THE BID FOR A POLITICAL THEORY OF NATURE

Forest Sovereignty: Wildlife Sustainability and Ethics (Oxford: Peter Lang) examines plants, animals, and political philosophy in a claim for a forest state of Gaia. The book argues that humans should set aside and leave to their growth vast tracts of forests, wetlands, and grasslands. Biologists surmise that immense and undisturbed interlocking networks of forests, wetlands, grasslands, seas, oceans, etc. constitute a thermodynamic system of atmospheric integrity maintaining environmental health. Modern human mechanical intrusion into nature’s realm has upset planetary homeostasis. One path to reestablishing climate fitness would not only be to preserve what remains but also to rewild additional forest, wetland, and grassland areas. There’s an ethical claim in saying forests have incalculable value because their intrinsic qualities of growth, metamorphosis, and decay are instrumental in creating and maintaining healthy ecosystems that constitute earth’s biosphere. 

Systems of morality should not consider only humans since the natural world is entitled to rights. Without question there is currently conflict between humans and forest flora, fauna, and fungi; this conflict must be ethically resolved for the sake of all life. We are not morally obligated to preserve natural museums that house stuffed animals. We are ethically obligated to preserve living forest wildlife upon which the health of earth depends. There’s an ethical claim in saying forests have incalculable value because their intrinsic qualities of growth, metamorphosis, and decay are instrumental in creating and maintaining any number of ecosystems that constitute earth’s biosphere. In the final paragraph of On the Origin of Species (1859), Darwin talks about a tangled bank as an orderly system supporting multiple species and structures. In nature, the secret to success is not dominance but interdependence.

A snapshot of the book appeared in July of 2024. Under the topic Ethical Dilemmas in Public Philosophy, the American Philosophical Association published the essay, “The Forest State of Gaia,” consisting of material cut from the book and revised for publication. Read the APA essay here. I spoke about forest sovereignty as an ecological and social good as an invited keynote at the Second International Global Plant Humanities conference, May 2025. Here. An abstract-essay of the book will appear in a special issue, November 2025, of the International Journal of Contemporary Humanities. 

On one hand, the book offers a critique of Enlightenment political philosophy from Thomas Hobbes and John Locke up to John Rawls and Robert Nozick; on the other hand, the radical book explores anthropocentric political philosophy to offer a theory of forest sovereignty using the very ideas from these seminal thinkers. Typically, following Locke, political philosophers argue that what exists in nature becomes human property with added value once labored over by people. This is a Western, colonialist settler mentality that has fostered deforestation and wildlife degradation. Controversially, Forest Sovereignty argues that the natural world mostly belongs to plants and animals since they have adapted in and helped evolve great forests as lungs and watersheds of the world. This line of thinking does not exclude, however, Indigenous people. Additionally, human-centered ideas from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, and Michael Walzer (among others) are examined as a springboard to posit forest dominion for flora, fauna, and fungi. More philosophers in the discussion include Hannah Arendt, Mary Midgley, and Martha C. Nussbaum. 

Looking at the environment from the perspective of wildlife should matter. Profound changes in how we view nature are in order, an outlook that could impact all aspects of social life from the individual up through the institutional level in human consciousness and conscience. We can continue to pollute so as to reap economic gains, banking funds for our children and grandchildren; or we could protect the environment now, at some cost, for the sake of our children and grandchildren. Understandably, there are many developing and economically struggling nations that chafe at environmental concerns when their pressing issues are about boosting their economies. With more countries beginning to understand the value of forest conservation, rich countries can offer financial assistance in many ways, from direct aid to debt relief.

There are important considerations to remember. Ecosystems are collections of organisms and soils responding to energies in and forces against existence in complex and mutual relationships for stability in bio-networks of shared welfare. Because flora, fauna, fungi, microorganisms, etc. engage naturally in ecosystem engineering to sustain their biomes and by default the biosphere of Gaia, we could consider granting them forest sovereignty. Nature allocates resources in balance among forest inhabitants; humans take unfairly from nature and do not distribute evenly. Without technology and relying on evolved adaptations to resources, there were many forest organisms well before any humans tending, seeding, and tilling the earth, the main point and a major claim for sovereignty in the forest state of Gaia. Just as there are human rights, so too there can be forest rights that protect the sanctity of earth’s life-supporting plants and animals.

