Thinking Nature by Sean J. McGrath, Hardcover, 9781474449267 | Buy online at The Nile
Departments
 Free Returns*

Thinking Nature

An Essay in Negative Ecology

Author: Sean J. McGrath   Series: New Perspectives in Ontology

Thinking Nature
Hardcover

Makes a compelling case for a new Anthropocenic humanism where humans have a special responsibility for nature

Moving between ancient and modern sources, philosophy and theology, and science and popular culture, Sean McGrath offers a genuinely new reflection on what it means to be human in an era of climate change, mass extinction and geoengineering.

Read more
New
$283.61
Or pay later with
Free 30 day returns       Secure transaction
Check delivery options
Hardcover

PRODUCT INFORMATION

Summary

Makes a compelling case for a new Anthropocenic humanism where humans have a special responsibility for nature

Moving between ancient and modern sources, philosophy and theology, and science and popular culture, Sean McGrath offers a genuinely new reflection on what it means to be human in an era of climate change, mass extinction and geoengineering.

Read more

Description

Moving between ancient and modern sources, philosophy and theology, and science and popular culture, Sean McGrath offers a genuinely new reflection on what it means to be human in an era of climate change, mass extinction and geoengineering. Engaging with contemporary thinkers in eco-criticism, including Timothy Morton, Bruno Latour and Slavoj iek, McGrath argues for a distinctive role for the human being in the universe: the human being is nature come to full consciousness.McGrath's compelling case for a new Anthropocenic humanism is founded on a reverence for nature, a humanism that is not at the expense of nature, and a naturalism that is not at the expense of the human.

Read more

Critic Reviews

“A genuinely new contribution ...McGrath avoids the real pitfalls into which so much contemporary discourse about the environment fall. Either humans are entirely unexceptional, mere objects in the universe alongside other objects, or they are so distinct as to be utterly unnatural and separate from the rest of nature or Creation. Escaping this false choice, McGrath argues for the recovery of a sense of humans as natural, alongside other natural beings, but possessing a unique responsibility and vocation.”

Thinking Nature is ... the outcome of an impressive armament of interconnected research projects and a battery of relevant training, cultivated over a career just beginning to fully bloom. In it, McGrath draws upon a decade of scholarship on Heidegger, another decade of pioneering scholarship on Schelling, a variety of published essays on the German mystics, theosophists, medievals and Renaissance Neo-Hermetics who influenced them, doctorates in philosophy and theology, religious training in the Discalced Carmelite tradition, psychoanalytic training in the Jungian school, and insights gleaned from time spent at the helm of an ENGO called For A New Earth (FANE). Thinking Nature is born of the integration of contemplation and activism.--Chandler D. Rogers, Boston College "Continental Philosophy Review"

Read more

About the Author

Sean J. McGrath is Full Professor of Philosophy at Memorial University of Newfoundland and a Member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada. McGrath is a specialist in the philosophy of religion and the history of philosophy. He has published and lectured widely in German idealism, phenomenology, ecology, theology, and psychoanalysis.

Read more

Back Cover

Thinking Nature tracks the history of the concept of nature from the Hebrew Bible, through Renaissance philosophy and science, to Dark Ecology. Critical of the post-humanist trend in contemporary eco-criticism, Sean McGrath makes a compelling case for a new anthropocenic humanism - a humanism that is not at the expense of nature, and a naturalism that is not at the expense of the human.Nature as the stable backdrop of human civilization appears to have vanished in the light of climate change, mass extinction, and genetic engineering. And yet the term 'nature' remains vital to both metaphysics and to public ecological discourse. This is because 'nature', in McGrath's view, is a living symbol, and can survive the extinction of one or another of its meanings. Contemporary ecology must proceed in the absence of a clear concept of nature, not because none are possible, but because of the depth of the transformation occurring to the earth in the Anthropocene. Whatever shape the new concept of nature will take, it must include the one who thinks nature, the human being, since the separation of nature from culture, facts from values, is no longer tenable.

Read more

Product Details

Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Published
31st March 2019
Pages
224
ISBN
9781474449267

Returns

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.

New
$283.61
Or pay later with
Free 30 day returns       Secure transaction
Check delivery options
Browse by category
YOUR PAYMENT IS SECURE

We use 100% PCI DSS compliant payment services. That means your payment information is always protected, and never gets seen by anyone.
30-DAY FREE RETURN POLICY

Return nearly all items within 30 days of delivery. Unused or faulty items are acceptable as free returns. *Exceptions apply, see our returns policy.

The Nile
Follow Us
Help & Support
Contact Us

Copyright © 2025 The Nile Group.

Zip

 AfterPay

PayPal

Credit Card
Buy Baby at The Nile
 
 
 
Buy Toys at The Nile
Buy Books at The Nile
Buy Movies & TV at The Nile
Our Top Brands