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142 pages

English

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The global ecological crisis is upon us. From global warming to the long-term implications of ocean acidification, air and water pollution, deforestation, and the omnipresent dangers of nuclear technology the future of our planetary home is threatened. Yet in the midst of the unfolding crisis, the conventional ideologies of the twentieth century and their representations of nature remain unchallenged by both the defenders of capitalism and capitalism's most radical critics. The Distortion of Nature's Image illustrates how the anti-naturalism of late capitalist society, in which nature is reified into the emptiness of mere matter, simply a thing to be dominated, is subtly complemented by the failure of the Left to go both beyond the historic limitations of Marx's ninteenth-century viewpoint and beyond anarchism's blind faith in "natural law." However, an alternative for comprehending nature and the ecological crisis as historical and social phenomena remains open in the dialectical naturalism of Western Marxism and Murray Bookchin's social ecology. By examining in closer detail how Bookchin's social ecology politicizes the concept of nature, as well as how precursory models in Western Marxist thought provide a foundation for this, Damian Gerber illustrates how the notion of an ecological society remains a decisively political question.
Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Ecology and Critical Theory
On Some Limitations of Contemporary Nature Ontologies
Reification and the Historical Context of Nature Philosophy
The Dialectic of the Nature-Concept
The Concept of Dialectical Naturalism

1. Anti-Naturalism, the Bourgeois Enlightenment, and the Modern Origins of a Dialectical Naturalism
The Becoming of Nature
Epistemology and the Bourgeois Image of Nature
The Kantian “Block” and the Distancing of Reason from Nature
An Alternative Perspective on Kant: Schiller’s Aesthetic Letters
Fichte’s Nature-Concept as the Non-Ego
“The Struggle of Spirit with Itself ”
Hegel’s Critique of the Concept of Natural Law
The Representation of Nature as Reification
Hegel’s Doctrine of the Notion
The Anti-Naturalism of “Spirit” and the Limits of Hegel’s Idealism
Feuerbachian Interlude

2. Nature in Marx and Anarchism
Marx and the Historicization of Nature
The Younger Marx’s Naturalism
The Concept of Nature in Marx’s Middle Period and the Ethical Dimension of Marx’s Anti-Naturalism
Beyond the Limits of Marx’s Nineteenth Century
Post-Proudhonian Anarchism and the Persistence of Mythopoeic Naturalism
Nature Against Itself: The Contradictions of Bakunin’s “Natural Human Society”
The Ambiguities of Kropotkin’s Concept of “Anarchist Morality”
Digression: On the Historical Scars of Nature Philosophy
The Self-Contradictory Historicism of Kropotkin’s “Mutual Aid” Thesis
Naturalism as Politics
The Determinate Negation of Kropotkin’s Theory of Society
The Necessity of a Dialectical Naturalism

3. Recovering a Dialectical Naturalism
The Basis of a Dialectical Naturalism
Precursory Models of Dialectical Naturalism
Bloch’s Notion of “Technological Contact”
Murray Bookchin’s Social Ecology
The Nature-Concept and the Anthropology of Hierarchy
Toward a Communalist Image of Nature

Epilogue
Appendix
Theses on Communalism
Notes

Sujets

Lycée

Philosophie

Philosophie politique

Sociology

Informations

Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	25 mars 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781438473567
Langue	English

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The Distortion of Nature’s Image
SUNY series in New Political Science

