5: The Bounds of Utopia

Author:
John Foster
Publication Date:
17 Feb 2022
Pages:
84–101
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51952/9781529223293.ch005
Restricted access
Rights and permissions Cite this chapter
Buy article/chapter (GBP  £20.00)

So the realism of transformation is ambitious. If hope informed by it can envisage a rapid and dramatic shift in the perception by individuals of their agency and motivations, in relation to their whole Earth-systemic context, that shift could also by extension transform the pressures shaping action by groups and collectives all the way up to the nation state and the international order. This means we are to hope for nothing less than a new kind of movement for change, establishing itself with astonishing speed through all the new forms of connectivity now available – a movement of deliberate and emphatic individual acceptance of responsibility for the wider biospheric life which is now threatened. How such a movement might be brought sufficiently swiftly into being, through what activities of consciousness-raising and mobilization coupled with the impacts of which unignorably climate-driven disasters, is an open-ended matter. So are the expressive forms which it might take, and the drastic political changes which it will demand. Empirically, none of that is remotely credible. Practically, we have no option left but to hope against hope that it could yet happen. That means believing what the previous chapters have tried to set out the warrant for believing: that the hope which we must invest counter-empirically in bringing transformation about can genuinely create the possibility of our becoming the life-responsible agents of its happening.

Counter-empirical hope, however, remains hope: desire for a valued outcome under the sign of contingency.

  • Anderson, K. (2012) ‘Climate change going beyond dangerous: brutal numbers and tenuous hope’, Development Dialogue, September 2012: 16–40.

  • Arendt, H. (1958) The Human Condition, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

  • Attenborough, D. (2020) A Life on Our Planet, London: Witness Books.

  • Bentham, J. (1827) J.S. Mill (ed) Rationale of Judicial Evidence, Specially Applied to English Practice, London: Hunt and Clarke.

  • Berners-Lee, M. (2020) How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything, London: Profile Books.

  • Berners-Lee, M. and Clark D. (2013) Foreword by B. McKibben, The Burning Question: We Can’t Burn Half the World’s Oil, Coal and Gas. So How Do We Quit?, London: Profile.

  • Blackburn, S. (2001) Ethics: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Blake, W. (1946) G. Keynes (ed) Poetry and Prose of William Blake, London: Nonesuch.

  • Chenoweth, E. and Stephan M. (2011) Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Non-Violent Conflict, New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

  • Churchill, W. (1949) The Second World War, Vol 2, London: Cassell.

  • Clough. A. (1974) F.L. Mulhauser (ed) The Poems of Arthur Hugh Clough, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Cohen, G. (1983) ‘Review of Allen Wood, Karl Marx’, Mind, 92: 440–5.

  • Commoner, B. (1972) The Closing Circle: Confronting the Environmental Crisis, London: Cape.

  • Crick, F. (1994) The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul, New York, NY: Touchstone.

  • Dark Mountain (2010) Dark Mountain, Issue 1 (Summer), Bodmin and King’s Lynn: MPG Books.

  • Dennett, D. (1992) Consciousness Explained, London: Allen Lane.

  • Dunn, J. (1989) Modern Revolutions: An Introduction to the Analysis of a Political Phenomenon, 2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Ernman M., Ernman B., Thunberg G. and Thunberg S. (2020) trans. P. Norlen and S. Vogel, Our House is On Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis, London: Allen Lane.

  • Extinction Rebellion (2019) This Is Not a Drill, London: Penguin.

  • Foster, J. (ed) (1997) Valuing Nature?, London: Routledge.

  • Foster, J. (2008) The Sustainability Mirage, London: Earthscan.

  • Foster, J. (2015) After Sustainability, Abingdon: Routledge.

  • Foster, J. (ed) (2019) Facing Up to Climate Reality: Honesty, Disaster and Hope, London: Green House.

  • Frankl, V. (1946/2004) Man’s Search for Meaning, London: Rider.

  • Geuss, R. (2008) Philosophy and Real Politics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  • Grober, U. (2012) trans. R. Cunningham, Sustainability – A Cultural History, Totnes: Green Books.

  • Hamilton, Ch. (2016) A Philosophy of Tragedy, London: Reaktion.

  • Hamilton, Cl. (2010) Requiem for a Species, London: Earthscan.

  • Hamilton, Cl. (2017) Defiant Earth: The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene, Cambridge: Polity Press.

  • Hardin, G. (1968) ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science, 162(3859): 1243–8.

  • Helm, D. (2012) The Carbon Crunch, New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press.

  • Holthaus, E. (2020) The Future Earth, New York, NY: HarperCollins.

  • Hulme, M. (2009) Why We Disagree about Climate Change, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Hume, D. (1777/1975) L. Selby-Bigge and P. Nidditch (eds) Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

  • Jackson, T. (2009) Prosperity Without Growth, London: Earthscan.

  • James, W. (1902/2008) The Varieties of Religious Experience, Rockville, MD.

  • Jamieson, D. (2014) Reason in a Dark Time, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Johnson, S. (1968) P. Crutwell (ed) Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

  • Kant, I. (1785/1964) trans. H. Paton (ed) Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, New York, NY: Harper and Row.

  • Kant, I. (2006) trans. D. Colclasure, P. Kleingeld (ed) Towards Perpetual Peace and Other Writings, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

  • Klein, N. (2014) This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

  • Klein, N. (2017) No Is Not Enough, London: Penguin.

