Abstract

Ecology and Reason is a dissertation in political philosophy, which joins the Socratic effort of visioning the Good life: that is, the quest for ever greater realization and socialization of truth, knowledge and justice. This quest explores the deepest concerns of human being: Who are we? Where did we come from? What is our purpose? What is the best way to live?, etc. ;This work investigates the relation between human and non-human being, especially nature and the sacred, asking "Why are human beings engaged in an escalating and systematic destruction of the planetary ecosystem which sustains them?" The devastation of the natural world through such crises as ozone depletion, the Greenhouse Effect, species extinction and desertification has been virtually ignored by political theory. Other questions follow: "What are the causes of these destructive processes?" "How can they be reversed?" "What sort of politics might promote an ecologically oriented Good life?" ;Chapter Two identifies the cause of these ecological crises as a complex called the "modernization project," which includes the disenchantment of the world, the separation of human being from nature and the larger "community of being," the hegemony of instrumental rationality, the Protestant Reformation, the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, capitalism, colonialism and Liberalism. Chapter Three details the devastating effects of this complex, manifested in the ecological crises of modernity, on both the human and non-human ecologies. ;Chapter Four critiques Enlightenment instrumental rationality, moving on to Habermas's paradigm of inter-subjectivity, based on communicative rationality. This paradigm is analyzed and found lacking because of its exclusion of the non-human world. Chapter Five seeks to articulate and defend a more comprehensive notion of rationality, called "ecological rationality," which incorporates instrumental, communicative, affective, noetic and erotic rational elements. ;Chapter Six considers the embodiment of ecological reason in storytelling and myth, in the lives of primal people, in Eric Voegelin's thought and in the "new science," and "new story." Chapter Seven surveys some philosophical and practical political ideas, models and policies, which reflect ecological reason and offer hope toward an ecologically sustainable future and realization of the Good life