ABSTRACT
The following deliberations are based on the content of lectures that were held several times at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Heidelberg under the title ‘Philosophical Foundations of Ecology and Economy’ for students of various disciplines: economics, politics, laws, liberal arts, physics, biology. In their current form they correspond largely to a series of talks held at the workshop ‘Foundations of Environmental Education’ in Großbothen near Leipzig, which was organised by the Academy of the Saxonian State Foundation on Nature and the Environment.1 Although various changes were made on the way to publishing it in book form, the lecture style has been intentionally preserved. As a consequence, the book displays certain characteristics similar to those Sigmund Freud recorded in regard to the publication of his Introductory Lec tures on Psychoanalysis:
Any particularities of this book which may strike its readers are accounted for by the conditions in which it originated. It was not possible in my presentation to preserve the unruffled calm of a scientific treatise. On the contrary, the lecturer had to make it his business to prevent his audience’s attention from lapsing during a session lasting for almost two hours. The necessities of the moment often made it impossible to avoid repetitions in treating some particular subject [. . .]. As a result, too, of the way in which the material was arranged, some important topics [. . .] could not be exhaustively treated at a single point, but had to be taken up repeatedly and then dropped again until a fresh opportunity arose for adding some further information about it.2
