Retrieving Nature: Education for a Post–Humanist Age

In this timely and challenging book, Michael Bonnett asks how education should respond to environmental concerns. He shows that the kind of searching enquiry needed to address this question exposes profound metaphysical issues about the meaning of nature and our relationship to it. The resolution of these issues, he suggests, is decisive for our understanding of ourselves and of our place in the greater scheme of things. Retrieving Nature explores the idea of a right relationship with nature where sustainability is thought of not simply as a policy but as a frame of mind. It argues that this frame of mind is an essential feature of authentic human consciousness, going to the heart of knowledge, truth and value. In this way, the book develops a post–humanist perspective that poses fundamental questions about the nature, purpose and practice of education.

Preface. Acknowledgements. 1. Introduction: A Tangled Web. 2. Metaphysics: Education and Environmental Concern. 3. Notions of Nature. 4. Retreat from Reality. 5. Nature as our Primordial Reality. 6. Nature’s Intrinsic Value. 7. Nature and Knowing. 8. Towards an Environmental Ethos for Education. 9. Education for Sustainable Development: Sustainability as a Frame of Mind. 10. Issues for Environmental Education. 11. Education for a Post–Humanist Age: The Question of Human Dwelling. Bibliography. Index.

Michael Bonnett is Senior Lecturer in the Philosophy of Education at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of the book Children’s Thinking (1994).

"This elegantly written and powerfully documented work by one of Britain’s most original philosophers of education is perhaps the first book–length philosophical enquiry into environmental education. But it is much more than that for, as the author points out, ‘a right relationship with nature lies at the heart of environment education’ – a relationship that poses challenges to our very conceptions of nature, rationality, value and human being. These are challenges to which Michael Bonnett rises in an intriguing and compelling book that will engage the attention of environmentalists, metaphysicians and moral philosophers as much as that of teachers and educational theorists." David E. Cooper, University of Durham "It is all too common these days to answer worries about environmental problems with the refrain that any solutions must involve “education”. But rarely have we seen any sustained reflection on the promotion of environmental responsibility from the professional fields that have devoted themselves to the serious consideration of educational theory or philosophy. Michael Bonnet’s elegantly written and well informed book steps into this breach and offers sound answers, and perhaps more importantly, asks the difficult questions that we must address to make any headway on this important issue. For too long philosophers of education and environmental ethicists have pursued their work independently of one another. Bonnett’s contribution will help us to overcome this divide and hopefully make good on the claim that education not only can, but must be part of our search for environmental sustainability." Andrew Light, New York University