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This is the first introductory anthology on the philosophy of ecology edited by an ecologist and a philosopher. It illustrates the range of philosophical approaches available to ecologists and provides a basis for understanding the thinking on which many of today's environmental ideas are founded. Collectively, these seminal readings make a powerful statement on the value of ecological knowledge and thinking in alleviating the many problems of modern industrial civilization. Issues covered include: the challenges of defining scientific ecology, tracing its genealogy, and distinguishing the science from various forms of "ecological-like" thinking the ontology of ecological entities and processes selected concepts of community, stability, diversity, and niche the methodology of ecology (rationalism and empiricism, reductionism and holism) the significance of evolutionary law for ecological science
The most pressing problems facing humanity today - over-population, energy shortages, climate change, soil erosion, species extinctions, the risk of epidemic disease, the threat of warfare that could destroy all the hard-won gains of civilization, and even the recent fibrillations of the stock market - are all ecological or have a large ecological component. in this volume philosophers turn their attention to understanding the science of ecology and its huge implications for the human project. To get the application of ecology to policy or other practical concerns right, humanity needs a clear and disinterested philosophical understanding of ecology which can help identify the practical lessons of science. Conversely, the urgent practical demands humanity faces today cannot help but direct scientific and philosophical investigation toward the basis of those ecological challenges that threaten human survival. This book will help to fuel the timely renaissance of interest in philosophy of ecology that is now occurring in the philosophical profession. Provides a bridge between philosophy and current scientific findings Covers theory and applications Encourages multi-disciplinary dialogue
Contributions to Law, Philosophy and Ecology: Exploring Re-Embodiments is a preliminary contribution to the establishment of re-embodiments as a theoretical strand within legal and ecological theory, and philosophy. Re-embodiments are all those contemporary practices and processes that exceed the epistemic horizon of modernity. As such, they offer a plurality of alternative modes of theory and practice that seek to counteract the ecocidal tendencies of the Anthropocene. The collection comprises eleven contributions approaching re-embodiments from a multiplicity of fields, including legal theory, eco-philosophy, eco-feminism and anthropology. The contributions are organized into three parts: ‘Beyond Modernity’, ‘The Sacred Dimension’ and ‘The Legal Dimension’. The collection is opened by a comprehensive introduction that situates re-embodiments in theoretical context. Whilst closely bound with embodiment and new materialist theory, this book contributes a unique voice that echoes diverse political processes contemporaneous to our times. Written in an elegant and accessible language, the book will appeal to undergraduates, postgraduates and established scholars alike seeking to understand and take re-embodiments further, both politically and theoretically.
What is nature? What is humanity's place in nature? And what is the relationship of society to the natural world? In an era of ecological breakdown, answering these questions has become of momentous importance for our everyday lives and for the future that we and other life-forms face. In the essays of The Philosophy of Social Ecology, Murray Bookchin confronts these questions head on: invoking the ideas of mutualism, self-organization, and unity in diversity, in the service of ever expanding freedom. Refreshingly polemical and deeply philosophical, they take issue with technocratic and mechanistic ways of understanding and relating to, and within, nature. More importantly, they develop a solid, historically and politically based ethical foundation for social ecology, the field that Bookchin himself created and that offers us hope in the midst of our climate catastrophe.
The global ecological crisis is the greatest challenge humanity has ever had to confront, and humanity is failing. The triumph of the neo-liberal agenda, together with a debauched ‘scientism’, has reduced nature and people to nothing but raw materials, instruments and consumers to be efficiently managed in a global market dominated by corporate managers, media moguls and technocrats. The arts and the humanities have been devalued, genuine science has been crippled, and the quest for autonomy and democracy undermined. The resultant trajectory towards global ecological destruction appears inexorable, and neither governments nor environmental movements have significantly altered this, or indeed, seem able to. The Philosophical Foundations of Ecological Civilization is a wide-ranging and scholarly analysis of this failure. This book reframes the dynamics of the debate beyond the discourses of economics, politics and techno-science. Reviving natural philosophy to align science with the humanities, it offers the categories required to reform our modes of existence and our institutions so that we augment, rather than undermine, the life of the ecosystems of which we are part. From this philosophical foundation, the author puts forth a manifesto for transforming our culture into one which could provide an effective global environmental movement and provide the foundations for a global ecological civilization.
