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Imagination and Environmental Political Thought - The Aftermath of Thoreau (Hardcover)
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Imagination and Environmental Political Thought - The Aftermath of Thoreau (Hardcover)
Series: Politics, Literature, & Film
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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Imagination and Environmental Political Thought: The Aftermath of
Thoreau seeks to correct oversimplified readings of Henry David
Thoreau's political thought by elucidating a key tension within his
imagination. With the celebration of Thoreau's two-hundredth
birthday now past, this study outlines, and builds on, his own
understanding of imagination and considers its implications for
environmental politics. Despite the use of the word, "aftermath,"
Thoreau's legacy for environmental political thought is primarily
constructive and foundational for modern environmentalism.
Thoreau's virtues and vices have been inherited by his
environmentally-conscious readers. The author of Walden's
preference for an abstract, ahistorical "higher law," his radical
concept of autonomy, and his frustration with government and
community foster an impractical political thought characteristic of
an idyllic imagination. Nevertheless, Thoreau demonstrates a more
prudential and moral imagination by emphasizing the inescapable
relationship between the moral order of individuals and the order
of political communities and by pioneering the central questions of
humanity's relationship to non-human nature. Can this tension of
imaginations be resolved? What are the consequences of this
tension? Thoreau's overall vision ultimately creates significant
problems with which environmentalists still struggle. While
Thoreau's emphasis on freedom and the immaterial aspects of human
and non-human nature are of considerable value, his abstract
political morality, misanthropy and escapism must be resisted both
for the sake of environmental well-being and human dignity. In
addition, this book is an exercise in re-thinking how the
humanities may provide scholars critical insights to better
diagnose and respond to the environmental challenges of our time.
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