Civic Care

This paper develops an Arendtian-inspired notion of “civic care” that offers an alternative normative account of what should bring citizens together politically. Unlike consensual approaches, “civic care” stresses that a proper political bond should be able to get citizens to collaborate to solve collective action problems, but without marginalizing the conflictive character of politics. At the same time, “civic care” differs from accounts of the political bond that rely on appeals to patriotism, compassion, or love of a “people.” By building on Arendt’s notions of amor mundi and “civic friendship,” this paper argues that “civic care” does not involve any direct or natural connection to fellow citizens. Instead, it entails a worldly type of bond. Likewise, it argues that addressing the question of how we can be bonded across our political differences is crucial in our polarized times because modern democracies face what Arendt understood as the greatest threat: “worldlessness.” In the last section, the paper addresses the motivational challenge regarding how citizens can be brought to show “civic care.” It argues that the task of reconstituting agonistic polities requires taking into consideration the interdependencies in our behaviors, and specifically, the sources of motivation related to our social nature.