NIHILISM Inc.: environmental destruction and the metaphysics of sustainability

In this work I have attempted to explain the failure of humanity to effectively confront the global environmental crisis, and thereby to reveal what is required to overcome it. It is argued that the destruction of the environment on a global scale is the final outcome of the expansion and domination of the world by European civilization, a civilization which is inherently destructive and implicitly nihilistic. The failure to respond to a crisis threatening all humanity and most other forms of life is symptomatic of this nihilism. Environmentalists have failed because they have not fully appreciated the nature of this civilization, an appreciation which requires an understanding of the history and dynamics of European culture and its offshoots from Ancient Greece to the present. The first part of the book analyses the origins and dynamics of Western civilization to reveal the origins of nihilism and to show how in the modern world nihilism has come to be embodied by institutions and individuals, while the second part is devoted to analysing Marxism, Russian culture and the Soviet Union. The final part of the work offers the philosophical foundations necessary for an alternative, environmentally sustainable civilization.