In the epoch-making work Ecology without Nature, the central idea is an immediate paradox: In order to think and act truly ecologically, we must give up our habitual idea of nature.
This idea, which according to Timothy Morton actually blocks what it would like to promote, he traces back to the Romantic era, when it was in Romanticism that we formed an idea of nature as something that is separate from ourselves, and which we can relate to aesthetically. As part of his research, Morton thinks with and against a large number of key thinkers who, from antiquity to the present day, have reflected on our relationship with our surroundings.
In addition, the book contains ground-breaking readings of romantic poets such as Wordsworth, Coleridge and Blake and critical commentaries on a multitude of environmentally-oriented works of art in every imaginable art form. Since its publication, the book has maintained and expanded its relevance as global warming and related environmental problems have increasingly come onto the political, scientific and cultural agenda.
