Being Ecological, with a new preface by the author

by Timothy Morton

Overview

From “our most popular guide to the new epoch” (Guardian), a new edition of the book about ecology without information dumping, guilt inducing, or preaching to the choir.

Ecology books can be confusing information dumps that are out of date by the time they hit you. Slapping you upside the head to make you feel bad. Grabbing you by the lapels while yelling disturbing facts. Handwringing in agony about “What are we going to do?” This book has none of that. Being Ecological, reissued with a new preface, doesn’t preach to the eco-choir. It’s for you—even, Timothy Morton explains, if you’re not in the choir, even if you have no idea what choirs are. You might already be ecological.

After establishing the approach of the book (no facts allowed!), Morton draws on Kant and Heidegger to help us understand living in an age of mass extinction caused by climate change. They discuss what sorts of actions count as ecological—starting a revolution? going to the garden center to smell the plants? And finally, they explore a variety of current styles of being ecological—a range of overlapping orientations rather than preformatted self-labeling. Caught up in the us-versus-them (or you-versus-everything else) urgency of ecological crisis, Morton suggests, it’s easy to forget that you are a symbiotic being entangled with other symbiotic beings. Isn’t that being ecological?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262551755
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	04/08/2025
Pages:	220
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. They gave the Wellek Lectures in Theory in 2014 and have collaborated with Björk, Haim Steinbach, and Olafur Eliasson. They are the author or coauthor of Dark Ecology, Nothing, Hyperobjects, Realist Magic, The Ecological Thought, and Ecology without Nature, among others, and 160 essays on philosophy, ecology, literature, music, art, architecture, design, and food.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction: Not Another Information Dump
1 And You May Find Yourself Living in an Age of Mass Extinction
2 …And the Leg Bone’s Connected to the Toxic Waste Dump Bone
3 Tuning
4 A Brief History of Ecological Thought
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Timothy Morton, with subjectivity goggles on, swims up close to the half-mile-wide eye of the creature that is our current moment. It’s an act of extreme bravery and, though Timothy may never admit it, love.”
—Adam McKay, screenwriter, producer, director

“I have been reading Tim's books for a while and I like them a lot.”
—Björk

“Timothy Morton is this generation’s philosopher of the climate crisis, and Being Ecological is the century’s most powerful critique of climate change and humanity’s role of thinking our way out of these possible future scenarios in lush prose. A must-read.”
—Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky, artist, writer, musician

“Being Ecological is another essential message from one of our most articulate and soulful eco philosophers.”
—Laurie Anderson, artist

“With wit and playful creativity, Being Ecological challenges us to think beyond the conventional and embrace the complexity of our ecological entanglement in a way that matters most: how we think!”
—Susan Kucera, director and filmmaker, Living in the Future’s Past

"A freewheeling, essential guide from one of our foremost ecological philosophers. Very useful for anyone wanting a better understanding of our relationship to the biosphere. Morton points to how we can live a meaningful life in an uncertain modern era."
—Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach trilogy

"If you're still just grooving along with Alan Watts and thinking that nature is wiggly, think again. Timothy Morton's flat ontology and leveling of the uncanny valley contradict earlier clichés to open up new possibilities for conceptualizing a better future together. And, to tune a bit to the register of Being Ecological, it's all accomplished in a vivid discussion with excellent bookfeel."
—Nick Montfort, Professor of Digital Media, MIT; author of The Future