Thinking like a Mall Thinking like a Mall Environmental Philosophy after the End of Nature Steven Vogel The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2015 Steven Vogel All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, please email [email protected]. This book was set in Sabon by the MIT Press. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Vogel, Steven, 1954– Thinking like a mall : environmental philosophy after the end of nature / Steven Vogel. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-02910-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Environmental sciences—Philosophy. 2. Philosophy of nature. I. Title. GE40.V64 363.7001—dc23 2014039752 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To the memory of my parents Contents Preface ix 1 Against Nature 1 2 The Social Construction of Nature 33 3 Alienation, Nature, and the Environment 65 4 The Nature of Artifacts 95 5 Thinking like a Mall 129 6 The Silence of Nature 167 7 Democracy and the Commons 199 Notes 239 Bibliography 265 Index 275 Preface This book has been a long time in the writing, and parts of it (or first drafts of parts of it) have been published as independent articles along the way. These include: “Alienation and the Commons,” in Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change: Human Virtues of the Future, ed. Allen Thompson and Jeremy Bendik-Keymer (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012); “Why ‘Nature’ Has No Place in Environmental Philosophy,” in The Ideal of Nature: Debates about Biotechnology and the Environment, ed. Greg- ory E. Kaebnick (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011); “On Nature and Alienation,” in Critical Ecologies: The Frankfurt School and Contemporary Environmental Crises, ed. Andrew Biro (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011); “The Silence of Nature,” Environmental Values 15, no. 2 (May 2006); “The Nature of Artifacts,” Environmental Ethics 25, no. 2 (2003); “Environmental Philosophy after the End of Nature,” Environmental Ethics 24, no. 1 (2002); “Nature as Origin and Difference: On Environmental Philosophy and Continental Thought,” Philosophy Today 42, suppl. (1999); “Marx and Alienation from Nature,” Social Theory and Practice 14, no. 3 (1988). Some of the original work here was done during a semester-long Spe- cial Research Fellowship at the Humanities Research Center “Menneske og Natur” at Odense University in Denmark, and I am thankful for that support. I am also grateful to Robert Chapman and to Pace University’s Department of Philosophy for providing me with office space and other assistance during part of the writing of this book. Thanks are also due