Authors

David Wood

Disciplines

Life Sciences | Philosophy

Abstract

Habit rules our lives. And yet climate change and the catastrophic future it portends, makes it clear that we cannot go on like this.

Our habits are integral to narratives of the good life, to social norms and expectations, as well as to economic reality. Such shared shapes are vital. Yet while many of our individual habits seem perfectly reasonable, when aggregated together they spell disaster. Beyond consumerism, other forms of life and patterns of dwelling are clearly possible. But how can we get there from here?

Philosophy is about emancipation—from illusions, myths, and oppression. In Reoccupy Earth, the noted philosopher David Wood shows how an approach to philosophy attuned to our ecological existence can suspend the taken-for-granted and open up alternative forms of earthly dwelling.

Bringing an uncommon lucidity and directness to sophisticated philosophical questions, Wood plots experiential pathways that disrupt our habitual existence. In walking us through a range of reversals, transformations, and estrangements that thinking ecologically demands, Wood shows how living responsibly with the earth means affirming the ways in which we are vulnerable, receptive, and dependent, and the need for solidarity all round.

David Wood is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University.

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