Habit rules our lives. And yet climate change and the catastrophic future it portends, makes it clear that we cannot go on like this. Our habits are integral to narratives of the good life, to social norms and expectations, as well as to economic reality. Such shared shapes are vital. Yet while many of our individual habits seem perfectly reasonable, when aggregated together they spell disaster. Beyond consumerism, other forms of life and patterns of dwelling are clearly possible. But how can we get there from here? Who precisely is the ‘we’ that our habits have created, and who else might we be? Philosophy is about emancipation—from illusions, myths, and oppression. In Reoccupy Earth, the noted philosopher David Wood shows how an approach to philosophy attuned to our ecological existence can suspend the taken-for-granted and open up alternative forms of earthly dwelling. Sharing the earth, as we do, raises fundamental questions about space and time, place and history, territory and embodiment—questions that philosophy cannot directly answer but can help us to frame and to work out for ourselves. Deconstruction exposes all manner of exclusion, violence to the other, and silent subordination. Phenomenology and Whitehead’s process philosophy offer further resources for an ecological imagination. Bringing an uncommon lucidity, directness, and even practicality to sophisticated philosophical questions, Wood plots experiential pathways that disrupt our habitual existence and challenge our everyday complacency. In walking us through a range of reversals, transformations, and estrangements that thinking ecologically demands of us, Wood shows how living responsibly with the earth means affirming the ways in which we are vulnerable, receptive, and dependent, and the need for solidarity all round. If we take seriously values like truth, justice, and compassion we must be willing to contemplate that the threat we pose to the earth might demand our own species’ demise. Yet we have the capacity to live responsibly. In an unfashionable but spirited defense of an enlightened anthropocentrism, Wood argues that to deserve the privileges of Reason we must demonstrably deploy it through collective sustainable agency. Only in this way can we reinhabit the earth.

Paul Ricoeur and Environmental Philosophy expands the scope of Ricoeur's philosophy, especially his hermeneutics, to issues of environmental philosophy and our contemporary environmental crisis. David Utsler argues that, although Ricoeur himself was not an environmental philosopher, his work provides frameworks to reconsider our way of being-in-the-world as it pertains to our relationship with the environment. The unprecendented environmental crisis can be thought of as the result of interpretations—bad ones—and the crisis we now face requires the task of new and creative interpretation. This book discusses the ways in which Ricoeur's hermeneutics has the potential to restructure the discourse and dialogue surrounding environmental issues, and to creatively mediate the many conflicting interpretations that call for resolution. Utsler does not claim this text to be a comprehensive application of Ricoeur's work to environmental philosophy, as he believes there is still a great deal more of Ricoeur's philosophy from which to draw to enrich the growing field of environmental hermeneutics.

Hosting Earth is a timely and much-needed volume in the emerging literature of environmental philosophy, drawing upon art, science, and politics to explore alternatives to the traditional domination of nature by humans. Featuring a dialogue with Mary Robinson (former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and former President of Ireland), which addresses the current climate emergency, this book engages the question of ecological hospitality: what does it mean to be guests of the earth as well as hosts? It includes chapters by cutting-edge scholars in the philosophy of nature, as well as artists, scientists, psychologists, and theologians. The contributors discuss proposals for a new "Poetics of the Earth," opening horizons beyond our perilous Anthropocene to a new Symbiocene of mutual collaboration between human and non-human species. Focusing on the central role that the human psyche plays in answering our current ecological emergency, Hosting Earth is for anybody invested in the future of our planet and how psychological, psychoanalytic, and philosophical thought can reorient the current conversation about ecology.

Melting glaciers and icecaps, massive forest fires, enormous storms, extensive and prolonged flooding, and desertification of large tracts of land are realities we currently face and will continue to struggle with as a result of climate change. Our climate crisis invites, if not demands, a critical evaluation of our political, religious, economic, and cultural narratives and rituals that give rise to our ways of relating to one another, to other species, and to planet Earth. This book argues that the climate emergency exposes deep problematic roots of Western religious and political paradigms and apparatuses that undergird ideas of and methods for human flourishing. In particular, Western religious and political philosophies have produced and maintained a radical rift between human beings and other species, as well as beliefs about human dominion over other species and the earth. These ideas and practices are responsible for the colonization of Nature and for climate change. Understanding these sources invites a radical reimaging of our religious ideas and practices. Specifically, this book proposes a coming Jesus—a form of life that traverses the rift, while denying human and divine dominion for the sake of recognizing and respecting the singularities and flourishing of all species.

