Beyond the Bifurcation of Nature: A Common World for Animals and the Environment

Environmental destruction, animal abuse, and widespread indifference toward plants and elemental systems demand that a human-centric view of the world be permanently dismantled. But once it is, what functional hierarchies take its place, if any? This volume brings Alfred North Whitehead's process-relational worldview into conversation with deeper empirical perspectives on science and religion, with activist and de/constructive philosophies, with South Asian and indigenous traditions, and with art and ethical theory to ignite new nonviolent experiments in thought and action adequate for our current buzzing planetary multiplicity.

About the Author :
Brianne Donaldson aims to rethink new modes of co-creative freedom and non/violence in human-animal-ecology relations. Her research focuses on the worldviews of Jainism, Process Philosophy and Critical Animal Studies. She is the author of Creaturely Cosmologies: Why Metaphysics Matters for Animal and Planetary Liberation, and is Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Monmouth College.

Review :
'Overall, this book demonstrates process-relational philosophy's relevance and explicit contributions to the discipline of environmental philosophy. It also provides well thought out responses to those who have been critical of process-relational philosophy in the context of environmental philosophy [...] The melding of the process-relational philosophies of Whitehead and Hartshorne with Derrida's différance and postmodernist thinking (e.g., Heidegger and Levinas) as well as with Eastern thought (e.g., ancient Chinese philosophy, Daoism, Jainism, etc.), figures richly throughout the book.'Adam C. ScarfeDepartment of Philosophy, University of WinnipegProcess Studies, 45:2 (2016)'Too often environmentalists have valorized holism, romantically yearning for unity and oneness. Here, finally, is a collection that takes on the more productive question: how are we to move beyond the bifurcations that stymie thought and devalue the Other, perpetuating hierarchies of oppression, especially towards plants, animals, and the environment? In these beautifully complementary essays the resources of ethics, art, religion, process philosophy, and poststructuralism lead in bold and unexpected new directions.'Philip ClaytonClaremont School of Theology and author of The Re-emergence of Emergence'This is an exceptionally important collection of essays, showcasing the wide range of possibilities inherent in Whitehead's writings for thinking about central issues in animal, plant, and environmental ethics. This volume will be welcomed especially by scholars of Whitehead's work as well as readers who wish to think more carefully about our ontological and ethical relations with the more-than-human world.'Matthew CalarcoCalifornia State University Fullerton and author of Zoographies