Ethics for a Broken World: Imagining Philosophy after Catastrophe

摘要

Political philosophers who believe that they mine timeless topics for eternal verities will be in for a rude awakening upon encountering this book. In it Tim Mulgan imagines philosophers in a future, climatically "broken world" in which, as J. G. Ballard depicts in The Drowned World and as James Lovelock recommends, virtually all people live in higher latitudes, a world in which some people cannot have their "basic needs" satisfied (p. 11). Through a series of "lectures," these philosophers assess the relevance of three of our contemporary ("affluent"-world) political philosophies to their issues. Thereby, a set of central political ideas-e.g., rights, liberty, well-being, democracy, and justice itself-get reconceptualized (p. 16). Since we now are forging this broken world, the moral message of the conceit to the present is palpable.