The Philosophy of Living Nature focuses on the approach of the Western philosophical tradition to physis, or nature. Zdenek Kratochvíl reveals, on a philosophical level, the roots of today’s environmental crisis, presenting an etymological investigation of the concept of “nature” itself and arguing for the necessity of focusing on the world and its plurality as the background for phenomena and the context of things, as a unity of horizons, as a paradigm for understanding nature. However, as Kratochvíl makes clear, questions about the natural world have stakes far beyond the realm of philosophy: chapters in this wide-ranging and richly nuanced book deal with the identity of living organisms and the relation of life and being. Together, they provide an analysis of Darwinian and neo-Darwinian evolution and question in what sense we may know living beings.

Zdenek Kratochvíl is a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and History of Sciences in the Faculty of Science and in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies in the Faculty of Arts at Charles University. Václav Paris is assistant professor in the Department of English at the City College of New York.