Abstract

The Ecology of Freedom, the culmination of Bookchin's efforts to construct a comprehensive ecological social theory, is a major achievement Bookchin's perspective, as is clear from his earlier works, is deeply rooted in ecology. In this book he expands his ecological analysis to a full-scale teleological, organicist interpretation of reality. The result is a coherent, comprehensive metaphysical position v/hich is capable of integrating his theories of the self, society, and nature.

Bookchin questions the direction in which Western thought has moved at crucial points in its evolution. From its beginnings, it bore the marks of social domination. While the pre-Socratics retain traces of the values of organic society that preceeded the rise of patriarchy, the state, and private property, by the time of Plato and Aristode and rationality of domination was already deeply rooted.