Thucydides indicates in a number of ways that the section of his book from its beginning up until the account of the factional strife in Corcyra presents the case for the greatness of Athens over Sparta – of Athens’ regime and its education, and of the understanding of human nature and the human condition on which Athens is based (1.1–3.69). First, as we have seen, in the Archaeology, he presents himself as a partisan of Periclean Athens.1 Second, Thucydides presents a comparison of the two “who had come to be the most illustrious Greeks of their time,” “Pausanias the Spartan and Themistocles the Athenian,” a comparison that highlights the violent, tyrannical, and foolish character of Pausanias but that culminates with Thucydides’ first eulogy of an individual in the book, his eulogy of Themistocles for his outstanding practical wisdom.2 Third, this section of the book presents what is by far Thucydides’ longest eulogy of any individual in the book, of the Athenian statesman Pericles, more than triple the length of Thucydides’ next longest eulogy, that of the Spartan Brasidas.3 Thucydides’ eulogy concludes a discrete, relatively compressed subsection of the book, that is introduced by Thucydides’ praise of Pericles as “a man at that time first of the Athenians, most powerful at both speaking and acting,” a subsection that is 8.1 percent of the book as a whole, and that is entirely dominated by Pericles.4 This subsection contains four unanswered speeches by Pericles – three in direct discourse, and one in indirect discourse – including three of the eight longest speeches in the book and by far the longest speech of all, the Funeral Oration.5 That oration presents Pericles’ eloquent account of the greatness of Athens and specifically its superiority to Sparta in the enjoyment of life and in intelligence.6 Fourth, this section of the book presents the Athenians’ two naval victories over the vastly more numerous Peloponnesian forces, led by Sparta, victories presented by Thucydides as due to the Athenians’ superiority in skill, judgment, and daring.7 Finally, this section presents the Athenians’ thoughtfully compassionate treatment of the rebellious Mytileneans – the greatest act of compassion in this harsh war – in stark contrast with the seemingly thoughtless and cruel treatment by the Spartans of the Plataeans.8 Thucydides in this section of the book portrays Athens as a city with the most sagacious statesmen, the most ingenious and energetic citizenry, and the most thoughtfully humane character.

This chapter details Herodotus’ Egyptian narrative, which has long been a topic of scholarly controversy. I argue that Herodotus presents Egypt as living culture dedicated to the active preservation of the past, in line with Egyptian self-presentation. This real cultural difference furthers Herodotus’ comparative political theory; the Hellenes appear jejune and conceited in comparison. The culturally mediated conception of the past cultivated by Egyptian conventions also offers a foil to Herodotus’ own historical inquiry. Through tracing the way that the Egyptians actively archive and reenact a hallowed past, Herodotus traces the way that attitudes toward the status of the past affect human flourishing in the present. The Egyptian narrative thus furthers his philosophical inquiry into the relationship between nature and convention.

In Islamic thought, scriptural references to the skies, the stars, the heavens, and other creatures inspires reflection on the universe as part of worship itself. The possibility of other planetary life is not seen as a threat to human existence or the moral framework of human life on earth, but intrinsic to the rhythm and purpose of the cosmic order.

This chapter examines Herodotus’ fulsome praise of Scythia, arguing that Scythia serves as an explicitly political model of human flourishing. Herodotus’ treatment of Scythia emphasizes that it achieves freedom without domination. This underscores both the importance Herodotus grants freedom and the great difficulty of avoiding cyclical violence, the stark dichotomy between ruling and ruled that drives the endless acquisition of empire. I thus contextualize Herodotus’ signal praise of Scythia by exploring the role of violence and vengeance in the ecosystem of strife he depicts much of life as bound up in. But as much as Herodotus highlights how rare and important this achievement is, his treatment of Scythia also emphasizes its great costs. His Scythian subsection thus shows his nonideal model of human flourishing, how it captures the vices and virtues of any particular political model. This pairs it with his treatment of Athenian freedom.

