Autore
Garske, Joseph P.

Titolo
Anglophone legal culture, human recalcitrance, Malthusian catastrophes, and the irrefutable premise of global warming
Periodico
Geoprogress journal
Anno: 2017 - Volume: 4 - Fascicolo: 1 - Pagina iniziale: 31 - Pagina finale: 39

This paper will not directly engage the question of global warming. It will neither attempt to confirm nor deny the reality of such an atmospheric condition. Instead, this paper has to do with an architecture of authority intended to preside over all peoples in all localities of the earth. It examines the necessity of a transcendent law to curb the excesses and impulses of humankind. In its approach, the paper will discuss the present-day idea of global warming as a successor to the eighteenth century idea of the Malthusian Catastrophe. Viewed that way, the question actually becomes whether the human race, as a whole, has the capacity for ethical progress, or whether human nature is so inherently defective that, if unrestrained, it will destroy itself. That topic arose in the eighteenth century when Continental jurists ridiculed the Common law as a medieval relic tied to the interests of hereditary privilege and merchant wealth. The Europeans asserted that both its harsh legal method and its pejorative view of human nature were vestiges of Medievalism and Puritanism. This affront to English ways called for a rebuttal. An exchange began in 1795 with the publication of a book by Nicolas de Condorcet, Progress of the Human Mind, perhaps the single most influential summation of ideas from the Age of Reason and its Optimistic view of human capacity. Thomas Malthus answered that hopeful view with a more pessimistic appraisal set forth in his Essay on Population, published in 1798. In his book, Malthus attempted to prove that the natural greed and depravity of human beings would eventually end—not in a world utopia—but in a tragedy of despair and death. The widely understood implication of his thesis was that the only way to forestall such a fate was to impose on the perverse appetites of humankind the strictures of transcending legal authority. This paper will conclude that, whatever the facts about global warming, there are fundamentally two types of solution: those imposed from the top down by coercive authority, and those from the bottom up by public cultivation and learning. The Anglophone solution for a Malthusian Catastrophe is to impose upon humankind an elevated global Rule of Law.



SICI: 2384-9398(2017)4:1<31:ALCHRM>2.0.ZU;2-K
Testo completo: http://www.geoprogress.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/GPJ2017_VOL4_1-04Garske.pdf

Esportazione dati in Refworks (solo per utenti abilitati)

Biblioteche ACNP che possiedono il periodico