The Nature of Being Human: From Environmentalism to Consciousness

by Harold Fromm

Overview

Although the physical relationship between the natural world and individuals is quantifiable, the psychosocial effect of the former on the latter is often less tangible. What, for instance, is the connection between the environment in which we live and our creativity? How is our consciousness bounded and delimited by our materiality? And from whence does our idea of self and our belief in free will derive and when do our surroundings challenge these basic assumptions?

Ecocritic Harold Fromm's challenging exploration of these and related questions twines his own physical experiences and observations with insights gathered from both the humanities and the sciences. Writing broadly and personally, Fromm explores our views of nature and how we write about it. He ties together ecology, evolutionary psychology, and consciousness studies to show that our perceived separation from our surroundings is an illusory construct. He argues for a naturalistic vision of creativity, free will, and the literary arts unimpeded by common academic and professional restraints. At each point of this intellectual journey, Fromm is honest, engaging, and unsparing.

Philosophical, critical, often personal, Fromm's sweeping, interdisciplinary, and sometimes combative essays will change the way you think about your place in the environment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801891298
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	05/04/2009
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Harold Fromm is a visiting scholar at the University of Arizona whose writings on the self, the environment, and academia have been widely read and debated. He is the coeditor of The Ecocriticism Reader and the author of Academic Capitalism and Literary Value.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: From Environmentalism to Consciousness
Part I: Ecology
1. Awakening to the "Environment"
2. On Being Polluted
3. From Transcendence to Obsolescence: A Route Map
4. Air and Being: The Psychedelics of Pollution
5. Ecocriticism's Genesis
6. Ecology and Ideology
7. Aldo Leopold: Esthetic "Anthropocentrist"
8. Postmodern Ecologizing: Circumference without a Center
9. The "Environment" Is Us
10. Ecology and Ecstasy on Interstate 80
11. Full Stomach Wilderness and the Suburban Esthetic
12. Coetzee's Postmodern Animals
Part Two: "Nature" and Evolution
13. My Science Wars
14. O, Paglia Mia!
15. A Crucifix for Dracula: Wendell Berry Meets Edward O. Wilson
16. The New Darwinism in the Humanities
17. Ecocriticism's Big Bang
18. Overcoming the Oversoul: Emerson's Evolutionary Existentialism
19. Back to Bacteria: Richard Dawkins' Fabulous Bestiary
Part Three: Consciousness
20. Muses, Spooks, Neurons, and the Rhetoric of "Freedom"
21. John Searle and His Ghosts
22. Daniel Dennett and the Brick Wall of Consciousness
23. The Crumbling Mortar of Social Construction
Conclusion: My Life as a Robot
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

David P. Barash

Harold Fromm writes about 'awakening to the environment,' but his book is much more. A desperately needed, beautifully crafted manifesto, it is nothing less than a great humanist awakening to the reality of also being a material, fully biological creature.

— David P. Barash, coauthor of How Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-So Stories

Joyce Carol Oates

How rare it is that a work of philosophical inquiry is written with the passion of a cri de coeur, but Harold Fromm's brilliantly conceived The Nature of Being Human resonates with such uncanny depths. Here is an utterly engrossing first-person account of a harrowing pilgrimage into the 21st century and its disturbing revelations about humankind's truest nature, in contrast to the comforting solicitudes of a 'humanist' past. If the role of the philosopher is to force us to think, Harold Fromm is a born philosopher.

Joseph Carroll

Fromm delineates three main movements in the naturalistic thinking of the past several decades—ecology, Darwinism, and consciousness studies. He brings a fine and subtle literary intelligence to bear on these subjects, brilliantly illuminating their imaginative implications. His prose is vibrant, vigorous, pithy, and often humorous.

— Joseph Carroll, author of Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature

From the Publisher

How rare it is that a work of philosophical inquiry is written with the passion of a cri de coeur, but Harold Fromm's brilliantly conceived The Nature of Being Human resonates with such uncanny depths. Here is an utterly engrossing first-person account of a harrowing pilgrimage into the 21st century and its disturbing revelations about humankind's truest nature, in contrast to the comforting solicitudes of a 'humanist' past. If the role of the philosopher is to force us to think, Harold Fromm is a born philosopher.
—Joyce Carol Oates

Harold Fromm writes about 'awakening to the environment,' but his book is much more. A desperately needed, beautifully crafted manifesto, it is nothing less than a great humanist awakening to the reality of also being a material, fully biological creature.
—David P. Barash, coauthor of How Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-So Stories

Fromm delineates three main movements in the naturalistic thinking of the past several decades—ecology, Darwinism, and consciousness studies. He brings a fine and subtle literary intelligence to bear on these subjects, brilliantly illuminating their imaginative implications. His prose is vibrant, vigorous, pithy, and often humorous.
—Joseph Carroll, author of Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature

Editorial Reviews

Fromm's contrarian view is explored beautifully in 'Ecology and Ecstasy on Interstate 80,' declaring that 'everything human is technological' while driving through the Sierras. The closing essays examine more esoteric issues of free will and social evolution. Fans of nature writing will find Fromm's travels witty and engaging, and his analysis unblemished by typical academic pretension or abstraction.
—Publishers Weekly

Perfect for classroom discussion and debate.
—Midwest Book Review

Fromm, an erudite, prolific author of numerous works ranging from ecocritical commentary to self-reflective discourses, presents a compilation of essays that illuminate his views regarding why most Americans seem oblivious to the destruction of their environment.
—Choice

Fromm's journey from victim, to campaigner, to pioneer of eco-criticism (that is, the study of literature from an ecological viewpoint) is documented here, alongside challenging analyses of man's place in nature, free will, our relationship with technology and more. Scholarly but engaging, Fromm is an environmentalist, but also a realist.
—Organic Gardener

The Nature of Being Human is a lively, opinionated, impressively learned and always readable contribution to the current debate on the human and natural costs of the dogma of ‘progress’.
—British Society for Literature and Science

Fromm is most truly a literary scholar rather than a philosopher or scientist. Nonetheless, the journey that this book represents traverses all three realms of inquiry as well as showing an engaging and provocative intellectual trajectory, and it would be churlish to deny that it represents a real and enduring effort by an important thinker to grapple with a range of vital human and ecological issues.
—Organization & Environment

The Nature of Being Human is a good read—enjoyable and instructive.
—Francisco Ayala, Evolutionary Theory

From the Publisher

The Nature of Being Human is a good read—enjoyable and instructive.

Evolutionary Theory - Francisco Ayala

Fromm, an erudite, prolific author of numerous works ranging from ecocritical commentary to self-reflective discourses, presents a compilation of essays that illuminate his views regarding why most Americans seem oblivious to the destruction of their environment.

Choice

The Nature of Being Human is a lively, opinionated, impressively learned and always readable contribution to the current debate on the human and natural costs of the dogma of ‘progress’.

British Society for Literature and Science

Fromm is most truly a literary scholar rather than a philosopher or scientist. Nonetheless, the journey that this book represents traverses all three realms of inquiry as well as showing an engaging and provocative intellectual trajectory, and it would be churlish to deny that it represents a real and enduring effort by an important thinker to grapple with a range of vital human and ecological issues.

Organization & Environment

Fromm's journey from victim, to campaigner, to pioneer of eco-criticism (that is, the study of literature from an ecological viewpoint) is documented here, alongside challenging analyses of man's place in nature, free will, our relationship with technology and more. Scholarly but engaging, Fromm is an environmentalist, but also a realist.

Organic Gardener

Perfect for classroom discussion and debate.

Midwest Book Review