Chapter 8: The Ideology of Environmental Concern Flashcards
the social class conflict between rich and poor, the owners of capital versus those who work for them—what scholars often call the conflict of the _____________ and ____________.
bourgeoisie and proletariat
the rural-urban conflict that led to the accumulation of wealth and income in cities via the exploitation and deprivation of the countryside — known as the conflict of the ________ and the _________.
bourgeois; pagan
What did sophists believe
believed morality and social order were based on mere convention (nomos) not on some principle external to human interests, such as God, justice, or science.
Why was the sophist argument circular
because if all morality is mere rhetoric and nomos, Sophism itself must be as well.
The Sophists then said that _______ was truth because it lay beyond the human and the social, beyond all our rhetoric, bias, desire, and self-interest.
physis or nature
What did Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) say about our desires
our desires can never be satisfied and ultimately lead to suffering; the solution was to blow out your desire and reach nirvana.
• Ancient Greece, India, and China were all experiencing unprecedented empire building, urbanization, wealth accumulation, and growing social inequalities.
Historians call it the beginning of the:
Axial age
What did Li Her say about our desires?
the solution was to learn to follow dao (the way) and to leave behind the intentions of our desires.
Dao is unaffected by human doings, but people do best when they allow themselves to be guided by it and not by human desire.
true
What did Horace say about rural vs urban living?
Horace praises the naturalness of rural living and also the social consequences of being free from envy. He chastises those who contemptuously attempt to avoid these social and environmental truths by trying to “push out Nature with a pitchfork.”
Natural Conscience
the search for this interest-free realm of innocence, and it is fundamental to our moral thought.
Postmodernism
the scrutiny of visions of the natural conscience.
What did Thoreau find in the West
he found the natural other — a vision of an interest free realm upon which to base a natural conscience.
Like the Daoists and the Sophists, Thoreau carried his critique of material desire and self-interest into a suspicion of ___________
knowledge
Thoreau found a natural me which is?
What can this be found in?
the imagination of a truer, more authentic self that we believe the natural other sees in us, as opposed to the me that society sees.
This can be found in the environmentalists’ self-conception.
