Holisms that are more than local or heuristic demand too much of ecological rationality, and they can accomplish too little. Various forms of anthropocentrism and various attempts to reawaken holism have burdened ecological reason throughout environmental philosophy. A necessary step toward liberating ecological reason, toward empowering it, is to articulate how it is essentially interdisciplinary. While it is true that many writers at least refer to the interdisciplinarity of ecology and of environmental studies, they have not noted that the definition of ecological reason itself must incorporate interdisciplinarity. Genuine interdisciplinarity enables ecological reason to avoid modernity s anthropocentrism and premodernity s holism.
Reason has two basic modes, the substantive and the functional or procedural.
I take these to be moments of a nonfoundational reason, following Jurgen Habermas s reconstructive account of communicative reason. When it is foundational, substantive reason posits a metaphysical whole from which meaning is derived. When foundational, functional or procedural reason organizes elements and means into effective ensembles, given some goal or desired outcome. Bartlett defines ecological rationality, articulating both its functional and substantive moments. He hopes thereby to restore the balance between them and to ground sustainable ecologies of the environment and society.