The Culture of Extinction: Toward a Philosophy of Deep Ecology

Front Cover
Humanity Books, 2003 - Nature - 488 pages
Global warming, air and water pollution, ozone-layer depletion, species extinction these are all the results of what philosopher Frederic L. Bender calls our "culture of extinction."Bender criticizes many of industrial society's basic assumptions, for example, that we humans are superior to animals, that the Bible justifies our dominion over the Earth, or that we are evolution's highest products. He also reveals the underlying connections between mechanistic science and Earth's devastation under capitalism, and he points out that major modernist philosophies, from Bacon and Descartes to 20th-century empiricism, are in the service of the culture of extinction.In conclusion, he offers a way of integrating the many insights of the different environmentalist movements and discusses practical steps to make our culture more environmentally friendly."

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Contents

Eating the Snakes Eggs
15
Ecocide
24
Stratospheric Ozone Depletion
42
Copyright

19 other sections not shown

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About the author (2003)

Frederic L. Benderis professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado and is the editor of "The Communist Manifesto: A Norton Critical Edition, The Betrayal of Marx," and "Karl Marx: The Essential Writings.""

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