What did Hanna Arendt mean by world?

ChatGPT said:

For Hannah Arendt, the world isn’t just the physical earth or human civilization—it’s the shared space of human affairs, the web of relationships, institutions, and cultural artifacts that make lasting human life possible. It’s the space between people, where action, speech, and meaning unfold.

She distinguishes the world from both nature (the biological, transient cycle of life and death) and society (the private and economic realm of necessity). The world is what humans build—through work, institutions, art, and political engagement. It’s where people appear to one another as distinct individuals, engaging in action (politics) and speech (discourse) that shape a common reality.

Crucially, the world is not eternal; it must be maintained. Totalitarianism, consumerism, and other forces threaten to erode it, either by collapsing plurality (turning individuals into isolated masses) or by reducing everything to bare survival. When the world disintegrates, all that remains is people caught in the flow of necessity, unable to appear, act, or create something lasting.

So when Arendt talks about worldlessness, she’s talking about a state where people are deprived of a common space to think, speak, and act—where the political realm has been reduced to either brute force or passive consumption.