousseau understood the availability of republican self-rule to be contingent both on the natural environment and on the relationship we construct with it such that freedom, in his words, is not automatically ‘a fruit of every Clime.’ This is the case, he suggests, because of the environment’s intersection with political economy and political culture. At the same time, Rousseau contends, republican self-rule is also a moral practice; republican polities afford citizens a public means of achieving and exercising moral agency. Triangulating the relationship between polity, morality, and environment, Rousseau’s thought offers an integrative logic through which to imbue the environment with both moral and political salience, thereby circumventing the dangers of mere moralization alone.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Mandi Astola, Andrew Brandel, Lisa Ellis, Daragh Grant, Sarah Johnson, David Lebow, Ned Lebow, Patchen Markell, John Meyer, Elaine Moe, Andrew Scerri, Andrew Schaap, Don Tontiplaphol, Zev Trachtenberg, and three anonymous reviewers. I would also like to thank participants from the Rousseau Association Virtual Conversation Series and the University of Amsterdam and Open University of the Netherlands History of Legal and Political Thought Workshop. Thanks also to the APSA Centennial Center for grant support on this project.
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Ploof, R.A. ‘A fruit of every clime’? Rousseau’s environmental politics. Contemp Polit Theory 22, 307–329 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-022-00610-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-022-00610-4