Freedom From What? Environment and Population in W. Vogt and H.F. Osborn

Jacopo Bonasera

doi:10.6092/issn.2611-2752/18204

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Jacopo Bonasera University of Bologna https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4978-3945

Jacopo Bonasera holds a PhD in History of Political Thought at the University of Bologna. In 2023 he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Italian Institute of Philosophical Studies, in Naples; currently, he is a researcher at the Burzio Foundation (Turin). His main research interests concern T.R. Malthus’ thought and historical reappraisals, and the development of environmentalism and its political and conceptual implications. He is working on a volume dedicated to the political and constitutional thought of Malthus; his most recent publications can be found in journals such as «History of European Ideas», «Filosofia politica», and «Annals of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi».

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2611-2752/18204

Keywords:

Vogt, Osborn, Population, Environment, Freedom

Abstract

This essay considers the environmental and political discourse of prominent American scientists William Vogt and Henry Fairfield Osborn, concerning their best-sellers Road to Survival (1948) and Our Plundered Planet (1948). It is argued that by re-articulating the place of ‘population’ in environmental thinking, they both advanced a specific theory of limits and possibilities of individual freedom. Their public position in the most pressing debates of the time resulted in a critique of modernization and development and a specific understanding of planning as a tool to ‘write’ a different ‘history of the future’ of Western civilization.

Freedom From What? Environment and Population in W. Vogt and H.F. Osborn

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