The Case for Emancipatory Ecospirituality: What is It? And Why Should We Care?

Scientific consensus on the environmental emergency has prompted recognition that business as usual is not only materially catastrophic but ethically, socially, and politically unfair. Working from different axiological perspectives, scholars in the environmental humanities have framed the crisis as an opportunity for paradigmatic and radical change, encouraging a new “Great Transformation” or “Great Transition”. Such appeals tend to focus on systemic change at economic and political levels. Nevertheless, the ecological crises as a revolutionary opportunity demands an integral metamorphosis of Western capitalist cultures, including the ontological and ethical dimensions embedded in perception, desires, and affects, and grounded in elementary subjective practices. In this light, ecospirituality is integral to transformative ecology. Confronted with the ecological crisis, this calls for us to set to work on the widely discussed issue of the relations between spirituality and politics

Three Poems

Biographical note: James Owens's newest book is Family Portrait with Scythe (Bottom Dog Press, 2020). His poems and translations appear widely in literary journals, including recent or upcoming publications in Channel, Arc, Dalhousie Review, Queen's Quarterly, and The Honest Ulsterman. He earned an MFA at the University of Alabama and lives in a small town in northern Ontario

Becoming Home: Revisiting Arne Naess toward an Ecophilosophy and a Depth Ecology for the 22nd Century

This article is set in the context of a worsening ecological crisis, which is interpreted as an existential life crisis. The ecocrisis is not just about nature, but also a crisis of culture, community, and self. The prefix “eco” is interpreted in as “home in life”. To solve the crisis, we need a balanced focus on ecophilia and ecojustice. It is not enough to care, to solve the crisis we need to address issues of justice. Naess said he was optimistic on behalf of the 22nd century, but how bad it gets before it gets better depends on what we do today. In the article, I will revisit the life and works of Naess to explore what may inspire a sustainable and eco-friendly future. It will show there is a need to put “philo” back into ecosophy and to go deeper into the depths of deep ecology in a depth ecology movement. It will also address some issues, such as that of eco-animism and a renewed sense of the sacred

Engaging with Nature in Times of Rapid Environmental Change: Vulnerability, Sentience, and Autonomy

Increasingly rapid environmental changes since the middle of the 20th century pose a significant challenge for vulnerable human populations. North American Native people from the Northwest Coast, as many other indigenous populations around the globe, have conceived landscapes as sentient, and capable of responding to human action. The consequent “social responsibility” taken for landscape is explored in the context of vulnerability to rapid environmental change. The basis for respect that underlies this sense of responsibility, and its significance for addressing human vulnerability to nature’s agency, through more adequate practices of mitigation and adaptation, is discussed. It is concluded that we face an imperative to reconceive the agency of natural phenomena.

Ecophilosophy as a Way of Life

The contemporary figure of the ecophilosopher perhaps holds the seeds of something that transcends philosophy in its current strictly academic, professionalized, indeed corporatized mode. This is a "something" that could, on the one hand, tie philosophy back to its own ancient, life-giving, but now lost, root in the Graeco-Roman world, and on the other hand, open it up to people searching outside the academy for a shared and reflective way of life that is authentically Earth-aligned. By means of a detailed comparison of ecophilosophy with the ancient schools of Stoicism and Epicureanism, understood not merely as intellectual discourses but as "ways of life" (Pierre Hadot), I argue that the figure of the ecophilosopher potentially offers to thoughtful people everywhere a radical pathway through the illusions of our current period of decline-and-fall towards a more adaptive life grounded in "direct, unmediated contact with the real.

Life on the Move

What does the War on Terror have to teach us about the ongoing War on Invasive Species? Rooted in the author's personal experiences as an immigrant on a family farm in Virginia, this essay explores themes of language, mental frames, and  violent conflict in novel ways that shed insight into the morality of the struggle to manage unwanted species. &nbsp