Political Theory and the Ecological Challenge

摘要

In The Politics, Aristotle claimed that the existence of political relations was a distinctive feature of human societies. If the Western understanding of politics, in a sense, rests on this claim that separated human beings from the (rest of the) natural world, then it is perhaps not surprising that political science, and political philosophy more specifically, has been slow to incorporate the insights of ecology. Fully acknowledging human embeddedness in natural systems and processes might undermine the very foundations of our understanding of political life. But mounting evidence of human impacts on the natural environment, and the adverse effects of environmental changes, is making the ecological challenge for political philosophy one that is too big to ignore. As Andrew Dobson and Robyn Eckersley state in their introduction to this excellent collection, "mainstream [political] theory is not - at this historical juncture - complete without taking account of its ecological counterpart" (page 2).