Lexington Books
Pages: 562
•
Trim: 6 x 8¾
978-0-7391-8288-8 • Hardback • July 2017 • $175.00 • (£135.00)
978-1-4985-6199-0 • Paperback • May 2019 • $57.99 • (£45.00)
978-0-7391-8289-5 • eBook • July 2017 • $55.00 • (£42.00)
Matthew C. Ally was supposed to be an ecologist. During the same semester in which he took a required course in “Temperate Forest Ecosystems,” he took an elective philosophy course called “Tyranny and Freedom.” The rest is history. He is professor of philosophy at the Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York and coordinator of the BMCC Sustainability Studies Project. He has published articles on Sartre’s philosophy, progressive and radical pedagogy, philosophical ecology, environmentalism, and sustainability.
Prelude – Many Ways to Wonder
confessions of a lifelong pond watcher
PART I – ENVIRONMENTALISM AND HUMANISM
SHIPS PASSING IN THE LIGHT
Chapter 1 – Toward an Existential Ecology
water, water, everywhere
Chapter 2 – Bringing Sartre to the Biosphere
the truth of a pond
PART II – NATURE AND CULTURE
WHAT CAN WE KNOW ABOUT A POND?
1st Interval – On Method and Substance
phenomenology
Chapter 3 – A Phenomenological Exploration
to the pond itself
2nd Interval – On Method and Substance
dialectics
Chapter 4 – A Dialectical Investigation
everything is in this pond
PART III – FACT AND VALUE
ONE POND, RIGHT OR WRONG
Chapter 5 – Order and Autonomy in Nature and History
what ponds do
3rd Interval – On Method and Substance
praxis
Chapter 6 – From Integral Humanity to Participatory Belonging
wet feet and a helping hand
PART IV – REALITY AND IMAGINATION
PONDS ON EARTH AND OTHER WORLDS
Chapter 7 – A Global Crisis in Planetary Perspective
stirring up a sea of troubles
4th Interval – On Method and Substance
imagination
Chapter 8 – Intimations of a New Socioecological Imaginary
eddies, bubbles, and ripples
PART V – EARTH AND WORLD
FROM HABITABILITY TO LIVEABILITY
Chapter 9 – To the Far Side of Anthropocentrism
safely through the straits
5th Interval – On Method and Substance
ecology
Chapter 10 – On the Near Side of Ecocentrism
running waters, deeper still
Coda – Bringing Earth and world together again
sketch of an existential ecology
This book is truly unique: at once brilliant, timely, often amusing, and exceptionally rich in its references to contemporary thinking in philosophy, history, and science. Professor Ally engages Jean-Paul Sartre as his Virgil in a revealing trek through nature, from a sylvan pond to the outer rings of the global ecological crisis. In the end, while not concealing the hellish aspect of our current situation, he argues strongly and convincingly against abandoning hope.
— William L. McBride, Purdue University
In ‘bringing Sartre to the water’s edge,’ Matthew Ally demonstrates the surprising relevance of existentialism to the growing environmental crisis, and gives us a new and holistic way of understanding that crisis. There is nothing quite like this work of ecology and philosophy focusing on a single pond in upstate New York and ending with the urgent call to transform the geoculture of capitalism, consumerism, and colonialism. Deeply considered, beautifully written, and powerfully felt, it is a book to be lived with, enjoyed, savored, and pondered. Ecology and Existence is a masterwork by a mature and confident thinker.
— Ronald Aronson, author of We: Reviving Social Hope
In a brilliant tour de force Matthew Ally brings Sartre to bear on environmental thought. His masterfully structured work reads like a nimble essay. He captures our imagination, bringing the conceptual toolbox of humanist thought into play at a pond. Sartre at the water’s edge never turns into a Narcissus reflecting upon himself, rather, he finds his 'integrative and open-ended philosophical method' in a newly found freedom of water. Contingency, freedom, responsibility, solidarity, and liberation, are revived in the experiential lack of gravity the pond provides. Ally is a story teller and a scientifically informed philosopher with an exquisite literary sensibility. He brings natural history writing back into philosophy, contemporizing a rich tradition of Thoreau and Rachel Carson.
— Irene J. Klaver, University of North Texas
The pond is the place where many an American philosopher have skipped their philosophical stones, and by throwing some of his own Matthew Ally has placed himself within this important American tradition of ecological/environmental writing. This is a very original contribution to existentialism, existentialist ethics, environmental ethics, continental philosophy, and Sartre scholarship. This is not a book on Sartre, but a book that works with Sartre. It is not exegetical, although there is plenty of that. It is what the author calls 'reconstructive philosophy,' which is a wonderful genre: what philosophers could and should have said, but never did, even if it was bubbling off the pages they wrote. This is also not an apologia, but rather a constructive and prospective work: what we can and should do with one of the most inspiring philosophers of the twentieth century. Ally confronts directly five main evident liabilities with Sartre’s existentialism in relationship to the pressing issue of global climate change and environmental justice in the Anthropocene: reflexive anthropocentrism, heuristic exceptionalism, naïve instrumentalism, clannish exclusivism, and philosophical machismo. Follow Ally along his trekking to find out how he unravels Sartre’s inchoate existentialist environmental ethics.
— Eduardo Mendieta, Professor of Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University
The pond! Does it exist, or not exist? Matthew Ally has brought Jean-Paul Sartre finally out from the café and into the woods, writing a major work of existential ecophilosophy that is the climax of years of careful thinking. The field, like the pond, will be changed forever.
— David Rothenberg, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, New Jersey Institute of Technology
The pond! Does it exist, or not exist? Matthew Ally has brought Jean-Paul Sartre finally out from the café and into the woods, writing a major work of existential ecophilosophy that is the climax of years of careful thinking. The field, like the pond, will be changed forever.
— David Rothenberg, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, New Jersey Institute of Technology
The expression “it seems fair to wonder” appears frequently throughout the book. It is an apt expression for Ecology and Existence, which encourages its readers to wonder (more or for the first time) about Sartre’s philosophy, ecology, the sciences more generally, our environmental and ecological crises, hope (and despair) over the future of Earth and its myriad worlds, and the relations among all of these. Especially for those who consider themselves in some sense Sartrean (seeking intelligibility, struggling for a better future, perhaps to this point insufficiently thinking through ecological matters), this book is a helpful read.
— Sartre Studies International