Human Beings and Nature: Unifiying (Un)Natural Opponents

The purpose of this thesis is to locate and make explicit the philosophical premises that contributed to the climate problem and in turn inquire how we can move past these philosophical ideas and change our attitudes towards nature, so that we can address the climate problem better. I argue that environmental ethics should be based on the reconnection of the human with nature. To do this, I first investigate the complexity of the climate problem. Second, I discuss past conceptions of nature, from the ancient Greek conception of physis to twentieth century critiques about the devastation of the earth. In the third section, I discuss the contemporary ideological and political economic context of the climate problem, particularly neoliberalism and environmentalism. In the final section, I investigate alternative conceptions of nature by Bruno Latour, Jason Moore, Timothy Morton, Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway and Val Plumwood. I conclude that an important philosophical premise underlying the climate crisis is the distinction between humans (culture, or ‘the social’) and nature.