Beyond Elemental Loss

Beyond Elemental Loss offers an important and innovative contribution to environmental philosophy by investigating loss in times of anthropogenic climate change through the elements of water, fire, air, and earth. Marjolein Oele argues that the current experience of loss prompts a reassessment of the conventional meaning and conceptualization of loss. She proposes that such loss is best understood through infinitesimal, diachronic shifts occurring in the elemental constellations that structure the world--water, fire, air, and earth--and humanity's incremental inability to cognitively and affectively make sense of this world increasingly transformed by anthropogenic forces. Through a generous yet critical reading of a broad range of interdisciplinary sources tracing changes in our relationship to the elemental over time, Oele's scholarship plumbs the history of philosophy as much as it pulls from Indigenous philosophies, continental thought, mythologies, anthropological and historical sources, science, and ecology. The book's argumentative arc ultimately directs our attention toward constructive transformations in our cognitive and affective habits, and it argues that trust can bring us beyond elemental loss.