ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a critique of the instrumental thinking that dominates the world of business and looks to philosophy in the effort to develop an alternative mode of thinking about sustainability against the backdrop of a planet in peril. It shows explores how this way of thinking creates or underlines a dis-connectedness to nature and hence a distance from own efforts in dealing with pressing environmental challenges. The chapter that instrumental thinking is insufficient for dealing with the seriousness of the environmental challenges. To care for ecological variation and the manifold of species is not necessarily always instrumental for human needs or aims. Of course, the human suffering and politico-economic problems caused by industrial pollution and climate change are also a concern in ecosophy. The philosophy aims at revitalising natural concern for life – human life as well as other forms of life – by bringing in a non-instrumental way of thinking of interaction with the world.
