Engaging Nature: Environmentalism and the Political Theory Canon

by Peter F. Cannavò (Editor), Joseph H. Lane Jr. (Editor), John Barry (Foreword)

Essays that put noted political thinkers of the past—including Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Wollstonecraft, Marx, and Confucius—in dialogue with current environmental political theory. Contemporary environmental political theory considers the implications of the environmental crisis for such political concepts as rights, citizenship, justice, democracy, the state, race, class, and gender. As the field has matured, scholars have begun to explore connections between Green Theory and such canonical political thinkers as Plato, Machiavelli, Locke, and Marx. The essays in this volume put important figures from the political theory canon in dialogue with current environmental political theory. It is the first comprehensive volume to bring the insights of Green Theory to bear in reinterpreting these canonical theorists. Individual essays cover such classical figures in Western thought as Aristotle, Hume, Rousseau, Mill, and Burke, but they also depart from the traditional canon to consider Mary Wollstonecraft, W. E. B. Du Bois, Hannah Arendt, and Confucius. Engaging and accessible, the essays also offer original and innovative interpretations that often challenge standard readings of these thinkers. In examining and explicating how these great thinkers of the past viewed the natural world and our relationship with nature, the essays also illuminate our current environmental predicament. Essays on
Plato • Aristotle • Niccolò Machiavelli • Thomas Hobbes • John Locke • David Hume • Jean-Jacques Rousseau • Edmund Burke • Mary Wollstonecraft • John Stuart Mill • Karl Marx • W. E. B. Du Bois • Martin Heidegger • Hannah Arendt • Confucius Contributors
Sheryl D. Breen, W. Scott Cameron, Peter F. Cannavò, Joel Jay Kassiola, Joseph H. Lane Jr. Timothy W. Luke, John M. Meyer, Özgüç Orhan, Barbara K. Seeber, Francisco Seijo, Kimberly K. Smith, Piers H. G. Stephens, Zev Trachtenberg, Andrew Valls, Harlan Wilson

Genres: Nature

304 pages, Hardcover

First published December 5, 2014

Reviews

[Lydia]

Wouldn't have read it unless I had to. This is a prime example of how academia can be out of touch with practicality. Though well researched and thought out, these philosophical pieces were lofty and hard to follow, especially without having read most of the referenced source material.

[Pearse Anderson]

I had to read this for Chase Hobbes-Morgan's Environmental Politics class in my sophomore year at Oberlin College, OH. I did not love this anthology. I am not a political theorist and these were certainly not introductory works. A lot of nuance is overlooked, but some is injected, and other perspectives are shown, but overall, I found this to be a school textbook rather than a personal, pleasurable piece. Dry, but not deserving of blame. So, like, 5/10.