Following from the above paragraphs, paleoanthropologists teach that we apes evolved along with and simultaneously to many other forest inhabitants. Destruction of our kin forests seems unethical. From a practical standpoint, we still need forests for life since they constitute part of a family tree from which we primates are closely allied. There are moral questions in our flattening of forests that hold our roots and future livelihood. Forest Gaia is at once independent of us and yet part of our evolutionary history just as the air we breathe. As philosopher Mary Midgley would say, forest ecology is more important than human economics. The moral dilemma is that most people, and specifically world leaders and politicians, place inward-facing economics over outward-looking ecology, thus explaining why over the past few decades the climate crisis has intensified.

For example, the 1992 U.N. Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro discussed climate change and biodiversity protections but failed to reach agreement on forest sovereignty since nation-states asserted their financial and resource rights as primary. While there were approvals to forests as part of a global economy, many nation-states shrugged off financial support for any venture to fund a state of Gaia. Nonetheless, since 1992 many Latin American countries, more than some other nations, have come to see the value in sustainable forest management by holding inventory, protecting boundaries, and preserving at-risk species and riparian buffer zones. Laws are social and ethical, and progress regarding the defense of animals appears in laws that recognize how animals share sentience with humans and are consequently afforded protections. Furthermore, many Latin American countries, rich in biodiversity, have increased educational initiatives and legislative protections for wildlife. Indigenous rights and reforestation are also key components. Considering all that has changed since 1992, and with financial support from wealthy Western institutions, the time to reconsider forest sovereignty has arrived. Modern humans, in contrast to forest wildlife and Indigenous people, plunder resources for the benefit of the politically powerful or for corporations satisfying bourgeois consumers. Governments cannot truly justify taking lands from Indigenous people. More to the point, animal advocates and forest conservationists could justify rights equal to or perhaps greater than those of human inhabitants in the state of Gaia. Why?

Building a highway in the forest to transport consumer goods like timber or precious metals not only damages the ecosystem but also presents a physical barrier and hazard to animals. No forest organism should be bound by the human state, only its own. It’s not as if animals can migrate to another forest given the magnitude of fragmentation imposed upon them by humans. People in modern nations have benefited from the resources and materials in forests; human incursion has not been a boon to animals. Other than small groups of Indigenous people or hunter-gatherers, the citizens of the forest who claim residence are the diverse flora, fauna, and fungi, so it’s their state. In Politics, Aristotle says good citizens engage in participatory commitments for a common enterprise, precisely the merging of public and private interests in nature. In his Ethics, Aristotle also implies how the common good, without discounting individual flourishing, is a higher perfection, the state over the individual, as Plato might say. Individuals matter insofar as each contributes to the functioning of a state that fares well. Animals should not be considered as refugees in the forest nor should the forest be considered their refuge. According to political philosophy, the forest is rightfully their state. They have inhabited the place for many millennia and have been ecosystem engineers freely maintaining its natural resources.

Since the earth’s forests provide clean air, water filtration, carbon sinks, rainwater catches, etc. as life givers they and not people should be governors of the planet. Modern humans are, essentially, foreigners to the social compact of the forest because they have not consented to but break the contract. Rather than a state of conflict, the natural state is one of mutualism. In nature, accounting for species struggle and privation, organisms in any ecosystem work and live close together in symbiotic feeding relationships. A hungry tiger has little choice as an obligate carnivore. Even so, his feeding behavior creates forest population equilibrium: what he does not consume is nourishment for birds and small mammals, microorganisms, and bacteria. Eventually, the bones of the carcass become minerals in soil and sediment that help flora, fungi, and fauna develop forests and contingent wetlands and grasslands as global air and water purifiers. In contrast to most human developments, nothing is wasted in forest habitats.

