Eco-Republic: What the Ancients Can Teach Us about Ethics, Virtue, and Sustainable Living

Melissa Lane. (2012). Princeton: Princeton University Press.     

The focus in this book is to examine the role the individual plays in aiding and informing wider societal change, particularly in light of the contemporary climate crisis. Lane brings ancient philosophical ideas (notably from Plato and his Republic) into dialogue with modern debates and how modern issues should best be approached. The book falls into three parts: “Inertia” which deals with the current state of the world and where ancient thought could provide a kickstart form reform, “Imagination” which lends itself to the theorising of what the aftermath of social reform might look like, and “Initiative” which looks at how various imaginative acts and ideas put forwards in Parts I and II might be applied to current problems. This leads onto Lane’s version of sustainable living which focusses as much on the continued health and happiness of the individual members of society as on the health of the planet as a whole.

Example quotation

Sustainability ‘relates to a broad condition for […], in Platonic terms, a conception of good – realizing potential and improving quality of life, protecting and enhancing the earth as an ecosystem. And it shows that we need not, and should not, take the status quo as the standard for sustainability. Sustainability is not about maintaining the status quo ad infinitum into the future. It is about reconfiguring society within the limits of the earth so that over time, society will be ever more able to realize and instantiate the good.’

(p.20)