After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene - Hardcover

Jedediah Purdy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674368223 ISBN 13: 9780674368224

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2015

Synopsis

Nature no longer exists apart from humanity. The world we will inhabit is the one we have made. Geologists call this epoch the Anthropocene, Age of Humans. The facts of the Anthropocene are scientific-emissions, pollens, extinctions-but its shape and meaning are questions for politics. Jedediah Purdy develops a politics for this post-natural world.

About this title

Review:

Dazzling... [Purdy's] book is, among other things, a panoramic tour of what he calls the 'American environmental imagination.' ...Purdy hopes that climate change might spur yet another change in how we think about the natural world, but he insists that such a shift will be inescapably political... For a relatively slim volume, this book distills an incredible amount of scholarship--about Americans' changing attitudes toward the natural world, and about how those attitudes might change in the future.--Ross Andersen"The Atlantic" (11/30/2015)

It's good to have as powerful a mind as Professor Purdy's taking on these questions so central to our modern life. Every page has insights that will help people struggling to understand how we got here and where we're headed.--Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

After Nature is the book that finally, somehow, manages to get the whole of our environment in its head--to see the multiplicity of its expressions; of our influence; of our capacity, now, to determine the fate of the whole world--and from all of that draws out an account of political possibilities that, for all their sense of danger, are not without plausible hope.--Emmett Rensin"Bookforum" (03/01/2017)

For Purdy, one of the key challenges of the Anthropocene is to use the law in ways that adopt the best rather than the worst of each vision of nature: to integrate concern for human work and meaning into an ecological framework; to set standards for action on climate change; to make transparent the sources of our food and our treatment of animals...Purdy thinks we need to learn the core political lesson of his story--which at its heart is not about the politics of nature, but about democracy. This is a history in which democracy is constantly evaded, decision-making is removed from collective politics by appeals to 'natural systems, ' and anti-politics creeps back in.-- (05/12/2016)

Jedediah Purdy has written a big book, taking up a set of profound environmental questions and offering sweeping answers... The strengths of After Nature are significant and make this a must-read book for all who are struggling with how to reinvigorate environmental protection in the face of political breakdown in America and troubling global trends, including the emerging risk of climate change... The journey he maps is illuminating. In fact, perhaps the greatest strength of After Nature is its intellectual history of American environmentalism... With this book, Purdy shows himself to be a deep thinker on the nature of Nature... Purdy offers a provocative ecological vision and ethical argument that deserves to be reckoned with. He has established himself among the top tier of environmental philosophers of our day.-- (12/06/2015)

After Nature argues that we will deserve the future only because it will be the one we made. We will live, or die, by our mistakes.-- (09/01/2015)

After Nature takes the reader on a smart and eloquent tour of the history of conservation movements, the rise of the study of ecology (and its flourishing in the wake of the Vietnam War) and the gradual expansion of environmental law, but Purdy is at his most insightful and persuasive when writing about the first of his 'major realms, ' economy--and the subtle ways money has been shaping nature for centuries to suit its own needs... In the previous year, there've been many studies of the deeper meaning of the Anthropocene and the future of humanity, studies ranging from the impenetrable to the inconsolable. After Nature is by a wide margin the best of these books; in its passion, intelligence, and persistent thread of hope, it may very well be the Silent Spring of the 21st century.-- (09/01/2015)

Offers a powerful reckoning with our bewildering present... Its great value lies in its sophisticated, lucid study of the evolving American environmental imagination. Purdy...brings impressive intellectual and literary chops to bear on a history of American attitudes toward nature, and how those attitudes have manifested in tangible modifications of the air, land, and water... The book aims to show how our shared philosophical premises inform our laws, our behavior, and ultimately our world.-- (11/30/2015)

[Purdy] argues that our democracy is too beholden to the influence of money, that the processes we use to produce energy and food should be made more transparent to the public, and that technological solutions are unreliable and will not bring about the greater change of consciousness that is necessary to solve our most pressing problems. He urges an ethic of self-restraint and a new worldview in which human beings are no longer 'the figure at its center.'-- (10/22/2015)

A profound vision of post-humanistic ethics.--Kirkus Reviews (05/15/2015)

About the Author:

Jedediah Purdy is Robinson O. Everett Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0674368223
• ISBN 13: 9780674368224
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 296