Nature and Value - by Akeel Bilgrami (Paperback)

About the Book

This book brings together essays that individually and as a whole present a detailed and rigorous multidisciplinary exploration of the concept of nature and its wider ethical and political implications. The essays together present a revaluation of the natural world with a view to addressing some of the fundamental concerns of our time.

Book Synopsis

Today, as we confront an unprecedented environmental crisis of our own making, it is more urgent than ever to consider the notion of nature and our place within it. This book brings together essays that individually and as a whole present a detailed and rigorous multidisciplinary exploration of the concept of nature and its wider ethical and political implications.

A distinguished list of scholars take up a broad range of questions regarding the relations between the human subject and its natural environment: when and how the concept of nature gave way to the concept of natural resources; the genealogy of the concept of nature through political economy, theology, and modern science; the idea of the Anthropocene; the prospects for green growth; and the deep alienation of human beings in the modern period from both nature and each other. By engaging with a wide range of scholarship, they ultimately converge on a common outlook that is both capacious and original. The essays together present a revaluation of the natural world that seeks to reshape political and ethical ideals and practice with a view to addressing some of the fundamental concerns of our time.

Nature and Value features widely known scholars in a broad swath of disciplines, ranging from philosophy, politics, and political economy to geology, law, literature, and psychology. They include Jonathan Schell, David Bromwich, James Tully, Jedediah Purdy, Robert Pollin, Jan Zalasiewicz, Carol Rovane, Sanjay Reddy, Joanna Picciotto, Anthony Laden, Nikolas Kompridis, Bina Gogineni, Kyle Nichols, and the editor, Akeel Bilgrami.

Review Quotes

An outstanding collection of essays in which some of the world's leading thinkers subject the fundamental presuppositions of contemporary society to rigorous scrutiny. Essential reading for those who are searching for fresh perspectives on the current human predicament.--Amitav Ghosh, author of The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable

Our awareness of having entered the Anthropocene is still so recent that many of the issues, challenges, and dilemmas it poses are still underexplored. This admirable and inspiring book offers a number of converging guidelines that help us to see our predicament and to see it whole.--Charles Taylor, author of A Secular Age

It has been a genuine privilege and a pleasure to read this book. I learned a great deal from doing so and I fully expect that other readers will learn much as well. Nature and Value accomplishes something inestimably important by demonstrating how it is possible to juxtapose writings by scholars from a vast array of different disciplines and generate a conversation about climate change that is at once coherent and dynamic.--Paul Apostolidis, London School of Economics and Political Science

About the Author

Akeel Bilgrami is the Sidney Morgenbesser Professor of Philosophy and a professor on the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. His Columbia University Press books include Who's Afraid of Academic Freedom? (2014) and Beyond the Secular West (2016).