"Worldviews and Ecology is the perfect book for inclusion in secondary world history, religious studies, or ethics courses. The essays in this collection, written by the many of the leading spokes-people in the area, are short, succinct in their presentation of issues, well written, and followed by copious notes for follow up reading. I found the chapters to be rich in materials that would make for exciting and informed classroom discussion. A book for both teachers and students.

The collection is divided into three main sections: (1) Overviews, (2) Traditional World Religions, and (3) Contemporary Ecological Perspectives. It is impossible to comment on each essay, so I have chosen one from each section as a representative. Because we think the contents of the book are so important, I will make a complete list of essays at the end of the review.

In what I am calling the "overview section," noted scholar Tu Wei-ming has written a remarkable essay called "Beyond the Enlightenment Mentality." While acknowledging the huge global debt that human society has to the numerous scientific and political breakthroughs generated by the Enlightenment, Tui Wei-ming also think we need to see the problems that it has generated for us. Not only is he concerned with specific problems, but also with a worldview that has been and continues to be extremely problematic. "A fair understanding of the Enlightenment mentality requires a frank discussion of the dark side of the modern West as well. The "unbound Prometheus," symbolizing the runaway technology of development, may have been a spectacular achievement of human ingenuity in the early phases of industrial revolution. Despite impassioned reactions from the Romantic movement and insightful criticisms of the forefathers of the "human sciences," the Enlightenment mentality fueled by the Faustian drive to explore, to know, to conquer, and to subdue persisted as the reigning ideology of the modern West.......The unleashed juggernaut blatantly exhibited unbridled aggressiveness toward humanity, nature, and itself. This unprecedented destructive engine has for the first time in history made the viability of the human species problematical (22)."

In considering how to correct these problems Tu Wei-ming suggests that we can find the resources to do so from three major sources. These are: (1) the ethico-religious traditions of the Modern West (Greek philosophy and the Judeo-Christian tradition, (2) non-western axial age civilizations (Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism from South and Southeast Asia, and Confucianism and Taoism from East Asia, and Islam), and (3) Primal Traditions (North American, Hawaiian, Maori, and other indigenous religious traditions). The ethico-religious traditions of the Modern West, which with their notions of an ontological difference between spirit/matter and soul/body and a notion of "dominion" over the earth, have much to answer for in terms of the terrors that have been unleashed upon the world. But, within each of these traditions exist core concepts and practices that can be used for the healing of these problems. He sees that the Greek notion of the citizen, the Judaic notion of the covenant, and the Christian idea of universal love as key solutions. "However, the unintended negative consequences of the rise of the Modern West have so undermined the sense of community implicit in the Hellenistic idea of the citizen, the Judaic idea of the covenant, and the Christian idea of universal love that it is morally imperative for these great traditions, which have maintained highly complex and tension-ridden relationships with the Enlightenment mentality, to formulate their critique of the blatant anthropocentrism inherent in the Enlightenment project (26)."

From the axial age traditions of Asia and the Middle East he sees that they can offer us resources in "worldviews, rituals, institutions, styles of education, and patterns of human relatedness" that develop styles of life "both as a continuation of and alternative to the West European and North American exemplification of the Enlightenment mentality (26)." The primal religious traditions offers us models or examples of relatedness and rootedness. They provide examples of local thinking and active concern for that locality and a community "bonding in ordinary, daily, human interaction (27)." Following the thinking of religious scholar Ewert Cousins, he says that if we are to survive in our post-modern age we must consider the "Earth as our Prophet, and the indigenous peoples as our teacher."

Eric Katz's "Judaism and the Ecological Crisis" is representative of the approach that many of the authors in the "Traditional World Religions" section take with their materials. Starting with a general overview of Judaism's attitude towards the natural world, Mr. Katz says, "Within Judaism then, the human view of nature and the environment is grounded in the specific obligations and activities of Jewish life, the tasks and commandments that God presented to the Jewish people (55-56)." He then moves to tackle the meaning of the pivotal creation story in Genesis where God commands humans to...."replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over..." (Genesis 1:28) He takes up the question as to what does this mean? Are we talking about dominion or stewardship? Does the earth belong to the human race? From his study of core religious texts, Mr. Katz says the answer is no. Then moving historically through texts he shows that the view within Judaism is towards the goals of stewardship, with some qualifications "To use a comparison widespread in the literature of environmental philosophy, the concept of stewardship in Judaism advocates neither the domination-destruction nor the preservation of the natural environment but its conservation and wise developmental use (57)." The qualifier to Jewish stewardship is that stewardship implies ownership. Jews cannot be stewards of the Earth in this sense because in Judaism the earth belongs to God and not to humans. Mr. Katz spends other parts of the article looking at how practices like the Sabbath and Jubilee year point to positive images of connection to the natural world.

From the last group of essays in the "Contemporary Ecological Perspectives" section I choose to mention here Charlene Spretnak's "Critical and Constructive Contributions of Eco-Feminism." Eco-Feminism is a strong voice in the environmental discussion, and Ms. Spretnak is one of those leading voices. She frames the article by reminding us that the critical insight of Eco-Feminism "is that a historical, symbolic, and political relationship exists between the denigration of nature and the female in Western cultures (181)." Moving into a brief history of that connection she says that "The patriarchal core of the Eurocentric worldview is the culturally imposed fear that nature and the elemental power of the female are potentially chaotic and engulfing unless contained by the will of the cultural fathers (183)." Ms. Spretnak then moves to consider the Eco-Feminist critiques of environmental philosophy which is that (1) it has been blind to patriarchal assumptions, (2) the need to reject the rationalist conceptions of the self that posit dualities like public/private and thinking/feeling, and (3) a conception of rights that lacks a holistic apprehension of the natural world. She considers the dialogue between Eco-Feminism and Deep Ecology and then comments on the spiritual aspects of Eco-Feminism that offer alternatives to the environmental problem.

"Worldviews and Ecology" is written to introduce both students and teachers to our most urgent global issue, and to provide a framework for classroom discussion and further study. It more than succeeds in bringing into one volume the plural voices of nationally known spokes-people. We recommend it highly.

Table of Contents

Beyond the Enlightenment Mentality..................................................Tu Wei-ming

Toward a Global Environmental Ethic.................................................J. Baird Callicot

Traditional World Religions

Native North American Worldviews and Ecology..................................John Grim

Judaism and the Ecological Crisis...........................................................Eric Katz

The Garden of Eden, The Fall, and Life in Christ...................................Jay McDaniel

The Ecological Fallout of Islamic Creation Theology............................ Roger E. Timm

A Baha'i Perspective on an Ecologically Sustainable Society................Robert A. White

Hindu Environmentalism........................................................................Christopher Key Chapple

Toward a Buddhist Ecological Cosmology..............................................Brian Brown

Jainism and Ecology................................................................................Michael Tobias

Ecological Themes in Taoism and Confucianism....................................Mary Evelyn Tucker

Contemporary Ecological Perspectives

The Emerging Cosmological Worldview..................................................Ralph Metzner

Cosmology and Ethics................................................................................Larry L. Rasmussen

Critical and Constructive Contributions of Eco-Feminism........................Charlene Spretnak

Whiteheads's Deeply Ecological Worldview..............................................David Ray Griffin

Deep Ecology as Worldview..........................................................................George Sessions

Ecological Geography.....................................................................................Thomas Berry

Cosmogenesis...................................................................................................Brian Swimme

review ©2000 Tom Collins and RSiSS 

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