Critical Planetary Romanticism - by Whitney a Bauman (Paperback)

About the Book

This book turns to the nineteenth-century German Romantic tradition to find resources for a new approach--critical planetary romanticism--that foregrounds the irreducible entanglement of all living and nonliving things.

Book Synopsis

Facing planetary environmental crises, philosophers and theorists have critiqued the human exceptionalism of dominant forms of science. Yet today is not the first moment in which technological and political change have spurred efforts to rethink humanity's place in the world. This book turns to the nineteenth-century German Romantic tradition to find resources for a new approach--critical planetary romanticism--that foregrounds the irreducible entanglement of all living and nonliving things.

Whitney A. Bauman argues that German Romantic figures such as Ernst Haeckel represent a vital alternative path for critical thought that strikingly anticipates contemporary new materialisms. Their thinking about evolution and ecology did not separate humans from the rest of the natural world but instead foregrounded an immanent understanding of the world from a position within it. Bauman traces the theological and religious influences on Romantic ecology, revealing how Christian as well as Indic and Islamic thought shaped scientific understandings of nature. Considering the history of scientific racism associated with Haeckel, he shows that critical planetary romanticism addresses the various embodied experiences of humanity and how they are shaped by power relations. At the same time, he challenges postmodern and critical theories to engage with the nonhuman world and the entirety of the planetary community. A bold intervention into environmental philosophy, Critical Planetary Romanticism reconceives new materialism and in so doing lays the groundwork for a new planetary politics.

Review Quotes

Bauman takes us on a lucid journey with nineteenth-century German Romantics and contemporary visionaries who view the natural world as emergent or evolving and eschew reductionist interpretations that have fueled technological extraction and damage. His clarion call for the adoption of a new materialism, blending science-based understandings with reverent eco-mindedness, is imbued with his deep philosophical wisdom and spiritual sensibilities.--Ursula Goodenough, author of The Sacred Depths of Nature: How Life Emerged and Evolved

Bauman's book is a tour de force, a remarkable synthesis of nineteenth-century German Romantic thinkers and twentieth-century critical theorists. It is a pathbreaking work in terms of highlighting a postmodern view of relationality and interdependence. The research is comprehensive and the conclusions are compelling. This book is original, creative, and potentially life-changing. It should be required reading for those seeking reattunements to the planetary community.--Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, coauthor of Journey of the Universe

In this eloquently argued and intellectually adventurous book, Bauman traces a line of thinking, knowing, and feeling about the natural world from J. G. Herder to Ernst Haeckel to articulate a contemporary religious naturalism, informed by emergent scientific understandings and attuned to current ecopolitical struggles. Written with creative verve, scholarly rigor, and ethical gravitas, Critical Planetary Romanticism proffers urgently needed insights for our ailing Earth and its diverse more-than-human denizens.--Kate Rigby, author of Reclaiming Romanticism: Towards an Ecopoetics of Decolonization

About the Author

Whitney A. Bauman is professor of religious studies at Florida International University. A cofounder of the interdisciplinary research platform Counterpoint: Navigating Knowledge, he is the author of Religion and Ecology: Developing a Planetary Ethic (Columbia, 2014) and coauthor of Environmental Ethics and Uncertainty: Wrestling with Wicked Problems (2019), among other books.