This groundbreaking work of both theoretical and experiential thought by a leading ecological philosopher and animal liberation scientist departs from every animal rights, ecological aesthetics, comparative ethology, traditional animal and plant behaviorist work by venturing into a new frontier of ethical anthrozoological studies. What distinguishes Tobias book is both its on-the-ground research in nearly 80 countries, and breadth of interdisciplinary humanities and sciences; a Renaissance-like treatise in the realm of John Ruskins Unto This Last, the late 19th century collection of essays that would transform the thinking of a Mahatma Gandhi.
Tobias brings to bear upon this urgently needed text, 45 years of research in ecological anthropology, animal protection, comparative ethics, literature, spirituality, animal and plant behavior, biocultural heritage contexts from every continent, and a deeply metaphysical set of perspectives that will set this book apart from any other in the vast realms of natural history and ecology.
This lean and elegant text argues that human beings are obsessed with other species and aesthetic landscapes precisely because we lack by our evolutionary self-confidence the very coherence that is everywhere around us abundantly demonstrated. What our species has deemed to be superior is, according to Tobias, a tenuous argument predicated on the brink of our species self-destruction, giving rise to a most unique proposition: We either recognize the miracle of other sentient intelligence, sophistication, and genius, or risk enshrining the shortest lived epitaph of any known vertebrate in earths 4.1 billion years of life.
This is a deeply provocative work of philosophical premises and hypotheses that is likely to stir uneasiness and debate for many decades to come much like the theories of group fitness and sociobiology from E. O. Wilson- from one of the worlds most influential ecological philosophers.
Recenzijos
Anthrozoology: Embracing Co-Existence in the Anthropocene is packed with example after example of attitudes, values, behaviors, and practices of human dominance toward animals across and throughout cultural history. Anthrozoology is a challenging yet informative and very creative book; one that I imagine would engage and stimulate students, among others, in countless, unimaginable ways. (David J. Wagner, MAHB, mahb.stanford.edu, February, 2017)
Preface.- The Making of the Anthropocene.- Our Conquest of
Co-Evolution?.- The Metaphysics of Extinction.- The Conative Spectrum of
Other Species.- Arcadian Connections.- The Other Minds Challenge.-A
Prolegomena of Human Conscience.- Experiential, Empirical and Disturbing
Anthrozoologies.- Epiphanies of the Biosemiosphere.- Evolutionary Biographies
and the Enigma of the Other.- A North American Family The Ecologies of
Translation.- Coda.
Michael Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison, partners who between them have authored some 50 books and written, directed and produced some 170 films, a prolific body of work that has been read, translated and/or broadcast around the world, have been married for more than a quarter-of-a-century. Their field research across the disciplines of comparative literature, anthropology, the history of science and philosophy, ecology and ethics, in over 80 countries, has served as a telling example of what two people deeply in love with one another can accomplish in spreading that same unconditional love to others of all species.
