The Structure of Political Community

Like other political philosophers, Arendt makes the obvious point that a political community needs a distinct territory of its own, but on novel grounds. She argues that just as most political philosophers explained the origin and continuance of the state in ‘materialistic’ terms, they maintained that it needs a territory in order to enable its members to secure their basic material needs. In Arendt’s view, such a naturalistic account ignores the political and ontological significance of territory and is unsatisfactory for several reasons.