Political Nature
Subtitle: Environmentalism and the Interpretation of Western Thought
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: August 1, 2001
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 224
ISBN-13: 9780262133906
Subjects: Political science & theory; The Environment; Conservation Of Natural Resources (General); Ecological Politics; Science; Politics / Current Events; Science/Mathematics; Ecology; Environmental Conservation & Protection - General; History & Theory - General; Science / Environmental Science; Environmental Science; Environmentalism; Political ecology
First sentence: How should human communities be ordered?
Description: "Concern over environmental problems is prompting us to reexamine established thinking about society and politics. The challenge is to find a way for the public's concern for the environment to become more integral to social, economic, and political decision making. Two interpretations have dominated Western portrayals of the nature-politics relationship, what John Meyer calls the dualist and the derivative.

The dualist account holds that politics - and human culture in general - is completely separate from nature. The derivative account views Western political thought as derived from conceptions of nature, whether Aristotelian teleology, the clocklike mechanism of early modern science, or Darwinian selection. Meyer examines the nature-politics relationship in the writings of two of its most pivotal theorists, Aristotle and Thomas Hobbes, and of contemporary environmentalist thinkers.

He concludes that we must overcome the limitations of both the dualist and the derivative interpretations if we are to understand the relationship between nature and politics."--BOOK JACKET.