Most definitions of empathy stress its interpersonal nature: Empathy requires a human sender and a human receiver, where all parties involved have the theoretical capacity to accurately understand each other’s minds. Because empathy is inherently interpersonal, some scholars have questioned whether empathy between humans and artificial intelligence as it currently exists (e.g., large language models) is “real.” However, the requirement for two minds, each with the theoretical capacity to fully understand the thoughts and emotions of the other, is also not clearly met in other domains where empathy is discussed, such as empathy between humans and non-human animals or empathy with nature. This chapter critically examines these assumptions about what is needed for empathy to occur, offering several possible sets of empathy requirements that researchers might engage with, and outlining potential challenges researchers might face if they adopt any particular set of requirements in their work. Ultimately, we pose the question of whether two minds and/or the ability for minds to understand each other are truly necessary for empathy, or whether all that is required for empathy to occur is an entity’s perception of giving or receiving it.

In this chapter, we mainly review the effect of (i) improved contact with nature and (ii) new house building near the green belt. As one example of (i) we review the case for more ‘pocket parks’ in urban areas. From a German survey of house-movers, we estimate that, when a person has one more hectare of green space within one kilometre of their house, their life satisfaction rises by 0.0066 points (out of 10). (This contradicts the theory of spatial equilibrium and traditional methods used to value nature via differences in house prices.) Given this (and the Treasury valuation of a WELLBY), a pocket park would be worth establishing, provided it cost less than £61 million per hectare.

We next consider house building when house prices have become prohibitively expensive for many people due to the shortage of land with planning permission. We review the effect of giving planning permission on land near commuter stations outside cities. We conclude that this would deliver huge benefits, and we discuss how this could be organised.

“Behind the Deadline, April 1864–April 1865” examines the “second” Camp Ford – the prison camp after it swelled in size to become the largest Confederate camp west of the Mississippi River. The chapter provides a rich and textured cultural, environmental, and social history of the Union prisoners and how their increased numbers and the subsequent increase in the camp’s physical size from five to ten acres shaped their experience within and outside the new stockade. This chapter explores in detail prison life and death during Camp Ford’s most cramped and dangerous time.

“Paths to Captivity, 1863” provides background and context for the construction of Camp Ford and for those Union soldiers first imprisoned there. It describes how and where Confederates captured the first wave of Union prisoners in 1863, and it traces their journeys from Arkansas, Louisiana, or the Gulf Coast to the new prison outside of Tyler. Chapter 2 offers a framework for those early prisoners, guards, and civilians who intersected at Camp Ford.

Camp Ford’s Civil War’s introduction is driven by narrative couched in concise arguments and general historiographical context so that readers know precisely what to expect and how what they will read fits into the ongoing scholarly conversations regarding war, nature, and captivity in Texas, the Trans-Mississippi, and the South during the Civil War.

While Camp Ford at its most crowded had more favorable conditions than most wartime prison camps, Union prisoners of war nevertheless wanted out. Many attempted to escape, and most failed. “Escaping Camp Ford, 1863–1865” explores these remarkable escape attempts, at once telling the stories of the escapees, their pursuers, and the natural and cultural environments through which they sought freedom. In short, this chapter will convey rollicking and often deadly stories balanced by a deeper analysis of the environment and people both in the region immediately around Camp Ford and throughout much of East Texas, southern Indian Territory, and western Louisiana. The act of escape – successful or not – had a major impact on those within the prison and beyond.

“Imprisoned, July 1863–April 1864” is devoted primarily to the “first” Camp Ford from 1863 to 1864 – the prison camp before it was contained by a wooden stockade built by local enslaved people. This chapter examines the daily existence of the early federal prisoners and how they interacted with camp guards, local civilians, and enslaved people. It includes detailed discussions for how the natural environment shaped the prisoner experience and how prisoners shaped their environment.

This chapter examines one of the most distinctive features of Bishop’s work: her frequent use of correctio. When using this rhetorical scheme, writers will correct, question, rephrase or offer alternatives to their words and phrases in the body of the text itself (rather than, say, in the process of redrafting). The first part of this chapter gives an account of: correctio’s history; its characterisation in early-modern and twentieth-century rhetorical manuals; its risks and rewards; and its indiscriminate approval by Bishop’s critics. The chapter then analyses its frequent use by three major influences on Bishop: George Herbert, William Wordsworth and Marianne Moore. The main part of this chapter then examines Bishop’s use of correctio in relation to visual art, nature writing, memory, the representation of consciousness, scepticism, and elegy.

