Books in the Groundworks: Ecological Issues in Philosophy and Theology series

Both philosophical and theological texts of antiquity argued that a "noetic" or contemplative understanding of nature is higher than the discursive rationality oriented toward domination and control. Studying poets, mystics, and nature writers, this book argues that restoring a sacred view of nature is urgently needed in Western thought.

This collection of essays examines the various intersections between philosophical hermeneutics and environmental philosophy. Adopting a broad and inclusive understanding of our relation with the environment, it investigates a number of important topics for contemporary environmental thought, including the self, history, ethics, culture, and narrative.

This book puts Merleau-Ponty's philosophy into dialogue with literature, evolutionary biology, and animal studies to argue for evolutionary continuity between human cultural and linguistic behaviors and the semiotic activities of other animals. It restores our species to its place within the co-evolved animal community now threatened by environmental change.

Being in Creation asks about the role of humans in the more-than-human world from the perspective of human creatureliness, a perspective that accepts as a given human finitude and limitations, as well as responsibility toward other beings and toward the whole of which they are a part.

Environmental aesthetics crosses several commonly recognized divides: between analytic and continental philosophy, Eastern and Western traditions, universalizing and historicizing approaches, and theoretical and practical concerns. This volume sets out to show how these,perspectives can be brought into conversation with one another.The first part surveys the development of the field and discusses some important future directions. The second part explains how widening the scope of environmental aesthetics demands a continual rethinking of the relationship between aesthetics and other fields. How does environmental aesthetics relate to ethics? Does aesthetic appreciation of the environment entail an attitude of respect? What is the relationship between the theory and practice? The third part is devoted to the relationship between the aesthetics of nature and the aesthetics of art. Can art help "e;save the Earth"e;? The final part illustrates the emergence of practical applications from theoretical studies by focusing on concrete case studies.

Eco-Deconstruction marks a new approach to the degradation of the natural environment, including habitat loss, species extinction, and climate change. While the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930ΓÇô2004), with its relentless interrogation of the anthropocentric metaphysics of presence, has already proven highly influential in posthumanism and animal studies, the present volume, drawing on published and unpublished work by Derrida and others, builds on these insights to address the most pressing environmental issues of our time.The volume brings together fifteen prominent scholars, from a wide variety of related fields, including eco-phenomenology, eco-hermeneutics, new materialism, posthumanism, animal studies, vegetal philosophy, science and technology studies, environmental humanities, eco-criticism, earth art and aesthetics, and analytic environmental ethics. Overall, eco-deconstruction offers an account of differential relationality explored in a non-totalizable ecological context that addresses our times in both an ontological and a normative register.The book is divided into four sections. ΓÇ£Diagnosing the PresentΓÇ¥ suggests that our times are marked by a facile, flattened-out understanding of time and thus in need of deconstructive dispositions. ΓÇ£EcologiesΓÇ¥ mobilizes the spectral ontology of deconstruction to argue for an originary environmentality, the constitutive ecological embeddedness of mortal life. ΓÇ£Nuclear and Other Biodegradabilities,ΓÇ¥ examines remains, including such by-products and disintegrations of human culture as nuclear waste, environmental destruction, and species extinctions. ΓÇ£Environmental EthicsΓÇ¥ seeks to uncover a demand for justice, including human responsibility for suffering beings, that emerges precisely as a response to original differentiation and the mortality and unmasterable alterity it installs in living beings. As such, the book will resonate with readers not only of philosophy, but across the humanities and the social and natural sciences.

Habit rules our lives. While many of our individual habits seem perfectly reasonable, when aggregated together they spell ecological disaster. Beyond consumerism, other ways of living are clearly possible. Reoccupy Earth shows how an approach to philosophy attuned to our ecological existence can suspend the taken-for-granted and open up alternative forms of earthly dwelling.

Living with Tiny Aliens imagines in theological terms how an individuals' meaningful existence persists within a cosmos pregnant with living-possibilities. In doing so, it works to articulate an astrobiological humanities.