The Philosophy of Social Ecology: Essays on Dialectical Naturalism

by Murray Bookchin, Todd McGowan (Afterword)

Overview

Our ecological problems stem from our social problems. Here's a framework for understanding both.

What is nature? What is humanity's place in nature? And what is the relationship of society to the natural world? In an era of ecological breakdown, answering these questions has become of momentous importance for our everyday lives and for the future that we and other life-forms face. In the essays of The Philosophy of Social Ecology,  Murray Bookchin confronts these questions head on: invoking the ideas of mutualism, self-organization, and unity in diversity, in the service of ever expanding freedom. Refreshingly polemical and deeply philosophical, they take issue with technocratic and mechanistic ways of understanding and relating to, and within, nature. More importantly, they develop a solid, historically and politically based ethical foundation for social ecology, the field that Bookchin himself created and that offers us hope in the midst of our climate catastrophe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781849354400
Publisher:	AK PR INC
Publication date:	04/19/2022
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Murray Bookchin (1929–2006) was an active voice in ecology, anarchist, and communalist movements for more than fifty years. His groundbreaking essay, “Ecology and Revolutionary Thought” (1964), was one of the first to assert that capitalism’s grow-or-die ethos was on a dangerous collision course with the natural world that would include the devastation of the planet by global warming. Bookchin is the author of The Ecology of Freedom, among two dozen other books.

Todd McGowan teaches at the University of Vermont and is the author of Emancipation After Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution, among other books.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Third Edition xi

Introduction: A Philosophical Naturalism 1

Toward a Philosophy of Nature: The Bases for an Ecological Ethics 29

Freedom and Necessity in Nature: A Problem in Ecological Ethics 53

Thinking Ecologically: A Dialectical Approach 73

History, Civilization, and Progress: Outline for a Critique of Modern Relativism 105

Afterword Todd McGowan 135

Notes 141

Index 157

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“A useful corrective to simplistic thinking about the human predicament.” —Canadian Book Review Annual

"Bookchin expands upon the concept of natural evolution and delivers it from the trap of mechanistic thinking." —Imprint

“Bookchin addresses a different body of concerns: the need by the public for an ecologically creative sensibility toward the environment.” —La Géographie Appliquée