Being at One

Being at One: Making a Home in Earth’s Commonwealth of Virtue, 2016 191,882 words

Being at One is a comprehensive two-volume study of the conditions for flourishing within an ecological modus vivendi. In the two volumes of the book, I develop an expansive conception of ‘the ecological,’ examining the commonwealth of life as something that encompasses both the natural and social metabolisms of living.

In volume one, Making a Home in Earth’s Commonwealth of Virtue, I argue for a concept of ecological virtue as a condition for a flourishing earthly commonwealth. The book establishes the virtues as qualities for successful living within environing relations. The closely reasoned analysis puts character formation and social formation to set persons within social and natural relations, attaining the personal (co)responsibility that is essential to living in place as one. In conceiving these qualities along ecological lines, ‘successful living’ is shown to take shape as a sustainable living within the ecological society.

Being at One. Vol II Spiritual Reality. 2016. 116,069 words

Spiritual Reality explores the transcendental dimensions of the ethics of ecological immanence outlined in the first volume. The argument traces the connections between immanence and transcendence through an examination of Earth-centred spirituality, highlighting participation in the ceaseless flow and creativity of the world, identifying patterns within wholes, and accenting the spirituality which unfolds within the natural order. From there, the book examines the conditions of a universal planetary ethic. Eschewing notions of abstract and empty universals, I ground commonality in the concrete particulars of the self-organising and participatory universe.