Description
Book SynopsisLove in many premodern cultures extended to and permeated the world or even the cosmos, but love in contemporary consumerist society tends to be sexualized, romanticized, and individualized. As a result, ancient visions of ethical love are difficult for moderns to comprehend, especially those rooted in premodern Western thought, or Native American thinkers that describe a love of the natural world that would help us live more responsibly on the Earth.This volume retrieves the significant narratives of love of the world and the concomitant ethical ramifications of those visions and argues that our age of science and technology has destroyed the ancient, living cosmos of previous visions and replaced it with a mechanical universe. This shift has resulted in various forms of destruction, diminishment, and forgetfulness. Overcoming modern world alienation requires recovering a sense of what it means to love the world and changing our practices to reflect our interconnection with it and our
Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION I. COSMIC LOVE OR LOVING THE LIVING COSMOS II. THE RISE OF SCIENCE, THE DEATH OF THE COSMOS, AND THE DECLINE OF III. ARENDT AND AMOR MUNDI: WHAT IS WORLD? IV. ARENDT AND AMOR MUNDI: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO LOVE THE WORLD? V. LOVE OF THE EARTH IN NATIVE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY VI. OVERCOMING THE MODERN JUGGERNAUT CONCLUSIONS: LOVE THE WORLD! REFERENCES CITED ABOUT THE AUTHOR
