Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2015
Cognitive representations play a fundamental role in governing the relationship existing between the natural world and the human world. It is important, therefore, to analyse some ideas which, in our culture, condition in a non ecological way the relationship which have with the natural world. This is the premise for the development of an ecological education.
In this perspective, the thought of Hannah Arendt revealed itself as fundamental. An interpretation of the arguments developed in her fundamental works (Arendt, 1987; 1989) permit the tracing of the genesis of some mental attitudes which have contributed to the development of a culture indifferent to the environment in which we live and, further, permit new categories of thought from which to begin to reform environmental education.