After Exploitation: How We Can Build Flourishing Relationships with the Earth

A revolution is taking place in the sciences and the arts, but the general public is barely aware of it. In his new book, Kocku von Stuckrad describes this revolution as a “relational turn” that no longer sees humans as masters of the world, but rather integrates them into a complex network of relationships with the nonhuman world. Instead of perpetuating the separation of culture from nature, subject from object, and mind from matter-a separation that stems from the European tradition-von Stuckrad moves beyond understandings of umwelt (German for “the world around us”) and develops the outlines of a mitwelt ethics (literally, an ethics for the “world we’re with”) that considers human and nonhuman beings as equals in their knowledge and relations to the world.Only in this way can we break out of what the author calls the “exploitation regimes” of patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism that have brought the planet to the brink of collapse. The book formulates concrete future perspectiv