The State of Nature: The Political Philosophy of Primitivism and the Culture of Contamination

Environmental Values 11 (4):407-425 (2002)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The ' state of nature ' could be understood in two senses; both in terms of its nature 's current condition and of that unmediated and pre-contractual relation between humanity and the environment posited by political philosophers like Locke and Rousseau and now championed by anarcho- primitivism. Primitivism is easily dismissed as an extreme, naïve and impractical form of radical environmentalism but its emergence signifies contemporary disaffection with the ideology of 'progress' so central to modernity and capitalism. This paper offers an ethico-political interpretation of primitivism 's critical relation to modernity in terms of the dialectic between amorality and immorality within what is characterised as modernity's ' culture of contamination '.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The Primitivist Theory of Truth.Jamin Asay - 2013 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
The Theory of Political Culture.Stephen Welch - 2013 - Oxford University Press.
Odi et Amo? Hobbes on the State of Nature.Andrés Rosler - 2011 - Hobbes Studies 24 (1):91-111.
Irigaray and Hölderlin on the relation between nature and culture.Alison Stone - 2003 - Continental Philosophy Review 36 (4):415-432.
Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity. [REVIEW]H. T. C. - 1936 - Journal of Philosophy 33 (7):192-193.
Politics in a State of Nature.William A. Edmundson - 2013 - Ratio Juris 26 (2):149-186.
Primitive Truth.Jamin Asay - 2013 - Dialectica 67 (4):503-519.
The Republic in the Air: State of Nature Theory and the Dreaming of the State.Ethan Hill Macadam - 2001 - Dissertation, Rutgers the State University of New Jersey - New Brunswick

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-09-29

Downloads
40 (#347,838)

6 months
5 (#246,492)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author Profiles

Michael Smith
Manchester Metropolitan University
Michael Smith
Aachen University of Technology