REDISCOVERING EARTH

The gap between what we know and what we do has haunted the field of moral philosophy since antiquity, and is at the center of today's environmental crisis. Put simply: if we know that we are destroying the planet, our habitat, why do we continue to do it? The ten dialogues collected here investigate this question, and propose how we might salvage the planet and save our own lives.

Played out are the debates that will shape the course of the twenty-first century, and indeed human history. Each speaker brings unique perspectives and testifies to the troubling and often absurd crisis we find ourselves in. Among the stories in Rediscovering Earth are accounts of how: people live directly under dams, unconcerned that they might burst; abandoned household cats stalk major cities, endangering smaller species; fish are shipped from one end of the world to the other, only to be processed, packaged, and returned to their original location; displaced monkeys break into homes, fatally attacking officials belonging to governments engaged in aggressive deforestation practices; and farmers kill themselves by drinking the remnants of insecticide they can no longer afford to apply to their land, resulting in its ruination.

If common ground is to be found in these discussions, it is that the future of nature will be decided as much in the cultural realm—in philosophy, literature, and art—as in the sciences. If we want finally to bridge the gap between knowledge and action we must rediscover the earth, identify ourselves more fully as earthlings, and realize that our future and that of the planet are one and the same.

Anders Dunker was born in Norway and studied philosophy, comparative religion, and literature. He has taught philosophy, literature, and cultural history at universities in Oslo, Bali, Rome, and Barcelona. He is a contributor to Le Monde diplomatique and the Los Angeles Review of Books, and is chief critic at Ny Tid/Modern Times Review.

Dialogue partners include Bruno Latour, Jared Diamond, Bernard Stiegler, Clive Hamilton, and Kim Stanley Robinson, among others.