The conclusion looks at how contemporary newspapers begin the effort to historicise 1859 and effectively level out the contours of a very distinctive year, along with some of that year’s voices. There is little here on voting reform or the war in Europe, though the Rifle Volunteers are warmly celebrated. This shows what a year book can achieve in putting lost details and voices back into the narrative, thus becoming an important act of witness, but also showing how specific acts of omission go to make up our history and can slow down change. The first parts of The Mill on the Floss were written during 1859, and we see how that year feeds directly into Eliot’s work. The conclusion ends by suggesting that nature in Eliot is a form of collective inheritance that acts as a synecdoche for custom, which in turn is the foundation of her creativity.

This chapter offers a close reading of Chapter 5 of Heinrich von Ofterdingen. Its primary focus is the two new characters Heinrich meets: an old miner and a hermit. The miner embodies a poetic way of seeing nature as an interconnected whole that gives expression to the presence of the divine. The hermit embodies a poetic way of seeing history in a parallel way, in which past and future are joined together in a spiritual present. Heinrich witnesses how their conversation converges on poetry as the higher power that unites nature and history, giving him a first glimpse of his own vocation.

In these pages, the problematic at the centre of the book is introduced. It explores how the concepts of sovereignty and freedom and the human/nature relationship are linked and how they influence the idea of self. This Introduction also displays past and current interpretations of the Romantic conception of subjectivity and of Romantic political philosophy, highlighting the shortcomings of these readings. Indeed, they neglect the political essence of the Romantic Self. This chapter closes with an overview of the structure of the book and a list of the Romantic authors considered.

This chapter explains how the Romantic gnoseology goes together with the concept of a dependent subjectivity. Indeed, the Romantics imagine their ontology as based on relationships (rather than on identity) and, consequently, the self as entangled in a mesh of reciprocal dependencies. This perspective on the Romantic gnoseology begins with the notion of ‘experiment’, which for the Romantics is a genetic method through which the subject–object dualism is undermined. Thinking of philosophy as an experiment implied, for them, accepting that the human being does not dominate nature but is instead constantly influenced by it. The deep relationship between the knower and the known is manifested in feeling, which reveals the primordial connection between subject and object and is at the core of the relational idea of the self. The relational ontology underlying the Romantic conception of feeling is even more evident in their analysis of love as a universal force that unites beings to and in the Absolute. Love designates the network of relationships constitutive of Being, of which the self is not the apex.

This chapter offers a close reading of Part II of Heinrich von Ofterdingen. The second part of the novel introduces the reader to a sightly later period in Heinrich’s life, after the tragic event of Mathilde’s death. Heinrich is now a wandering Pilgrim who has returned to a dream-like version of his homeland in Thuringia. He has a vision of Mathilde and their child that awakens his wish to be reunited with his beloved. Heinrich meets Cyane, who, he learns, was his sister in a previous life. Cyane then introduces Heinrich to Doctor Sylvester, and the two engage in conversation about nature, evil, virtue, and conscience.

The 1972 Stockholm Conference marked the emergence of transnational environmental law, with states agreeing on commitments towards a healthy environment. While the 1972 Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment may have been progressive and innovative at that time, it made no explicit mention of women, girls, or gender equality. Instead, women and girls were subsumed within the category of ‘man’. Through legal interpretation and analysis of policy documents, this chapter maps important progress made in the last 50 years. The article uncovers the untold story of women international lawmakers from the global South not only in advances on women’s rights but also in international law relevant to healthy social-ecological systems more broadly. The article finds that decoupling the notion of vulnerability from weakness and powerlessness and coupling it with agency and solidarity is needed if international law is going to tackle head on the biodiversity, climate change, pollution and water crises and effectively enable Earth stewardship.