A Philosophy of Climate Apocalypticism: In and Against the World (Routledge Environmental Humanities)

This book offers a long-overdue analysis of the ubiquity of eco-apocalypticism in current discourses on the climate crisis.

Drawing on a wide range of sources and theoretical traditions from ecological works and radical pamphlets, through political theology and continental philosophy to ancient and medieval apocalypses, the book sheds a comprehensive light on the concepts, processes, and experiences which circulate around the figure of the environmental end of the world. Importantly, this book argues that apocalypticism can provide a productive philosophical framework for addressing the climate catastrophe, enabling us to propose a distinctive answer to the fundamental question which haunts progressive ecological projects: how can we defend the world we find indefensible?

Appealing to students, academics, and researchers in philosophy, political theology, and environmental humanities, this book is a timely intervention which hopes to demonstrate that, when all else fails, it is the end of the world which may save the planet.

Jakub Kowalewski is Research Fellow at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, London. He is also the editor of The Environmental Apocalypse: Interdisciplinary Reflections on the Climate Crisis (Routledge 2023).