Book Review

Comparative/World

Scholars who teach undergraduates in the Anglo-Saxon world are apt to complain that their students are ignorant of a great deal of history and know even less when it comes to philosophy. When they give courses in matters of "the environment," they cannot ignore the whole history of ideas that accompanies the empirical chronicle, but they are aware that their audience of would-be biologists, environmental scientists, political science majors, and those whose basic interest is really the grammar of Old High Ruritanian is lacking some basic notions. So they look for a text that will not take much for granted, be reasonably comprehensive (for Western thought at least), and be comprehensible to students with a wide variety of backgrounds. Until recently, such teachers will have been hard put to find something suitable, for although a number of books include a potted history of environmental thought, they also include a great deal else that is useless to introduce at this point. Other texts, by contrast, are much too detailed to form part of a reading schedule for undergraduate students, whose lives may encompass a great deal beside the learning process to which they are ostensibly committed. There is excellent news, however. Peter Coates's book deals exactly with what its subtitle promises: Western attitudes since ancient times, where "attitudes" means the mixture of philosophy, politics, and life as it was.

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