1st Edition
The Philosophy of Environmental Emotions Grief, Hope, and Beyond
This volume presents new philosophical perspectives on environmental emotions. It explores the motivating nature of emotions such as anger, grief, and hope in relation to the current climate crisis.
Many of our emotional responses to the climate crisis take a distressed form like anxiety, despair, or grief. However, these emotions almost always coexist with hope, drive toward action, or a strengthened sense of relationality and belonging. This book explores the different levels at which these tensions take place. Part 1 discusses the conceptual and linguistic notions we use to make sense of our ecological predicament. Part 2 looks at the embedded dimension of our emotions: how we feel about the climate crisis as members of our communities and how our emotions are interconnected with what we do and how we work in and for our communities. Several chapters in this section explicitly discuss hope. Finally, Part 3 has a phenomenological and existential focus: it explores the nature of the rootedness and how it shapes our emotional experiences during the climate crisis.
The Philosophy of Environmental Emotions will appeal to scholars and graduate students working in environmental philosophy, philosophy of emotion, and environmental psychology.
Foreword
“Adversity is the first path to truth": How climate grief could be the making of us Rupert Read
The Philosophy of Environmental Emotions: Introduction Ondřej Beran, Laura Candiotto, Niklas Forsberg, Antony Fredriksson, and David Rozen
Part I: Language, Concepts, and Sense-making
1. Clarifying Climate Emotions via their Foci David Rozen, Petr Vaškovic and Gabriela Vičanová
2. Conceptual Change in Emotional Contexts Niklas Forsberg
3. Beyond "Grievability": Toward an Affective and Moral Lexicon for the Anthropocene Maria Antonaccio
4. How to Speak of Nonhuman Ghosts: Language, Moral Beauty, and Animal Ethical Mourning Elisa Aaltola
Part II: Living in Community
5. Hope and Agency in a Time of Environmental Upheaval Nora Hämäläinen
6. Hope and Realizing the Potentials of the Past Kenneth Shockley
7. Natality, Parenthood, and Climate Hope Tom Whyman
8. No Hope Without Hope for All: Arendt and Hope as a Communal Endeavour Rooted in the Shared Condition of Natality Olena Kushyna
9. Putting Grief to Work: Planting Hope for Rainforest-Futures as a Multispecies Care Ella Chiara Vallelonga
10. Friendship and Politics Ondřej Beran
Part III: The Displaced Self
11. Loving a Place that is Dying Laura Candiotto
12. Kinship and Relationality as Foundations for Environmental Emotions Antony Fredriksson
13. In Defence of Despair about Climate Breakdown Anh-Quân Nguyen
14. Ecological Grief, Ambiguous Loss, and the Slow Violence of Extraction Anna Gleizer and Pablo Fernandez Velasco
Afterword
15. Environmental Grief, Despair, and Meaning: Concluding Discussion Panu Pihkala
Biography
Ondřej Beran is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and one of the Heads of Research at the Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value (Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies), University of Pardubice. His recent publications include Examples and Their Role in Our Thinking (Routledge 2021).
Laura Candiotto is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and a member of the Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value (Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies), University of Pardubice. Among her recent publications is “What I cannot do without you” (Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 2022).
Niklas Forsberg is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and one of the Heads of Research at the Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value (Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies), University of Pardubice. His recent publications include Lectures on a Philosophy Less Ordinary (Routledge, 2021).
Antony Fredriksson is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and one of the Heads of Research at the Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value (Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies), University of Pardubice. His recent publications include A Phenomenology of Attention and the Unfamiliar (2022).
David Rozen is a PhD candidate and an external lecturer of philosophy at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Pardubice. Recently, he edited a collection of Czech translations of canonical writings in environmental philosophy, Příroda a postoje k ní (to appear, 2024).
"The environment is the main source of our emotional well-being; yet, we do not take sufficient time to know what kind of emotional impact environmental damages have on us and our well-being. This book offers a unique opportunity to understand how we feel in front of our environmental changes and how we do better for us and our future generations."
Susi Ferrarello, California State University, East Bay, USA
"In times of environmental despair, a volume exploring the ethical significance of grief and hope in view of the ecological crisis is direly needed. This book offers vital scholarship at a crucial moment of planetary emergency."
Jan Slaby, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
