Alienation and Nature in Environmental Philosophy

This book explores interpretations of alienation from nature in relation to a broad range of environmental issues.

Simon Hailwood (Author)

9781107081963, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 August 2015

278 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.54 kg

'The complexity comes in with Hailwood's painstaking attention to the intellectual heritage - recent and more historical - of deployments of alienation and estrangement in critiques of social life, as well as in the environmental context. And though environmental concerns motivate the book, and remain in the foreground throughout, Hailwood does a service for readers who, like me, are not well versed in the philosophical debates that focus on the richly normative conceptions of personhood associated with (forgive the simplification) the 'Continental tradition'.' Zev Trachtenberg, Environmental Values

Many environmental scientists, scholars and activists characterise our situation as one of alienation from nature, but this notion can easily seem meaningless or irrational. In this book, Simon Hailwood critically analyses the idea of alienation from nature and argues that it can be a useful notion when understood pluralistically. He distinguishes different senses of alienation from nature pertaining to different environmental contexts and concerns, and draws upon a range of philosophical and environmental ideas and themes including pragmatism, eco-phenomenology, climate change, ecological justice, Marxism and critical theory. His novel perspective shows that different environmental concerns - both anthropocentric and nonanthropocentric - can dovetail, rather than compete with, each other, and that our alienation from nature need not be something to be regretted or overcome. His book will interest a broad readership in environmental philosophy and ethics, political philosophy, geography and environmental studies.

1. Introduction
2. Alienations and natures
3. Pragmatists and sea squirts
4. Landscape
5. Nonhuman nature: estrangement
6. Nonhuman nature: alienation
7. Estrangement from the natural world
8. Entailments and entanglements
9. Concluding remarks
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Applied ecology [RNC], Environmentalist thought & ideology [RNA], The environment [RN], Meteorology & climatology [RBP], Law [L], Economics [KC], Social & political philosophy [HPS], Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ], Phenomenology & Existentialism [HPCF3], Philosophy [HP]