ABSTRACT
Encompassing ecological integrity, sufficiency of resources and social sustainability, contemporary usage of the term 'sustainability', then, leads many to a consideration of the ethics and politics of sustainability. In the work of the three Victorian sages, it is striking how their attention encompasses not merely the environmental and social devastation wrought by industrial modernity—as pressing and widespread as these aspects were—but the psychological and emotional impact on feeling, sensing subjects. Indeed, it is the continuities with those who find little of value in the concept of sustainability that is striking: both positions, for and against sustainability, that is, assume disruption, loss, uncertainty and an awareness of the limits of human agency as the unavoidable foundation of any ethico-political response to the Anthropocene. The contemporary scholars are increasingly exploring the ethical dimension of life in the Anthropocene. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.
