Back to Earth

Anthony Weston teaches Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Studies at Elon College, North Carolina, and is the author of Toward Better Problems: New Perspectives on Abortion, Animal Rights, the Environment, and Justice (Temple).

"In this exceptionally engaging book, Anthony Weston goes beyond the 'environmental ethics' approach to argue for the reinstatement of our age-old connections to Nature and other animals: what Vice President Al Gore refers to as a sense of the 'vividness, vibrancy, and aliveness of the rest of the natural world.' Weston draws upon an encyclopedic knowledge of recent research in animal behavior in his proposal for a new trans-species 'etiquette.' He also provides practical suggestions for redesigning our cities and neighborhoods in bioregional ways to help bring about a new ecological relationship with Nature."-George Sessions, Sierra College, coauthor of Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered"This is a wonderful book, generous and graceful-exactly what we need. Back to Earth is an invitation to live 'in the presence of the more-than-human...to awake and go to sleep with it, to take its rhythms and cycles for the rhythms and cycles of [our own lives], until the two finally merge into one stream.' It is written in the conviction that our fate is bound up with the more-than-human world and that to return home, to come back to earth, is a matter of etiquette, grace, and generosity of spirit-and a matter of coming, once again, to our senses through concrete and practical 'enabling practices,' sources and embodiments of a genuine environmental ethic."-Jim Cheney, University of Wisconsin

• Acknowledgments 1. Has Environmentalism Forgotten the Earth? 2. Animals Next to Us 3. Animals on the Borderlines 4. The Land Sings 5. Desolation 6. Coming to Our Senses 7. Transhuman Etiquettes 8. Is It Too Late? Notes Index