- ホーム
- > 洋書
- > 英文書
- > Philosophy
Full Description
Explores the ancient and perennial notion of the four elements as environmental ideas.
Bachelard called them "the hormones of the imagination." Hegel observed that, "through the four elements we have the elevation of sensuous ideas into thought." Earth, air, fire, and water are explored as both philosophical ideas and environmental issues associated with their classical and perennial conceptions. David Macauley embarks upon a wide-ranging discussion of their initial appearance in ancient Greek thought as mythic forces or scientific principles to their recent reemergence within contemporary continental philosophy as a means for understanding landscape and language, poetry and place, the body and the body politic. In so doing, he shows the importance of elemental thinking for comprehending and responding to ecological problems. In tracing changing views of the four elements through the history of ideas, Macauley generates a new vocabulary for and a fresh vision of the environment while engaging the elemental world directly with reflections on their various manifestations.
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Four-Thought
Sheltering the Elements
Plan of the Work
Part I: Elemental Encounters and Ideas
1. Philosophy's Forgotten Four
Earth
Air
Fire
Water
Interstice: Stone
2. The Topology of the Elemental Environment
Elementary Letters
Elemental Places
Elements as Archetypes
Elemental Opposition
Elemental Substances
Chemical Elements
Cultural Comparisons
The Frame of the Four
Social Construction of the Elements
Interstice: Wood
Part II: Elemental Theories
3. The Flowering of Ecological Roots: Empedocles' Elemental Thought
Four-Play
The Problem of the Poems
Square Roots and Radical Rhizomes
Empedocles' Elemental Cosmology
Ecological and Political Equality
Organic Unity
Environmental Action
Anticipation of Evolution
Animal Empathy
Environmental Roots
Ecological Ethos
Crafting Nature
Purity and Pollution
The Rhizomes of Deleuze and Guattari
Interstice: Ice and Snow
4. Plato's Chora-graphy of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water
The ABC of Everything
A Probable Physics
Derivation of Earth, Air, Fire, and Waterspan
The Corpus of an Ecological Cosmoscla
Second Beginnings and Constrained Constructionss
Removing the Spell of the Elements
Elemental Recycling
Forms of the Four?
Elements Emplaced: Chora-graphy in the Matrix
Construction and Structure of the Primary Bodies
War and Play of the Elements
Dispatching the Stoicheia: Elemental S/endings
Husserl and the Mathematization of Nature
Postscript to Plato: Whitehead's Philosophical Footnotes
Interstice: Cloud
5. The Place of the Elements and the Elements of Place: Aristotle's Natural Household
Four Accounts of Five Elements
A Dictionary of Elemental Definitions
The Ancient Generation Gap
Pondering Weight
The Place of the Elements
The Elements of Place
Homecoming and Inhabitation
Interstice: Heat and Cold
6. The Economy and Ecology of the Aristotelian Elements
Hot, Cold, Wet, and Dry
Converting the Contraries
Compounding the Quartet
Prime Matter as Persisting Problem
Extra Terrestrials: The Fifth Element
Elemental Contact: Beholding Tangible Bodies
In Touch with the Environment
The Soul and the External World
Aristotle and Ecology
Interstice: Light and Shadow
Part III: Elemental Worlds
7. Domestication of the Elements
Outside-In
Plumbing Philosophy
Watercraft and Landscape Aesthetics
From Waterways to Waterworks
Bottled Water
Fire and Water
Eclipse of the Atmosphere
Escape from Earth
End of the Elements?
Interstice: Night
8. In Touch With the Sensuous World: The Reclamation of the Elemental in Continental Philosophy
Elemental Reveries: Bachelard's Poetics
Elemental Dwelling: Heidegger's Fourfold
Elemental Flesh: Merleau-Ponty's Re-membering
Elemental Sensibility: Levinas on Enjoyment
Elemental Imperatives: Lingis and Our Sensuous Surroundings
Elemental Passions: Irigaray on Breath and Body
Elemental Landscapes: Casey on Place
Elemental Nature: Sallis on Imagination
From Elements to the Elemental
Interstice: Space
9. Revaluing Earth, Air, Fire, and Water: Elemental Beauty, Ecological Duty, and Environmental Policy
Elemental Ethics
Elemental Aesthetics
Environmental Action
Bewildering Order
Notes
Index
