Physis, Biopower, and Biothermodynamics

Positing that the 'environmental question' arises from the history of metaphysics, this book reinterprets Heraclitus' notion of physis as the fundamental, emergent potency of life, thus deconstructing the interpretation offered by Heidegger and stressing the struggle between the creative force of life and its subjection to the human Logos.

Enrique Leff is Emeritus Professor at the Institute for Social Research and the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and Emeritus Researcher at the National Council of Humanities, Science, and Technology (CONAHCyT), Mexico. He was the former coordinator of the Environmental Training Network for Latin America and the Caribbean at the United Nations Environment Program. He is the author of Political Ecology: Deconstructing Capital and Territorializing Life (2021) and Green Production: Towards an Environmental Rationality (1995).

1. Heraclitus and the Fire of Life 2. The Power of Reason and the Strife for Life 3. Biothermodynamics and the Question Concerning Life 4. Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's Bioeconomics: The Economic Process and the Entropic Death of the Planet