Killer Cities uses a combination of social theory, polemic and close attention to empirical detail to tell the story of how and why cities cause mass animal death and, in the process, hasten the destruction of the planet. This book is not just a lament, however. It is an attempt to navigate out of this mess of planned and unplanned violence towards a world in which cities no longer act as killers but become aligned with the lives of other beings. It offers pragmatic ways of diminishing the death toll and changing mindsets without ever minimizing the dilemmas that inevitably will have to be faced. Killer cities can be rehabilitated so that they offer brighter paths towards the future - for animals, for human beings, and for the planet. A new urban geography could be within our grasp. Indeed, it has to be, for all of our sakes.

This book offers a close and detailed account of the emergent and creative pedagogies of children learning together in a small, not-for-profit preschool, and the entangled becomings of their carers as well as the researcher–artist–author. The mutually affecting and inseparable realities of the ‘material’ and the ‘discursive’ are made visible through lively and sensual pedagogical invention by a group of five-year olds in the inner-city preschool which is located in Johannesburg, South Africa. These small, local stories are recognized in their emergence with global geopolitical realities. The author makes a valuable contribution to post-qualitative research through the use of visual research methods and non-representational approaches to working with knowledge. The book draws on the constantly evolving practices of Philosophy for Children (P4C) and Reggio Emilia both as pedagogical tools and as research methods. Photographs and stills from video footage provide a sense of the relatively modest material environment of the school. The book celebrates the considerable richness of the involvement of the children and the enormous possibilities offered by the world both inside and outside of the classroom when an enquiry-led art-based pedagogy is followed. Drawings and other products created by the children in the study offer valuable insight into the depth and complexity of their engagement with their worlds, both individual and collaborative.

What is solitude, why do we crave and fear it, and how do we distinguish it properly from loneliness? It lies at the core of the lives of philosophers and their self-reflective contemplations, and it is the enabling (and disabling) condition that allows us to seriously question how to live creatively and meaningfully. David Farrell Krell is one of the decisive philosophical voices on how philosophers can creatively engage their solitudes. The scale and range of his understanding of solitudes are taken up in this book by some of the most distinguished Continental philosophers. Authors address the problem of solitude from different angles, and imagine how to face and respond creatively to it. Blending philosophical narrative and straightforward philosophical treatises, this book provides inspiration for contemplation of our own versions of solitude and their creative potentials. Some authors focus on the work of historical figures in philosophy or poetry, such as Heidegger and Hölderlin, while others deal more directly with Krell's work as exemplary of their own imaginings of creative solitudes. Other authors respond more personally and creatively in their demonstrations of how we can, and must, seek our solitudes. Including an original chapter by David Farrell Krell, this book is an invigorating meditation on the possibility of being philosophical about a life through solitude, and the meaning of this powerfully resonant and universal human experience.

“Romantik. Journal for the Study of Romanticisms” is a multidisciplinary journal dedicated to the study of romantic-era cultural productions and concepts. The journal promotes innovative research across disciplinary borders. It aims to advance new historical discoveries, forward-looking theoretical insights and cutting-edge methodological approaches. The articles range over the full variety of cultural practices, including the written word, visual arts, history, philosophy, religion, and theatre during the romantic period (c. 1780–1840). But contributions to the discussion of pre- or post-romantic representations are also welcome. Since the romantic era was characterized by an emphasis on the vernacular, the title of journal has been chosen to reflect the Germanic root of the word. But the journal is interested in all European romanticisms – and not least the connections and disconnections between them – hence, the use of the plural in the subtitle. Romantik is a peer-reviewed journal supported by the Nordic Board for Periodicals in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOP-HS).

Animal rights is now a concept that has achieved wide name-recognition. Vegetarianism, and even veganism, is now commonplace, representing a massive transformation in public attitudes. Fifty years ago, the concept of animal rights was almost unheard of and the animal protection movement lay dormant. Even vegetarians were regarded as, at best, cranks and, at worst, dangerous critics of the social order. Yet the late 1960s and early 1970s were a formative time for the contemporary animal rights movement. One of the most important and influential intellectual moments for animal rights occurred at this time at Oxford University among like-minded scholars who would become known as the Oxford Group. The Oxford Group and the Emergence of Animal Rights is about this little known group--a loose friendship group of primarily postgraduate philosophy students who attended the University of Oxford for a short period of time in the late 1960s. The book traces the early development of the Oxford Group and its influence on animal rights theory and activism. It also serves as a case study of how the emergence of important work and the development of new ideas can be explained, as well as how the intellectual development of participants in a friendship group is influenced by their participation in a creative community. For example, would Peter Singer have written his landmark book Animal Liberation--or anything about animal ethics--without being exposed to the other members of the Oxford Group? How would the discipline of animal ethics differ if the group had not produced their edited collection of articles, Animals, Men and Morals? Drawing on previously unpublished correspondence among and interviews with the surviving Oxford Group members, Robert Garner and Yewande Okuleye explore the social and political milieu in which the group formed to understand how such intellectual movements coalesce.