Eco-Republic: What the Ancients Can Teach Us about Ethics, Virtue, and Sustainable Living [NOOK Book]

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Overview

An ecologically sustainable society cannot be achieved without citizens who possess the virtues and values that will foster it, and who believe that individual actions can indeed make a difference. Eco-Republic draws on ancient Greek thought--and Plato's Republic in particular--to put forward a new vision of citizenship that can make such a society a reality. Melissa Lane develops a model of a society whose health and sustainability depend on all its citizens recognizing a shared standard of value and shaping ...

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Eco-Republic: What the Ancients Can Teach Us about Ethics, Virtue, and Sustainable Living

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Overview

An ecologically sustainable society cannot be achieved without citizens who possess the virtues and values that will foster it, and who believe that individual actions can indeed make a difference. Eco-Republic draws on ancient Greek thought--and Plato's Republic in particular--to put forward a new vision of citizenship that can make such a society a reality. Melissa Lane develops a model of a society whose health and sustainability depend on all its citizens recognizing a shared standard of value and shaping their personal goals and habits accordingly. Bringing together the moral and political ideas of the ancients with the latest social and psychological theory, Lane illuminates the individual's vital role in social change, and articulates new ways of understanding what is harmful and what is valuable, what is a benefit and what is a cost, and what the relationship between public and private well-being ought to be.

Eco-Republic reveals why we must rethink our political imagination if we are to meet the challenges of climate change and other urgent environmental concerns. Offering a unique reflection on the ethics and politics of sustainability, the book goes beyond standard approaches to virtue ethics in philosophy and current debates about happiness in economics and psychology. Eco-Republic explains why health is a better standard than happiness for capturing the important links between individual action and social good, and diagnoses the reasons why the ancient concept of virtue has been sorely neglected yet is more relevant today than ever.

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Editorial Reviews

Times Literary Supplement
To deploy Plato may seem one of the more desperate strategies for saving the planet. Classical Athens had no inkling of environmental catastrophe, and Plato hated democracy. But in Eco-Republic Melissa Lane succeeds wonderfully not only in separating the useful in Plato from the useless, but also in demonstrating that the useful contains a surprising amount of what we need if we are to survive. . . . Lane demonstrates that the humanities, so far from being negligible, can play a vital role in averting environmental catastrophe.
— Richard Seaford
Science
Lane makes a compelling case that the Greek vices of pleonexia (overreaching desire for more than one's share) and hubris (arrogance against natural order) need to be disparaged with the same vigor today as they were by the ancients. . . . Eco-Republic offer(s) important intellectual provocation to reevaluate current inertia on environmental policy. Whether or not Plato may be our guide on these matters, the roles of science and the humanities in grappling with ecological urgency deserve to be deliberated.
— Saleem H. Ali
Forbes.com
Lane's intriguing implication is that sustainability leadership is as much about fostering a new mindset as it is about adopting cleaner technologies or more equitable social policies. Leaders in the ancient world thought and made decisions differently. They understood that they were embedded in an interdependent social web and they knew that their decisions had to take into account not just self-interest but the collective interest as well.
— Gregory Unruh
Times Literary Supplement - Richard Seaford

To deploy Plato may seem one of the more desperate strategies for saving the planet. Classical Athens had no inkling of environmental catastrophe, and Plato hated democracy. But in Eco-Republic Melissa Lane succeeds wonderfully not only in separating the useful in Plato from the useless, but also in demonstrating that the useful contains a surprising amount of what we need if we are to survive. . . . Lane demonstrates that the humanities, so far from being negligible, can play a vital role in averting environmental catastrophe.
Science - Saleem H. Ali

Lane makes a compelling case that the Greek vices of pleonexia (overreaching desire for more than one's share) and hubris (arrogance against natural order) need to be disparaged with the same vigor today as they were by the ancients. . . . Eco-Republic offer(s) important intellectual provocation to reevaluate current inertia on environmental policy. Whether or not Plato may be our guide on these matters, the roles of science and the humanities in grappling with ecological urgency deserve to be deliberated.
Forbes.com - Gregory Unruh

Lane's intriguing implication is that sustainability leadership is as much about fostering a new mindset as it is about adopting cleaner technologies or more equitable social policies. Leaders in the ancient world thought and made decisions differently. They understood that they were embedded in an interdependent social web and they knew that their decisions had to take into account not just self-interest but the collective interest as well.
Choice

In this provocative, accessible reflection on the potential contributions of Platonic political thought to the resolution of contemporary environmental problems, Lane attempts to craft 'an intuitive and imaginative model inspired by the ancients.' As a work in political theory, the book offers new insights into Plato and contemporary debates regarding climate change.
Polis - Owen Goldin

Lane's re-imagined Plato is worth heeding: the unPlatonic vision of bottom-up change that Lane offers may after all offer a realistic path to a better and more sustainable future. If she is right, Lane's visions of how to bring about a sustainable future will be validated. This requires rethinking the social good in the ways that Lane describes. Her important book can help us do just that.
Review of Politics - Joseph H. Lane

Lane's reading of the Republic is rigorous, thorough, and generally fruitful. . . . Eco-Republic is an extremely thought provoking exercise in the application of political theory to political life, and in this sense, Lane's work imitates the Republic in its methodologies as much as in its political conclusions. . . . [R]eading Eco-Republic is an exercise in political thinking that leaves us understanding both Plato and the world around us more fully than we did before.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781400838356
  • Publisher: Princeton University Press
  • Publication date: 10/17/2011
  • Sold by: Barnes & Noble
  • Format: eBook
  • Pages: 264
  • File size: 419 KB

Meet the Author

Melissa Lane is professor of politics at Princeton University. She is the author of "Method and Politics" in Plato's ""Statesman"" and "Plato's Progeny: How Plato and Socrates Still Captivate the Modern Mind".
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Part I INERTIA 1 Prologue to Chapter 1: Plato's Cave 3
Chapter 1: Introduction: Inertia as Failure of the Political Imagination 7
An Unconsciously Platonic Prologue to Chapter 2: Carbon Detox 27
Chapter 2:From Greed to Glory: Ancient to Modern Ethics - and Back Again? 29
Prologue to Chapter 3: Plato's Ring of Gyges 47
Chapter 3: Underpinning Inertia: The Idea of Negligibility 51

Part II IMAGINATION 77
Prologue to Chapter 4: Post-Platonic Perspectives on the Republic 79 Chapter 4: Meet Plato's Republic 83
Prologue to Chapter 5: Plato on Why Virtue Matters 99
Chapter 5: The City and the Soul 101
Prologue to Chapter 6: Plato's Idea of the Good 127
Chapter 6: The Idea of the Good 133

Part III INITIATIVE 157
Prologue to Chapter 7: Revisiting Plato's Cave 159
Chapter 7: Initiative and Individuals: A (Partly) Platonic Political Project 163

Notes 187
Works Cited 219
Index 235

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