No environmentalism without philosophy in Stephen Vogel's new book
Thinking Like a Mall is Vogel's latest contribution to what I have started to refer to as the post-natural naturalism literature. See the works of Paul Wapner, Tim Morton, Jedidiah Purdy, Rafi Youatt, William Cronon, Jamie Lorimer and many others.
Vogel is a philosopher, and his book is especially good in illustrating, without making the point explicitly, that any and all environmental criticism is immediately entangled in philosophical controversies. After all, environmentalism is about nature, and the concept of nature is at the root at least of western philosophy. (A great resource is Primitivism and Related Ideas in Anitquity by Boas and Lovejoy. These authors show how the concept of nature exploded in a proliferation of usages and connotations in classical Greece.)
It is also a problematic concept, though, which comes very close to standing for so much that it seems to stand for nothing. Vogel takes on "nature" as an ontological category. He dispenses with social constructivism through a good engagement with Hacking's excellent book on the topic, and quickly cuts straight to the heart of the matter, marching through Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger on his way to the utter destruction of the notion that it makes any philosophical sense to designate some things as natural and others as artificial.
But just because it makes no philosophical sense, does that mean it makes no sense at all? Distinctions between natural and artificial things break down eventually under philosophical scrutiny, and Vogel demonstrates this artfully. There is no nature opposed to non-nature, just reality. Just "the environment" says Vogel. But don't all distinctions between anything break down eventually under such a withering gaze? I am left wanting a dose of pragmatism to balance out the argument. Yes, we humans are part of nature, so in a sense everything we do is natural, but can we not use the term nature (pragmatically not ontologically) to designate that which humans have mostly left alone from that which we have built?
Here is my conjectural attempt to trace the genealogy of different senses of the term nature:
Vogel is a philosopher, and his book is especially good in illustrating, without making the point explicitly, that any and all environmental criticism is immediately entangled in philosophical controversies. After all, environmentalism is about nature, and the concept of nature is at the root at least of western philosophy. (A great resource is Primitivism and Related Ideas in Anitquity by Boas and Lovejoy. These authors show how the concept of nature exploded in a proliferation of usages and connotations in classical Greece.)
It is also a problematic concept, though, which comes very close to standing for so much that it seems to stand for nothing. Vogel takes on "nature" as an ontological category. He dispenses with social constructivism through a good engagement with Hacking's excellent book on the topic, and quickly cuts straight to the heart of the matter, marching through Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger on his way to the utter destruction of the notion that it makes any philosophical sense to designate some things as natural and others as artificial.
But just because it makes no philosophical sense, does that mean it makes no sense at all? Distinctions between natural and artificial things break down eventually under philosophical scrutiny, and Vogel demonstrates this artfully. There is no nature opposed to non-nature, just reality. Just "the environment" says Vogel. But don't all distinctions between anything break down eventually under such a withering gaze? I am left wanting a dose of pragmatism to balance out the argument. Yes, we humans are part of nature, so in a sense everything we do is natural, but can we not use the term nature (pragmatically not ontologically) to designate that which humans have mostly left alone from that which we have built?
Here is my conjectural attempt to trace the genealogy of different senses of the term nature:
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