Acknowledgements

This work, the result of analyzing and synthesizing words and ideas from many people, began early in 2022 when I considered comments from others about the broader environmental implications of my book, An Ape Ethic and the Question of Personhood. Fredericka A. Jacks through many conversations helped ferry some concepts out of darkness. I’m grateful for feedback from first and then anonymous peer readers and help from editors including Susan McHugh, Patrícia Vieira, and Laurel Plapp. Special thanks to John Dilyard for comments on the manuscript, to Todd B. Adams for assistance regarding Native Americans, and to Luis E. Banegas for help with voices from the Global South. My thanks to Ionut Untea, an editor at the American Philosophical Association website, for publishing my essay “The Wildlife State of Gaia,” July 2024, related to the ideas here without quite using the words of this book. There are too many other people to mention individually, and I thank them for their dedication in advocating for animal rights and environmental preservation.

This book is dedicated to my parents, who raised me to be intellectually inquisitive, liberally fair-minded, and diplomatically honest.

Original cover art by Karolina Jacks-Tague. 

Miscellaneous

I was profiled on Vegan Authors.

Copyright©2025 by Gregory F. Tague. All Rights Reserved. Image this site from Pixabay.

Original Book Cover Art Copyright©2025 by Karolina Jacks-Tague. All Rights Reserved. 

Gregory F. Tague, Ph.D. (1998 NYU) is Professor Emeritus, St. Francis College, N.Y., where he founded the Evolutionary Studies Collaborative and hosted Darwin-inspired Moral Sense Colloquia. His most recent books include An Ape Ethic and the Question of Personhood (2020) and The Vegan Evolution (2022). Tague’s current interests focus on environmental and animal ethics. 

Publisher:  2025. Oxford: Peter Lang. Plants and Animals: Interdisciplinary Approaches, edited by Susan McHugh and Patrícia Vieira. Official series page here. Read more here.  

ISBN: 978-1803749556. Price: $60.95 U.S. 225 pages.

Testimonials:

“Forest Sovereignty is a startling new book reconsidering our relationship to nature. Tague has written a nonfiction version of Richard Powers’s novel The Overstory. His careful, confident textual dismantling of the liberal-conventional account of private property gives way to something more elemental. Tague speaks for the trees.” Clayton Shoppa, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Philosophy, St. Francis College.

“Forest Sovereignty rereads political philosophy from Hobbes to Marx to advance an incisive theory of forest freedom recognizing the mutualistic self-governance of fungi, flora, and fauna. Passionately argued, the book issues a timely call for preserving and expanding the planet’s remaining great forests while radically greening humankind’s increasingly urban future.” - John C. Ryan, Ph.D., Nulungu Institute, University of Notre Dame, Australia.

“At a critical juncture in the Anthropocene, Forest Sovereignty: Wildlife Sustainability and Ethics postulates a transformative discourse in environmental philosophy, foregrounding the vegetal world as an autonomous epistemic and sentient being beyond the dominant human ontology. Drawing on anthropocentric political philosophy, the book articulates an argument for forest sovereignty, deconstructing human-hegemonic frameworks and formulating an alternative ecological ethics that affirms the intrinsic value of nonhuman organisms. Through its strong advocacy for forest autonomy, the book urgently calls for the emancipation of the botanical world from human supremacy, seeking to counteract, if still possible, the climate catastrophe, and uphold planetary integrity. As an imperative contribution to securing a sustainable green future, Forest Sovereignty constitutes essential reading.” - Goutam Majhi, Assistant Professor of English, Sadhan Chandra Mahavidyalaya (affiliated with the University of Calcutta), West Bengal, India.

