USD $142.00
Browse results
It is extremely difficult to seek new paths in the twilight of our former idols, ideals and visions of a happy and successful life. The authors of the book invite the reader to embark on this journey in a free-spirited manner and to look at the challenges posed by the new climate regime from different perspectives. Whether one accepts the concept of the Anthropocene as a starting point, or rather as an opportunity for constructive criticism, readers will be fully engaged by thinking through historical-philosophical, scientific, political, social, as well as educational problems.
It is extremely difficult to seek new paths in the twilight of our former idols, ideals and visions of a happy and successful life. The authors of the book invite the reader to embark on this journey in a free-spirited manner and to look at the challenges posed by the new climate regime from different perspectives. Whether one accepts the concept of the Anthropocene as a starting point, or rather as an opportunity for constructive criticism, readers will be fully engaged by thinking through historical-philosophical, scientific, political, social, as well as educational problems.
Author:
Abstract
One of the most remarkable facts of our time is that our species inhabits a planetary Technosphere of its own making, something entirely new in its (natural and cultural) history. This has allowed our species to acquire unprecedented power over the Earth’s course and opened a new chapter in geohistory called the Anthropocene. The acquisition of this power has also made us aware of the consequences of its use and the dangers of its misuse. Thus, a reflection was started on the current functioning of the Technosphere and its evolutionary trajectory, focusing on the risks of its weakening, collapse or disappearance in the short (proceeding decades) to the medium term (coming centuries). This chapter intends to be a contribution to this reflection. In the first part, the vision of the Technosphere of the American geologist Peter Haff is analyzed, not only because he, originally, conceptualized it, but also because he remains the main theorist. In the second part, it is argued that, after their coeval historical emergence, the Technosphere and the Anthropocene remained co-dependent and co-evolutionary realities, and some implications are drawn regarding the symbiotic relationship that has been established between them. The third part examines the serious problem facing the Technosphere in relation to its sustainability, arising from, so-called, Anthropocene risks. The fourth part revisits the idea proposed 20 years ago for the creation of the so-called “Geoscope of Sustainability” as a more sustainable control and governance instrument for the Anthropocene Technosphere.
Author:
Abstract
The global environmental crisis is the fire from which all the sciences are currently taking their flame. Appropriate economic, political and social solutions are being sought, technologies to mitigate climate change are being developed, and human survival strategies are being considered. The role of philosophy is overlooked, once again. And yet here are the eternal humanity’s problems illuminated in this – unflattering – light. Even the application of the best scientific solutions will not help us if we do not understand that the environmental crisis is above all a spiritual crisis, a crisis of the foundations of understanding what a human is, that afflicts the nature of science itself so that its application merely enhances the underlying problems it is supposedly addressing. A change of thinking is a necessary condition for a change in our everyday behaviour. The real problem is the outdated philosophy of education burdened by the framework of old anthropocentric metaphysics. F. Nietzsche, and later E. Fink, pointed this out with their cosmological philosophy of education, which wants to lead us to a radical understanding of the non-self-evidence of human existence in the cosmos. Because relevant, long-term changes can’t succeed unless the institutional relationships of the public sphere constitute an appropriately informed perceptual relationship with the World, for everyone, then problems will entrench, clearly evidenced by the pandemic and, again, the recurring threat of nuclear conflict. Namely, education is the font from which all our relationships flow into the World.
Author:
Abstract
The subject of this study is the axial features of social change that manifest environmental and economic tendencies towards crisis and civilisational risk. Change also affects the forms of rationality required to evaluate the transformation of post-industrial countries during the Anthropocene that might direct human behaviour. The task of philosophy is to explore rationality. A critical philosophy is supposed to understand, comprehend and explain. Philosophy as such does not rectify, change, prescribe or direct anything. But if philosophy is critical, political, and social, it is obliged to find ways to give humanity at least one more (not two, not the last, but, at least, one more) chance. In this chapter, I am attempting to make that possible using a triple negation: No to the further liberalisation of the open and diverse liberalism of late modernity. No to the further post-industrialisation of a post-industrial political economy. No to further rationalisations of modernistic rationality.
Author:
Abstract
This chapter examines Risse’s conception of common ownership of the earth in light of rapidly progressing climate change and asks whether it can become a foundation of a different vision of humans’ standing vis-à-vis the earth and their claims to the natural habitat, alternative to prevalent systems premised upon the notion of limitless exploitation of natural resources. The chapter exposes two problematic features upon which Risse’s conception of COE rests – the ontological assumptions built into a conception of ownership which make it difficult to incorporate environmental limits into our claims to natural resources and the narrow concept of basic needs which fails to account for a two-way relationship between the realization of justice and the state of the natural world. These two tenets, I argue, make Risse’s COE unfit for an account of justice in environmentally degrading world. Throughout the chapter I suggest the regime of commons is more appropriate for global resource domains providing vital yet depletable natural resources.
Author:
Abstract
The devastation arising from multiple factors originating in the Earth System has reached an unprecedented level in the last decades. So much so, that global, industrial civilization can be declared the cause of the shift of climatic and geological history, on Earth, in the age of Anthropocene. Industrial civilization is therefore threatened by consequences arising from its conditions. If civilization is to endure during the climate regime of Anthropocene it will need to transform into a form that allows it to coexist harmoniously within the Earth System. The concept of ecological civilization tries to formulate the principles and imperatives of this transformation. Although it originated in the USA, only in China has it, so far, become part of the public, constitutional and political discourse. This chapter focuses on the philosophical roots of its Chinese version. It illuminates the different meanings associated with the concepts of culture and civilization in Western and Chinese thinking. Although the Chinese version of the concept of ecological civilization follows several Western concepts, it emphasizes traditional Chinese patterns of thought and ways of interpreting the world, especially Daoism. Contrary to the original version of Daoism’s emphasis on the principle of ecological democracy, the Chinese version exhibits authoritarian tendencies and this is reflected in Chinese environmental policies. Finally, the chapter focuses on risks, and inconsistencies, within the concept and with other Chinese policies and suggests ways in which China repeats approaches identifiable as European and North American green policies, not only, in industrialization but, also, in pursuit of green transformation.
Author:
Abstract
The year 2020 brought events and posed situations in the world that were previously unimaginable for humanity. It initiated an experience of a kind of world shutdown, when, in order to maintain the safety and health of people, life in most countries, virtually stopped for a certain period. At the beginning of the pandemic, this shutdown had also a visible, but short-lived, positive environmental effect. This fact, however, highlighted the acute need to think about the opportunities arising from the intentional influencing of human behaviour which might, collectively, contribute towards solving environmental problems. This text focuses on examining the potential for environmental citizenship to address environmental challenges, now, within the context of a global pandemic. It also focuses on environmental responsibility as an important component of the challenge of environmental crisis, whilst considering the limits that individual advocacy encounters and reflects upon the political dimension of these elements. The aim of our study, therefore, is to reflect on conceptions of possible solutions to the environmental crisis. In light of this, and reflecting on the potential role of environmental citizens in facing this crisis, we posit that the most effective strategy is one of sustainable retreat and the massiveness of political and legal human actions. However, environmental responsibility within a framework of environmental citizenship appears to be the key precondition for long-term success.
Author:
Abstract
This chapter interrogates, first, the difficulties of building a scholarly, coherent, sub-discipline on the published aims of the journal Environmental Philosophy, and second, the problems inherent in making philosophical arguments around natural scientific data, in particular, the “biodiversity revolution”. These issues are addressed through the lens of how the Earth System science of the Anthropocene relates to environmental philosophy, environmental humanities, and social science contributions to Anthropocene and/or what might be called “Anthropo-scene” studies.