The concept of risk has been increasingly used in the understanding of the relationship between health and environment. A recent review of its use¹ showed that risk belongs to the human condition and that excluding uncertainty promotes maintaining the status quo. The question is how to propose actions to improve environmental health under the assumptions of doubt and uncertainty that characterize the condition of risk. As a proposal for a solution, the work of H. Arendt² examined the meanings and implications of uncertainty in the field of thought and in the field of action. The results show that risk lies in the gap between the past and the future. When this gap is understood as a space for possibilities, uncertainty, produced in the field of thought, fosters freedom and participation in the field of action. Valuing subjectivity and exercising judgment promote configuring new contexts and new possibilities for action, both in relation to nature and in relation to human beings. This new knowledge inserts itself in the existing gap between past and future and feeds the process again. One can conclude that "heath promotion" actions must be apt to accept results that are not necessarily idealized. There is no certainty in free action and its relevance is not in the ends one can establish, but rather in the process of its exercise.
Politics; Health promotion; Self-action; Authority; Freedom; Judgment
