Environmentalism as a Political Philosophy for the Anthropocene
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21814/anthropocenica.3089Abstract
Political philosophy stems from the reflexes of crises, risks and threats that society faces. The author understands environmentalism as a tendency of current political philosophy that starts from reflecting the causes and possible effects of the global environmental crisis as one of the most serious threats to the existential preconditions of the current political system and global civilization. Considering the changes in the initial social, technological and environmental conditions of the existence of the economic-political system – which are consequences of the transition from the stable geological-climatic era of the Holocene to the unstable era of the Anthropocene – it is necessary to reconsider the basic premises of the imperatives and conceptual frameworks of the current political-economic system. The founders of modern political thought traced the outlines of the current political-economic system in the philosophical framework, although we can identify some of the basic premises of environmentalism and relevant concepts for the reflection of the current threats and risks in some of their works. The author considers the concept of civil and human rights, the concept of state of nature and the concept of social contract adequate to think about the crisis of the current political-economic system in terms of environmentalism. Then, the author formulates in what meanings these concepts are also valid for the Anthropocene. In conclusion, the author's hypothesis is that the political philosophy of the 21st century must reflect the environmental pre-conditions and the limits of the existence and the forms of the economic-political system and, at the same time, must take into account that any economic and factors influence the quality and sustainability of the environment.
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