ABSTRACT
A sustainable future for human existence can only be secured when sustainability becomes the central value that organizes human activity. Despite this truth, the idea of sustainability is strikingly absent from the Enlightenment philosophies that gave rise to contemporary models of political and economic organization. The absence of sustainability as a central value in political and economic thinking means political and economic models struggle to accommodate the conceptual relationships necessary for ensuring a sustainable future. This struggle is reflected in the theoretical and practical failures of contemporary models and the failure of these models to address the immanent crisis of ecological collapse.
