Minding Nature: The Philosophers of Ecology

Reviewing the essays of Minding Nature, which proposes to “move toward both democracy and ecology,” Biehl ultimately determines the book to have failed in its stated mission. Either the selected philosophers are focused on ecology, and not democracy, or democracy, with little to say about ecology. Biehl decries the mysticism of their arguments that has gone unquestioned by the essayists. A large segment of the article is devoted to the writings of Murray Bookchin, the single thinker whom Biehl deems to have met the criteria of the book’s mission, but whose reviewers she found to be overly critical and myopic in their Marxist interpretation of his writings.

Originally published in issue 25.