A01=Eric T. Freyfogle
animal welfare
Author_Eric T. Freyfogle
capitalism
Category=RGC
Category=RNT
collective action
community
conservation
destruction
devastation
ecology
economics
ecosystem
ecotourism
environment
environmentalism
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
ethics
habitat
harmony
history
human exceptionalism
humanity
individualism
interdependence
land
morality
natural resources
nature
nonfiction
philosophy
politics
preservation
reality
science
social justice
technology
wilderness
wildlife
Product details
- ISBN 9780226326399
- Weight: 510g
- Dimensions: 15 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 28 Aug 2017
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
This is a book about nature and culture, Eric T. Freyfogle writes, "about our place and plight on earth, and the nagging challenges we face in living on it in ways that might endure." Challenges, he says, we are clearly failing to meet. Harking back to a key phrase from the essays of eminent American conservationist Aldo Leopold, Our Oldest Task spins together lessons from history and philosophy, the life sciences and politics, economics and cultural studies in a personal, erudite quest to understand how we might live on and in accord with the land. Passionate and pragmatic, extraordinarily well-read and eloquent, Freyfogle details a host of forces that have produced our self-defeating ethos of human exceptionalism. It is this outlook, he argues, not a lack of scientific knowledge or inadequate technology, that is the primary cause of our ecological predicament. Seeking to comprehend both the multifaceted complexity of contemporary environmental problems and the zeitgeist as it unfolds, Freyfogle explores such diverse topics as morality, the nature of reality (and the reality of nature), animal welfare, social justice movements, and market politics.
The result is a learned and inspiring rallying cry to achieve balance, a call to use our knowledge to more accurately identify the dividing line between living in and on the world and destruction. "To use nature," Freyfogle writes, "but not to abuse it."
Eric T. Freyfogle is the Maybelle Leland Swanlund Endowed Chair and professor of law emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he is also long associated with the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences. He is the author of numerous books, including, most recently, A Good That Transcends: How US Culture Undermines Environmental Reform, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
