Rating: 6
After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene
Jedediah Purdy | 2015
Although Purdy is a professor of law and many themes in After Nature are about politics, the book is largely about the interconnectedness of humanity and our environment. It’s a dense read but the payoff in the final few chapters (which I found to be the most interesting) made it worth it. It’s definitely a book I’d like to read again, or maybe in a classroom setting where I’d be able to unpack more of Purdy’s ideas.
“Losing nature need not mean losing the value of the living world, but it will mean engaging it differently. It may mean learning to find beauty in ordinary places, not just wonder in wild ones. It may mean treasuring places that are irremediably damaged, learning to prize what is neither pure nor natural, but just is—the always imperfect joint product of human powers and the natural world.”