Book description
Sustainability has become a compelling topic of domestic and
international debate as the world searches for effective solutions to
accumulating ecological problems. In Return to Nature? An Ecological
Counterhistory, Fred Dallmayr demonstrates how nature has been
marginalized, colonized, and abused in the modern era. Although nature
was regarded as a matrix that encompassed all beings in premodern and
classical thought, modern Western thinkers tend to disregard this
original unity, essentially exiling nature from human life. By means of
a philosophical counterhistory leading from Spinoza to Dewey and beyond,
the book traces successive efforts to correct this tendency. Grounding
his writing in a holistic relationism that reconnects humanity with
ecology, Dallmayr pleads for the reintroduction of nature into
contemporary philosophical discussion and sociopolitical practice.
Return to Nature? unites learning, intelligence, sensibility, and moral
passion to offer a multifaceted history of philosophy with regard to our
place in the natural world. Dallmayr's visionary writings provide an
informed foundation for environmental policy and represent an
impassioned call to reclaim nature in our everyday lives. Fred
Dallmayr, Emeritus Packey J. Dee Professor of Philosophy and Political
Science at the University of Notre Dame, is the author of In Search of
the Good Life: A Pedagogy for Troubled Times, The Promise of Democracy:
Political Agency and Transformation, and Integral Pluralism: Beyond
Culture Wars. He lives in Notre Dame, Indiana.