“The author argues that Western philosophy (social, ethical and political) has led humans to abuse the environment, and that a new philosophy – one which is attuned with the teachings of nature – is needed to rectify the abuse and cure the planet. There is growing academic interest in the idea that nature and non-human beings should have rights that need to be honored, preserved and protected. This view is appropriate in the realm of philosophy, religion, politics, biology and sustainability, but especially for interdisciplinary approaches to climate and sustainability. This book could be used in junior or senior undergraduate or in graduate programs, especially those dealing with the climate crisis.” – John Dilyard, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Management and IT, St. Francis College, N.Y., Columbia Center for Sustainable International Investment and the United Nations Sustainable Solutions Network.

Peer review (2025) on a substantially revised manuscript: “an excellent survey of views motivating ethical support for the rights of nature, as applied to forests. This includes contemporary classics of environmental ethics that describe land in a way that respects the value and autonomy of ecological systems. A big innovation is the detailed look at Western political thinkers…”

Reviewer (2024) on an improved manuscript: “Forest Sovereignty is a radical redescription of what Nozick calls the rectification of injustice: nature already has a hold on us and, as argued in the second half of the book, is the original claimant. It’s invested its labor in a primary, even elemental sense, discrediting much of our modern, industrialized thinking about politics, property, and commodity exchange. The book offers a really powerful case.”

A double-blind peer reviewer (2024) on a modified manuscript: “an exciting and innovative topic…the potential to inspire further research…adequately documented and demonstrates solid knowledge, mastery of the subject, and the most recent scholarship.”

Early reader (2023): “I think the book would appeal primarily to political theorists interested in new angles on Enlightenment and twentieth century social contract and other political theory.” 

TABLE OF CONTENTS INCLUDING CHAPTER SUBHEADINGS

In addition to each chapter’s opening paragraph(s), chapters include sections as follows. The book is approximately 94,550 words; word count includes a robust bibliography.

Preface and Summary

- The Virus of Human Climate Sovereignty

- A Modest Proposal

- Coming Up Roses?

- The Compass of This Book

Introduction: Moral and Political Margins

- The Awful Truth

- Philosophy of Trees

- Setting Boundaries

- Forest Crisis

- Overview of Political Considerations

- Legal Issues Underlying Sovereignty 

Chapter 1: The Forest State of Gaia

- Ecosystem Engineering

- Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid (1902)

- James Lovelock, The Gaia Hypothesis (1979)

- Lynn Margulis, Symbiotic Planet (1998)

- Aldo Leopold, “The Land Ethic” (1949)

- E.O. Wilson, Biophilia (1984) and Half-Earth (2016)

- Rachel Carson and Global Environmentalism

- Before Trees, Lichens

- Getting to the Root of the Matter

Chapter 2: Early Political Theory and Implications for Forests

- Philosophy and Religion

- Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), Leviathan (1651)

- John Locke (1632-1704), The Second Essay Concerning the True Original Extent and End of Civil Government (1690)

- Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), The Social Contract (1762)

- Adam Smith (1723-1790), The Wealth of Nations (1776)

- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), On Liberty (1859)

- Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), Political and Philosophical Writings

Chapter 3: Interpretations of Political Theory and Implications for Forests

- John Rawls (1921-2002), A Theory of Justice (1999)

- Robert Nozick (1938-2002), Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974)

- Utopia: Degrowth for Forest Growth 

- Social Goods and Spheres of Justice

- Participatory and Representative Democracy in the Forest

- The Transnational State of Gaia

- Ecology and Ideology

Chapter 4: Reflections on Political Theory and Other Considerations

- The Social Contract

- Libertarianism and Moral Liberty

- Property Rights and Distribution

- Free Markets

- Communitarians and Distributive Justice

- Morality, Law, and the Environment

- Animal Rights, Zoopolis, and Biopolitics

- Human and Animal Proximities

- The Lure of Science

- The Question of Human Success and Capabilities

- The Political Society of Nature

Conclusion: Ecological Credo

- The Political Society of Nature

- A Natural Contract

- Ecological Ethics

- Ecological Thinking

- Final Word: Indigenous Voices

Bibliography

Index