The Philosophical Foundations of Ecological Civilization A manifesto for the future Routledge Environmental Humanities Series

The global ecological crisis is the greatest challenge humanity has ever had to confront, and humanity is failing. The triumph of the neo-liberal agenda, together with a debauched ?scientism?, has reduced nature and people to nothing but raw materials, instruments and consumers to be efficiently managed in a global market dominated by corporate managers, media moguls and technocrats. The arts and the humanities have been devalued, genuine science has been crippled, and the quest for autonomy and democracy undermined. The resultant trajectory towards global ecological destruction appears inexorable, and neither governments nor environmental movements have significantly altered this, or indeed, seem able to. The Philosophical Foundations of Ecological Civilization is a wide-ranging and scholarly analysis of this failure.

This book reframes the dynamics of the debate beyond the discourses of economics, politics and techno-science. Reviving natural philosophy to align science with the humanities, it offers the categories required to reform our modes of existence and our institutions so that we augment, rather than undermine, the life of the ecosystems of which we are part. From this philosophical foundation, the author puts forth a manifesto for transforming our culture into one which could provide an effective global environmental movement and provide the foundations for a global ecological civilization.

Introduction 1. The Ultimate Crisis of Civilization: Why Turn to Philosophy 2. From Analytic Philosophy to Speculative Naturalism 3. Dialectics: From Marx to Post-Marxism 4. The Dialectics of Speculative Naturalism 5. Reviving the Radical Enlightenment Through Speculative Naturalism 6. From the Radical Enlightenment to Ecological Civilization: Creating the Future Conclusion: Ecological Civilization and ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness’

Arran Gare is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Inquiry at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia.