About this book
Philosophers, Henri Bergson once observed, "seem to philosophize as if they were sealed in the privacy of their study and did not live on a planet surrounded by the vast organic world of animals, plants, insects, and protozoa". Providing a solid overview of ecological philosophy and original insights into this developing field, Minding Nature focuses on some of the most influential thinkers who have emphasized our natural relations to the earth, our social creations, and each other. Combining philosophy, ecology, and political theory, the book critiques and builds upon the ideas of such luminaries as Thomas Hobbes, Martin Heidegger, Ernst Bloch, Hannah Arendt, Herbert Marcuse, Barry Commoner, Rachel Carson, and Jurgen Habermas, among others. Individually, these essays provide new perspectives on major philosophers and social thinkers. Taken together, they shed new light on the relationship between ecology, political economy, and social theory.
Contents
Introduction: Greening Philosophy and Democratizing Ecology, David Macauley 1. Nature as Artifact: Thomas Hobbes, the Bible, and Modernity, Frank Coleman 2. Charles Fourier: Proto-Red-Green, Joan Roelofs 3. Martin Heidegger: Antinaturalistic Critic of Technological Modernity, Michael E. Zimmerman 4. Merleau-Ponty and the Voice of the Earth, David Abram 5. Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Place: From Earth Alienation to Oikos, David Macauley 6. Ernst Bloch, Natural Rights, and the Greens, John Ely 7. The Outcry of Mute Things: Hans Jonas's Imperative of Responsibility, Lawrence Vogel 8. Domination and Utopia: Marcuse's Discourse on Nature, Psyche, and Culture, Henry T. Blanke 9. Lewis Mumford, The Forgotten American Environmentalist: An Essay in Rehabilitation, Ramachandra Guha 10. Change and Continuity in Environmental World-View: The Politics of Nature in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Yaakov Garb 11. The Commoner Ehrlich Debate: Environmentalism and the Politics of Survival, Andrew Feenberg 12. The Problem of Nature in the Work of J rgen Habermas, Joel Whitebook 13. Social Ecology and Social Labor: A Consideration and Critique of Murray Bookchin, Alan Rudy and Andrew Light
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