Sustainability in the Anthropocene

Philosophical Essays on Renewable Technologies

Edited by Róisín Lally - Contributions by Cristina Pontes Bonfiglioli; Jan Kyrre Berg Friis; Don Ihde; Babette Babich; Patricia Glazebrook; Róisín Lally; Dana S. Belu; Brendan Mahoney; Galit Wellner; Daniel Bradley; Thomas M. Jeannot and Lars Botin

We are facing an environmental crisis that some say is ushering a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, one that threatens not only a great deal of life on the planet but also our understanding of who we are and our relation to the natural world. In the face of this crisis it has become clear that we need a more sustainable culture. In fact the language of sustainability has become pervasive in our culture and has deeply ingrained itself in our understanding of what living a good life would entail. “Sustainability,” however, is a contested word, and it carries with it, often implicitly and unacknowledged, deep philosophical claims that are entangled with all kinds of assumptions and power relations, some of them very problematic. This book attempts to set this urgent goal of sustainability free from its more reductive and harmful interpretations and to thereby apply a more thoughtful environmental ethics to current and emerging technologies, particularly those involving reproduction and the harnessing of energy that dominate our elemental relations to sun and air, wind and water, earth and forest.

The book is divided into 4 sections: (1) Sustainability: A Contested Term, (2) Sustainability and Renewable Technologies: Sun, Air, Wind, Water, (3) Sustainability and Design, and (4) Sustainability and Ethics. The first section sets the context for our studies and opens a space for thinking sustainability in a more thoughtful way than is often the case in contemporary discussions. The next two sections are the heart of our contribution to postphenomenology and technoscience, and the essays, here, turn to concrete examinations of particular technologies and questions of technological design in the light of our environmental crisis. The fourth section closes the book by drawing some more general implications for ethics from the intersection of the foregoing themes.

Lexington Books

Pages: 258 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-1-4985-8422-7 • Hardback • April 2019 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-1-4985-8424-1 • Paperback • December 2021 • $44.99 • (£35.00)

978-1-4985-8423-4 • eBook • April 2019 • $42.50 • (£35.00)

Series: Postphenomenology and the Philosophy of Technology

Subjects: Philosophy / Movements / Phenomenology, Philosophy / Ethics & Moral Philosophy, Philosophy / Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy / Environmental Philosophy

Sustainability in the Anthropocene

Philosophical Essays on Renewable Technologies

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

We are facing an environmental crisis that some say is ushering a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, one that threatens not only a great deal of life on the planet but also our understanding of who we are and our relation to the natural world. In the face of this crisis it has become clear that we need a more sustainable culture. In fact the language of sustainability has become pervasive in our culture and has deeply ingrained itself in our understanding of what living a good life would entail. “Sustainability,” however, is a contested word, and it carries with it, often implicitly and unacknowledged, deep philosophical claims that are entangled with all kinds of assumptions and power relations, some of them very problematic. This book attempts to set this urgent goal of sustainability free from its more reductive and harmful interpretations and to thereby apply a more thoughtful environmental ethics to current and emerging technologies, particularly those involving reproduction and the harnessing of energy that dominate our elemental relations to sun and air, wind and water, earth and forest.

The book is divided into 4 sections: (1) Sustainability: A Contested Term, (2) Sustainability and Renewable Technologies: Sun, Air, Wind, Water, (3) Sustainability and Design, and (4) Sustainability and Ethics. The first section sets the context for our studies and opens a space for thinking sustainability in a more thoughtful way than is often the case in contemporary discussions. The next two sections are the heart of our contribution to postphenomenology and technoscience, and the essays, here, turn to concrete examinations of particular technologies and questions of technological design in the light of our environmental crisis. The fourth section closes the book by drawing some more general implications for ethics from the intersection of the foregoing themes.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 258 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-1-4985-8422-7 • Hardback • April 2019 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-1-4985-8424-1 • Paperback • December 2021 • $44.99 • (£35.00)

978-1-4985-8423-4 • eBook • April 2019 • $42.50 • (£35.00)

Series: Postphenomenology and the Philosophy of Technology

Subjects: Philosophy / Movements / Phenomenology, Philosophy / Ethics & Moral Philosophy, Philosophy / Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy / Environmental Philosophy

Author

Rόisín Lally is lecturer of philosophy at Gonzaga University.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Sustainable Technologies in the Anthropocene

Dan Bradley

Part One: Defining Sustainability

1. Sustainability: a Single Word and a World of Meanings

Cristina Pontes Bonfiglioli

2. Is This the End?

Jan Kyrre Berg Friis

Part Two: Sustainability and Renewable Technologies: Sun, Air, Wind, Water

3. Is it Too Late to “Let the Sun Shine in”?

Don Ihde

4. Talking Weather from Ge-rede to Ge-stell

Babette Babich

5. Water and Oil: Global Struggles in Sustainability

Trish Glazebrook

6. The Ontogenesis of Wind Turbines and the Question of Sustainability

Róisín Lally

Part Three: Sustainability and Design

7. We’re in this Together: Climate Change and Reproductive Technology in the Age of Ge-stell

Dana S. Belu

8. An Alternative to Technological Instrumentalism: Considering the Aesthetic Dimension of Sustainable Energy

Brendan Mahoney

9. Digital Cultural Sustainability

Galit Wellner

Part Four: Sustainability and Ethics

10. Sustainable Futures: Ethico-Political Dimensions of Technology

Lars Botin

11. Beyond Naturalism: A Personalist Integral Humanism

Thomas Jeannot

12. The Ethics of Sustainability, Instrumental Reason, and the Goodness of Nature

Daniel Bradley

Reviews

Róisín Lally’s Sustainability in the Anthropocene provides a wealth of essays on the philosophical meanings and implications of renewable technologies, as well as glimpses of novel ways toward a sustainable future that integrate deeply meaningful ways of being for humans.This volume shows us some ways of doing just that, and I commend Lally for putting together such a robust collection on an increasingly important subject.

— Journal of the Pacific Association for the Continental Tradition

Offering an alternative to analytical and pragmatic approaches to ecocide, these twelve essays invite readers to rethink economics, technology, and the concept of sustainability in philosophical terms. Phenomenology is here reshaped as applied philosophy, aiming at an alternative future. Contributors to this four-part edited volume adopt a range of angles from which to view the global problem we all face: that when the goods of developing economies sustain human life, those same processes degrade the environment at an alarming rate. Most chapters offer creative alternatives, even hope, supporting the proposition that future generations may flourish. Part 1 looks at the philosophical origins of sustainability; part 2 examines renewable technologies. One instructive example from part 3 ("Sustainability and Design") is Belu's essay (chapter 7) on in vitro fertilization, arguing that the surrogate womb has become a technology and the woman a receptacle or resource. Turning women's reproductive rights on their head, Belu shows how in vitro fertilization is premised on the same consumerist principles that lead to ecological degradation. The three challenging essays of part 4 ("Sustainability and Ethics") complete this philosophical tour de force, linking specific trends in modern thought to the ecological dilemma of our time.

Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.
— Choice Reviews

Features

1/31/2020 - Yale Climate Connections featured this title in a list article titled "Books about life in the Anthropocene." Link: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/01/books-about-life-in-the-anthropocene/