PHILOSOPHY AND THE CLIMATE CRISIS

An intriguing examination of five philosophers and the current climate crisis.

Williston, a professor of philosophy at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, has written about climate change for 15 years, including in The Ethics of Climate Change: An Introduction (2018). In the first section of this new work, Williston intentionally employs the term “crisis” to describe the environmental challenges facing humanity, noting that the word stems from a Greek term referring to a disease’s “turn for the worse.” He goes on to provide a stark assessment of that crisis, noting that it has given people a sense of profound disorientation; he then proposes that human beings can look to the history of philosophy to find “a new orientation and sense of energy”—as well as the long-term, big-picture thinking that’s needed now and far into the future. To make his case, Williston analyzes five “world-shaking” historical events and traces how Plato, St. Augustine, René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel responded with innovative thinking. In the third and final part, “Reorientation,” Williston introduces a new metaphysics for the climate crisis, “Anthropocene monism,” which explores “the historically evolved and evolving technosphere” and society’s need to reorient political control of technology. Although the text explores a number of complex scientific, technological, and philosophical topics, Williston succeeds in making his arguments cohesive and accessible, often using real-world examples to illustrate abstract concepts. He includes cogent summaries of each section in a three-part narrative structure that’s reminiscent of an undergraduate lecture. In the conclusion, however, Williston tries to balance realism with optimism as he provides suggestions for new ways of thinking, but it’s the least effective section of the book. Also, while making the case that technology isn’t value-neutral, he includes a long section on gun violence that detracts from the main argument.

An often strong case for applying the insights of philosophy to the climate crisis.