. Books Received. Ethics, Place & Environment: Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 125-128.

As part of the recent rethinking of green politics, the construction of a green democracy has been subjected to increasing scrutiny. There is a growing consensus around deliberative democracy as the preferred model for the realisation of the green programme. As a result several arguments emerge when deliberative principles and procedures are to be justified from a green standpoint. This paper offers a critical assessment of the green case for deliberative democracy, showing that deliberation is being asked to deliver more (...) than it is able to. However, it is suggested that the connection between sustainability, understood as a normative principle, and deliberative procedures may ultimately offer the best grounds for such a defence. (shrink)

Among those who reject the Epicurean claim that death is not bad for the one who dies, it is popularly held that death is bad for the one who dies, when it is bad for the one who dies, because it deprives the one who dies of the good things that otherwise would have fallen into her life. This view is known as the deprivation account of the value of death, and Fred Feldman is one of its most prominent defenders. (...) In this paper, I explain why I believe that Feldman’s argument for the occasional badness of death fails. While staying within an Epicurean framework, I offer an alternative that adequately accounts for a significant range of widely held intuitions about prudential value. My account implies that death is almost always good for the one who dies, yet often less good than not dying. Finally, I discuss some puzzles that remain for my account and hint at possible ways to address them. (shrink)

Among the many parallels between Hannah Arendt and Cornelius Castoriadis is their shared interest in the kind of politics that is characteristic of the council movements, revolutionary moments and the political democracy of ancient Greece. This article seeks to elucidate how the two thinkers fill out and complement each other’s thought, with special attention to political creation—an ambiguous theme in Arendt’s thought. While critical of the notion of ‘making’ in the political field, Arendt also emphasizes the importance of building institutions. (...) To take this seriously means that her analyses of the nature of politics must be modified and, in this respect, Castoriadis’s understanding of politics as institution-building can serve as a guideline. However, Arendt’s concept of ‘plurality’ in the public sphere represents a level of political analysis that is underdeveloped in the work of Castoriadis. Taken together, their thought highlights many important aspects of political creation in a radical sense. (shrink)

This paper offers two possible readings of the Earth Charter that are informed by current scholarship in the field of environmental politics. The first reading finds much in the document to suggest congruence with emerging discourses of cosmopolitanism and global environmental citizenship. The second reading, a more sceptical one, identifies aspects of the Earth Charter that seem more resonant with depoliticizing United Nations-style light green globalism than with an inclusive ethical vision of environmentalism. After setting out these two readings, I (...) argue that, although potentially undermining of its endorsability, thinking critically about problematic aspects of the Earth Charter is an exercise that may point in the direction of a cosmopolitan environmentalism that is less banal and instrumental and more dialogically open, reflexive, and democratic. (shrink)