In the fifty years since its initial publication, Is It Too Late? has proven its prescience in ways both significant and dire. As the first book-length philosophical and theological analysis of the environmental crisis, this work introduced a generation to the key elements of crisis while suggesting ways that religion can be a force for hope rather than an instrument of despair. Covering an ambitious range of issues--from deforestation to abortion, from religious views of the natural world to the need for technological innovation to avoid nature's destruction--John Cobb moves deftly from philosophical to theological to scientific learning and integrates these interdisciplinary insights into a compelling vision for what he calls "a new Christianity." Comprehensive in scope, non-technical in expression, and concise in length, Is It Too Late? provides the scholar and the student alike with a readable and compelling orientation to the philosophical and theological stakes of ecology. This Fortress edition includes a new preface in which Cobb reflects on the current situation, the specific promises and perils we now face, and how his own thinking on matters theological and ecological has evolved in the last half century.
Spinoza and Deep Ecology explores the philosophical, psychological and political assumptions that underpin a concern for nature, offering specific suggestions how the domination of humans and nature may be overcome. It is primarily intended as an introduction to the philosophy of ecology, known as deep ecology, and to the way Spinoza's philosophy has been put to this aim. Only a self-realisation, along the lines of Spinoza's philosophy, can afford a philosophy of care which is inclusive of humans and the non-human world, which recognises the need for civil laws and democratic politics for human flourishing. In stark contrast to texts written by or on behalf of deep ecologists, Spinoza and Deep Ecology is not afraid of criticising existing versions of deep ecology which fail to accept that human concerns are integral to environmental issues.
Instead of thinking of nature as a resource to be used for human needs, deep ecology argues that the true value of nature is intrinsic. This comprehensive and wide-ranging anthology contains almost 50 articles by the leading writers and thinkers in the field, offering a broad array of perspectives on this important approach to environmentalism.
This study explores the increasingly troubled relationship between humankind and the Earth, with the help of a simple example and a complicated interlocutor. The example is a pond, which, it turns out, is not so simple as it seems. The interlocutor is Jean-Paul Sartre, novelist, playwright, biographer, philosopher, and, despite his several disavowals, doyen of twentieth-century existentialism. Standing with the great humanist at the edge of the pond, the author examines contemporary experience in the light of several familiar conceptual pairs: nature and culture, fact and value, reality and imagination, human and nonhuman, society and ecology, Earth and world. The theoretical challenge is to reveal the critical complementarity and experiential unity of this family of ideas. The practical task is to discern the heuristic implications of this lived unity-in-diversity in these times of social and ecological crisis. Interdisciplinary in its aspirations, the study draws upon recent developments in biology and ecology, complexity science and systems theory, ecological and Marxist economics, and environmental history. Comprehensive in its engagement of Sartre’s oeuvre, the study builds upon his best-known existentialist writings, and also his critique of colonialism, voluminous ethical writings, early studies of the imaginary, and mature dialectical philosophy. In addition to overviews of Sartre’s distinctive inflections of phenomenology and dialectics and his unique theories of praxis and imagination, the study also articulates for the first time Sartre’s incipient philosophical ecology. In keeping with Sartre’s lifelong commitment to freedom and liberation, the study concludes with a programmatic look at the relative merits of pragmatist, prefigurative, and revolutionary activism within the burgeoning global struggle for social and ecological justice. We learn much by thinking with Sartre at the water’s edge: surprising lessons about our changing humanity and how we have come to where we are; timely lessons about the shifting relation between us and the broader community of life to which we belong; difficult lessons about our brutal degradation of the planetary system upon which life depends; and auspicious lessons, too, about a participatory path forward as we work to preserve a habitable planet and build a livable world for all earthlings.