Nation‐states in a Prisoner's Dilemma with climate change: Applying Edith Stein's theory of the state

Abstract

To get a better picture of the relation between nationalism and global environmental problems within the state‐dominated situation, I present the inherent logic of international environmental politics as a version of the famous Prisoner's Dilemma. I argue that the same contingent bonds that relate the members of nations to their respective nation‐states are part of the contemporary difficulty of actually working together for the common good on the international level by creating exclusive feelings of solidarity—the ‘Prisoners’ of the Dilemma. To reveal the experiential background of nation‐states in this situation, I rephrase and apply Edith Stein's theory of the state as a collective entity. Stein was an inter‐war political philosopher who is now mainly read within religious studies and philosophy of mind. As my argument implies, her work also has relevance for further affect nationalism studies.