  • Klein, N. (2019) On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal, London: Allen Lane.

  • Kuhn, T. (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

  • Kumar, K. (1991) Utopianism, Buckingham: Open University Press.

  • Lanchester, J. (2019) The Wall, London: Faber & Faber.

  • Lawrence, D. (1950) St Mawr/The Virgin and the Gipsy, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

  • Lawrence, D. (1964) Studies in Classic American Literature, London: Heinemann.

  • Levin, K., Cashore, B., Bernstein, S. and Auld, G. (2012) ‘Overcoming the tragedy of super wicked problems: constraining our future selves to ameliorate global climate change’, Policy Science, 45: 123–52.

  • Locke, J. (1689/2008) I. Shapiro (ed) Two Treatises of Government, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

  • Lovelock, J. (2000) Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Lovelock, J. (2006) The Revenge of Gaia, London: Penguin.

  • MacIntyre, A. (1970) Marcuse, London: Fontana.

  • Macy, J. and Johnstone C. (2012) Active Hope, Novato, CA: New World Library.

  • Malm, A. (2020) Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency, London: Verso.

  • Marcuse, H. (1964/2002) One-Dimensional Man, London: Routledge.

  • Marcuse, H. (1969) An Essay on Liberation, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

  • Martin, A. (2013) How We Hope: A Moral Psychology, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  • Mathews, F. (1991) The Ecological Self, London: Routledge.

  • McBay A., Keith L. and Jensen D. (2011) Deep Green Resistance, New York, NY: Seven Stories Press.

  • McCarthy, C. (2006) The Road, London: Picador.

  • McDowell, J. (1998) Mind, Value and Reality, London: Harvard University Press.

  • Metzinger, T. (2004) Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

  • Midgley, M. (1979) Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature, Hassocks: Harvester Press.

  • Mill, J.S. (1985) J.M. Robson (ed) The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Vol X: Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press/Routledge and Kegan Paul.

  • Mill, J.S. (1863/1998) R. Crisp (ed) Utilitarianism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Monbiot, G. (2006) Heat: How We Can Stop the Planet Burning, London: Allen Lane.

  • Monbiot, G. (2017) Out of the Wreckage, London: Verso.

  • Morris, W. (1891) News from Nowhere, or, An Epoch of Rest, London: Reeves and Turner.

  • Mulgan, T. (2011) Ethics for a Broken World, Durham: Acumen.

  • Murdoch, I. (1999) P. Conradi (ed) Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

  • Nagel, T. (1989) The View From Nowhere, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Nietzsche, F. (1872/1999) trans. R. Speirs, R. Geuss and R. Speirs (eds) The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Nietzsche, F. (1886/1973) trans. R. Hollingdale, Beyond Good and Evil, London: Penguin.

  • Nietzsche, F. (1887/1996) trans. D. Smith, On the Genealogy of Morals, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Nussbaum, M. (2001) The Fragility of Goodness, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Orwell, G. (1970a) S. Orwell and I. Angus (eds) The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Vol 2, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

  • Orwell, G. (1970b) S. Orwell and I. Angus (eds) The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Vol 4, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

  • Parfit, D. (1986) Reasons and Persons, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Porritt, J. (2020) Hope in Hell, London: Simon & Schuster.

  • Read, R. (2021) Parents for a Future: How Loving Our Children Can Prevent Climate Collapse, Norwich: UEA Publishing Project.

  • Read, R. and Alexander S. (2019) This Civilisation is Finished, Melbourne: Simplicity Institute.

  • Rittel, H. and Webber M. (1973) ‘Dilemmas in a general theory of planning’, Policy Sciences, 4: 155–69.

  • Schopenhauer, A. (1841/2009) trans. D. Cartwright and E. Erdmann, The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Schumacher, E. (1974) Small Is Beautiful, London: Abacus.

  • Schumacher, E. (1978) A Guide for the Perplexed, London: Abacus.

  • Scruton, R. (2013) Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously about the Planet, London: Atlantic Books.

  • Shelley, P. (1967) T. Hutchinson (ed) Poetical Works, London: Oxford University Press.

  • Singer, P. (2011) The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution and Moral Progress, 2nd edn, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  • Solnit, R. (2004/2016) Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, Chicago, IL: Haymarket.

  • Tawney, R. (1938) Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

  • Taylor, B. (ed) (2008) Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, Vol 1, London: Continuum.

  • Thunberg, G. (2019) No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, London: Penguin.

  • Tillich, P. (1957) Dynamics of Faith, New York, NY: Harper & Row.

  • Tolstoy, L. (1921) trans. A. Maude, A Confession and What I Believe, London: Oxford University Press.

  • Trevelyan, G. (1904) England under the Stuarts, London: Methuen.

  • Verveij, M. (2011) Clumsy Solutions for a Wicked World, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

  • Wackernagel, M. and Rees W. (1996) Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Planet, Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers.

  • Wallace-Wells, D. (2019) The Uninhabitable Earth, London: Allen Lane.

  • Wilde, O. (1948) J.B. Foreman (ed) The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, London: Collins.

  • Yeats, W. (1967) The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, London: Macmillan.

Content Metrics

May 2022 onwards Past Year Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 13 13 0
Full Text Views 1 0 0
PDF Downloads 1 0 0

Altmetrics