Bradley J. Macdonald, editor
The Distortion of Nature’s Image
Reification and the Ecological Crisis
DAMIAN GERBER
Cover: iStock by Getty Images
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2019 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gerber, Damian, 1988– author.
Title: The distortion of nature’s image : reification and the ecological crisis / Damian Gerber.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2019. | Series: SUNY series in new political science | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018021866 | ISBN 9781438473550 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438473567 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Global environmental change—Social aspects. | Human ecology. | Nature—Effect of human beings on. | Social ecology. | Capitalism—Environmental aspects.
Classification: LCC GE149 .G465 2019 | DDC 304.2/8—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018021866
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Alexandra,
the one who opened my eyes to all the hope and beauty in a biosphere worth preserving
Contents
P REFACE
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
I NTRODUCTION
Ecology and Critical Theory
On Some Limitations of Contemporary Nature Ontologies
Reification and the Historical Context of Nature Philosophy
The Dialectic of the Nature-Concept
The Concept of Dialectical Naturalism
C HAPTER O NE
Anti-Naturalism, the Bourgeois Enlightenment, and the Modern Origins of a Dialectical Naturalism
The Becoming of Nature
Epistemology and the Bourgeois Image of Nature
The Kantian “Block” and the Distancing of Reason from Nature
An Alternative Perspective on Kant: Schiller’s Aesthetic Letters
Fichte’s Nature-Concept as the Non-Ego
“The Struggle of Spirit with Itself”
Hegel’s Critique of the Concept of Natural Law
The Representation of Nature as Reification
Hegel’s Doctrine of the Notion
The Anti-Naturalism of “Spirit” and the Limits of Hegel’s Idealism
Feuerbachian Interlude
C HAPTER T WO
Nature in Marx and Anarchism
Marx and the Historicization of Nature
The Younger Marx’s Naturalism
The Concept of Nature in Marx’s Middle Period and the Ethical Dimension of Marx’s Anti-Naturalism
Beyond the Limits of Marx’s Nineteenth Century
Post-Proudhonian Anarchism and the Persistence of Mythopoeic Naturalism
Nature Against Itself: The Contradictions of Bakunin’s “Natural Human Society”
The Ambiguities of Kropotkin’s Concept of “Anarchist Morality”
Digression: On the Historical Scars of Nature Philosophy
The Self-Contradictory Historicism of Kropotkin’s “Mutual Aid” Thesis
Naturalism as Politics
The Determinate Negation of Kropotkin’s Theory of Society
The Necessity of a Dialectical Naturalism
C HAPTER T HREE
Recovering a Dialectical Naturalism
The Basis of a Dialectical Naturalism
Precursory Models of Dialectical Naturalism
Bloch’s Notion of “Technological Contact”
Murray Bookchin’s Social Ecology
The Nature-Concept and the Anthropology of Hierarchy
Toward a Communalist Image of Nature
E PILOGUE
A PPENDIX
Theses on Communalism
N OTES
B IBLIOGRAPHY
I NDEX
Preface
This book attempts to explore, in the context of a critical history of Western nature philosophy, how the organization of our global market society, its institutions, and prevailing ideas are reflected in prevailing concepts of nature. It is concerned primarily with a critical examination of the “nature” that prevailed and remained influential throughout the liberal enlightenment tradition, through to three of the most extant avenues of radical philosophy (Marx, anarchism, and social ecology) and their images of nature, which have offered us the means to think in innovative ways about the increasingly tenuous relationship between human social organization and the ecology of the planet on whose surface we live. The American radical philosopher Murray Bookchin (1921–2006) is one of the chief contributors to the theory of social ecology, and, accordingly, a good part of this book concentrates on Bookchin’s attempt to construct a philosophy of dialectical naturalism. A dialectical naturalism, it is contended herein, is a way of looking critically at humanity’s relationship to nature that resists reified thinking and expands our consciousness about new configurations of human-ecology relationships. 1
Before we turn to an outline of the book, it would be helpful to briefly explain the book’s relationship to some predominant trends in the contemporary environmental movement, and what it hopes to contribute to studies of Bookchin and social ecology, and environmental thought more generally.
The study of social ecology, and in particular the thought of Murray Bookchin, is an emerging field of influence in radical political ecology, and it is within the broader tradition of Bookchin studies that this work is situated. 2 A backdrop to this tradition, as explored elsewhere, often appears to be a tacit acceptance of certain flashpoints between divergent movements in Western political ecology, in particular the debate between deep ecology and social ecology, between Neo-Marxist ecologists and social ecologists, the distinction between reformist and revolutionary political theory and, as an outgrowth of this, the Bookchin-Eckersley debate of the 1990s, often perceived as a clash between liberal environmentalist and more radical social ecology perspectives. 3 It is not the intention of this book to recapitulate all of the parameters of these debates, not least because in many respects they have become outmoded and aspects of them may be of dubious relevance to contemporary ecology movements. The introduction that follows this preface looks to some of the most pertinent contemporary scholarship in political ecology and concisely examines its relationship to the analysis of reified thinking and dialectical naturalism that follows. However, three recurring themes of this work are worth mentioning in brief here, for they are of great significance to the possibility of rethinking the contribution of social ecology to ecology movements. These are the relationship of Bookchin’s thought to Marxism, the argument that social ecology can be regarded as a continuation of the radical tradition of critical theory (in the sense of Max Horkheimer’s formative Traditional and Critical Theory essay) and the theoretical distinction between reformist and revolutionary perspectives, which often informs how ecology movements develop in practice.
As Bookchin’s idea of a dialectical naturalism took an increasingly distinctive shape, it defined itself both as an outgrowth of, and against, varied elements of Marx’s thought. Nonetheless, this book seeks to illustrate that it is not so much in antithesis to Marx’s thought itself, but in antithesis to certain trends in the subsequent development of Marxism (sometimes referred to by Bookchin, rather too vaguely, as “Neo-Marxism”), that the most vociferous aspects of the Bookchin critique can be understood to be directed. 4 It is well beyond the subject matter of this book to delve into the voluminous debates that define this critique, and at any rate, these are addressed to some degree elsewhere. 5 However, it would be useful to note here an important difference in the relationship between Bookchin’s thought and Marx, and the development of what is nowadays called Eco-Marxism. The renowned Marxist political geographer Castree, in a survey of the contribution of Marxist thought to political geography, emphasizes the influence of Neil Smith in particular, whose work Uneven Development , published in 1984, postulated that nature itself is “produced” not “given.” 6 For Castree, it is above all Smith’s “insistence that there is no nature intelligible outside contingent social discourses, relations and practices” that has proven to be one of the most influential turning points in the development of contemporary Eco-Marxism. 7 While it is only implicit in this book, a valuable critique of this position could be made by illustrating how its undialectical attempt to absorb the concept of nature within the predominant mode of production (in Marx’s terms) is actually more of a return to a pre-Hegelian, Fichtean metaphysics (a metaphysics detailed in the first chapter of this book), and that an alternative and more dialectical interpretation of Marx’s concept of nature is left open: namely, that nature can be perceived as both what is given (and hence the “first nature” of eco-communities independent of human labor) and that which is, in turn, mediated and modified through the prevailing mode of production (that is, the “second nature” of market society). It is this alternative interpretation of Marx that is left open to Bookchin to develop in a decidedly ethical and aesthetic direction in the form of a philosophy of dialectical naturalism, and that he himself directs against the productivist trend characteristic of much contemporary Eco-Marxism. 8
A more complex question arises from the development of Frankfurt School critical theory, given both its stated aims of preventing the members of society from falling victim to reified thought 9 —an underlying motivation that, as this book will demonstrate, is also at the core of social ecology’s dialectical concept of nature—and the shared interest of several foundational members of the Frankfu