Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press (2015)
Authors |
|
Abstract |
A provocative argument that environmental thinking would be better off if it dropped the concept of “nature” altogether and spoke instead of the built environment.
Environmentalism, in theory and practice, is concerned with protecting nature. But if we have now reached “the end of nature,” as Bill McKibben and other environmental thinkers have declared, what is there left to protect? In Thinking like a Mall, Steven Vogel argues that environmental thinking would be better off if it dropped the concept of “nature” altogether and spoke instead of the “environment”—that is, the world that actually surrounds us, which is always a built world, the only one that we inhabit. We need to think not so much like a mountain (as Aldo Leopold urged) as like a mall. Shopping malls, too, are part of the environment and deserve as much serious consideration from environmental thinkers as do mountains.
Vogel argues provocatively that environmental philosophy, in its ethics, should no longer draw a distinction between the natural and the artificial and, in its politics, should abandon the idea that something beyond human practices (such as “nature”) can serve as a standard determining what those practices ought to be. The appeal to nature distinct from the built environment, he contends, may be not merely unhelpful to environmental thinking but in itself harmful to that thinking. The question for environmental philosophy is not “how can we save nature?” but rather “what environment should we inhabit, and what practices should we engage in to help build it?”
|
Keywords | Environmental Philosophy, Nature, Artifacts, Philosophy of technology, Social and Political Philosophy |
Categories | (categorize this paper) |
Reprint years | 2016 |
Buy this book | $23.05 new (5% off) $24.23 from Amazon Amazon page |
ISBN(s) | 0262529718 9780262529716 0262029103 |
Options |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Download options
References found in this work BETA
No references found.
Citations of this work BETA
Are Humans Disturbing Conditions in Ecology?S. Andrew Inkpen - 2017 - Biology and Philosophy 32 (1):51-71.
When Ecology Needs Economics and Economics Needs Ecology: Interdisciplinary Exchange During the Anthropocene.S. Andrew Inkpen & C. Tyler DesRoches - 2020 - Ethics, Policy and Environment 23 (2):203-221.
View all 29 citations / Add more citations
Similar books and articles
Reclaiming Nature by Reclaiming the Body.Guðbjörg R. Jóhannesdóttir & Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir - 2016 - Balkan Journal of Philosophy 8 (1):39-48.
Environmental Philosophy After the End of Nature.Steven Vogel - 2002 - Environmental Ethics 24 (1):23-39.
Environmental Philosophy After the End of Nature.Steven Vogel - 2002 - Environmental Ethics 24 (1):23-39.
Steven Vogel. Thinking Like a Mall: Environmental Philosophy After the End of Nature.Allen Thompson - 2016 - Environmental Philosophy 13 (2):315-318.
Thinking Like a Mall: Environmental Philosophy After the End of Nature. [REVIEW]Jeremy Bendik-Keymer - 2016 - Environmental Ethics 38 (4):507-508.
Thinking Like a Mall: Environmental Philosophy After the End of Nature.Thomas S. J. Smith - 2016 - Ethics, Policy and Environment 19 (1):114-117.
Environmental Philosophy Is Environmental Activism: The Most Radical and Effective Kind.Callicott J. Baird - 1995 - In Don E. Marietta & Lester E. Embree (eds.), Environmental Philosophy and Environmental Activism. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 19--36.
Nature in Common?: Environmental Ethics and the Contested Foundations of Environmental Policy.Ben Minteer (ed.) - 2009 - Temple University Press.
Thinking Like a Mall: Environmental Philosophy After the End of Nature.Emily Ray - 2017 - Contemporary Political Theory 16 (4):549-552.
Environmental Ethics and the Built Environment.Roger J. H. King - 2000 - Environmental Ethics 22 (2):115-131.
The Place of Domesticated Spaces in Environmental Ethics: Toward an Environmentally Responsible Culture.Roger J. H. King - 2003 - Social Philosophy Today 19:41-53.
Preservation Versus the People?: Nature, Humanity, and Political Philosophy.Mathew Humphrey - 2002 - Oxford University Press.
Analytics
Added to PP index
2018-09-18
Total views
4 ( #1,273,217 of 2,498,155 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
4 ( #171,347 of 2,498,155 )
2018-09-18
Total views
4 ( #1,273,217 of 2,498,155 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
4 ( #171,347 of 2,498,155 )
How can I increase my downloads?
Downloads