Rationality environmentalised (with and beyond Michael Bonnett)

Abstract

Michael Bonnett’s highly regarded Environmental Consciousness (2021) is an admirable extension of the phenomenology of nature inaugurated in his previous work Retrieving Nature (2004). To fully capture the essentials of his environmental thinking, I locate the set of ideas he has developed in his phenomenology of nature (such as ‘environmental consciousness’ itself) within a wider context, by situating Environmental Consciousness as a sequel not just to Retrieving Nature but also to Children’s Thinking (1994). While broadly sympathetic with how his thinking has evolved into the environmental philosophy of education articulated in his new book, I argue that the notion of rationality has been alienated from his environmentalising project. Given the alliance Bonnett acknowledges with John McDowell’s re-conceptualisation of nature, I contend that the latter’s view that human experience is pervaded by conceptual rationality in a relevant sense can make room to integrate rationality with Bonnett’s on-going project; put differently, I wager that rationality should be ‘environmentalised’.