Reinhabiting Reality

Towards a Recovery of Culture

By Freya Mathews

Subjects: Taoism, Environmental Philosophy, Deep Ecology, Cultural Critique
Series: SUNY series in Environmental Philosophy and Ethics
Paperback : 9780791463086, 238 pages, February 2005
Hardcover : 9780791463079, 238 pages, February 2005

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Table of contents

Acknowledgments

Part 1: Culture: The Love of Ground

 

1. The Last Crane: Modernity and the End of Grace
2. Letting the World Grow Old
3. Becoming Native

 

Part 2: Ground Studies

 

4. Julia's Farm: Fertility
5. Hamilton Downs: Philosophy in the Field...of Being
6. The White Heron: Grace and the Native Self

 

Part 3: Views from the Ground

 

7. The Merri Creek: To the Source of the Given
8. Barrmunga: Return to the Doorstep of Night

 

Afterword: CERES: Singing the Ground

Notes

Index

Argues that the environmental crisis is symptomatic of much deeper crises in modern civilization.

Description

In this sequel to For Love of Matter: A Contemporary Panpsychism, also published by SUNY Press, Freya Mathews argues that replacing the materialist premise of modern civilization with a panpsychist one transforms the entire fabric of culture in profound ways. She claims that the environmental crisis is a symptom of deeper issues facing modern civilization arising from the loss of the very meaning of culture. To come to grips with this crisis requires a change in the metaphysical premise of modernity deeper than any as yet envisaged even by the radical ecology movement. This is a change with profound implications for the full range of existential questions and not merely for questions regarding our relationship with "nature."

Freya Mathews is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at La Trobe University, Australia. She is the editor of Ecology and Democracy and the author of The Ecological Self.