Ecophilosophy in a World of Crisis: Critical realism and the Nordic Contributions

This book looks at the ways in which the development of critical realism has given rise to positions which resonate with those of ecophilosophy, especially the Nordic form of it. The development of critical realism comprises, as is well known, basic, original or first-wave critical realism (consisting in transcendental realism, critical naturalism and the theory of explanatory critique), a second-wave of dialectical critical realism (including transcendental dialectical critical realism) and a third-wave, the philosophy of meta-Reality. The theme of anti-anthropocentricity is announced at the onset of critical realism (in A Realist Theory of Science [1975]) and the motifs of open systems, emergence and complexity which all feature (in one guise or another) in Nordic ecophilosophy, are prominent in basic critical realism, while the theory of multiple and mixed determinations foreshadows the applied critical realist theme of interdisciplinarity.