The Philosophy of Outer Space: Explorations, Controversies, Speculations

This volume provides a rigorous philosophical investigation of the rationales, challenges, and promises of the coming Space Age.

Over the past decade, space exploration has made significant and accelerating progress, and its potential has attracted growing attention from science, states, businesses, innovators, as well as the media and society more generally. Yet philosophical theorizing concerning the premises, values, meanings, and impacts of space exploration is still in its infancy, and this potentially immense field of study is far from mainstream yet. This book advances outer space philosophy by integrating key scientific and societal debates sparked by recent developments in space research and activities with conceptual, existential, ethical, aesthetic, and political themes and concerns. It maps various regions of philosophical exploration, reflection, and speculation regarding humanity’s present and future emanations into outer space, to promote a broad, rich, and nuanced societal debate regarding this transformative enterprise, which is as stimulating as it can be disorienting.

This book will be a fascinating read for academics, researchers, and students interested in philosophy, space studies, science and technology studies, future studies, and sustainability.

Mirko Daniel Garasic is Assistant Professor of Moral Philosophy at the Department of Education Science, Roma Tre University, Italy. He has been Visiting Professor in Neuroethics at IMT School for Advanced Studies, Lucca; Research Scholar at the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights in Rome. He is the author of Guantanamo and Other Cases of Enforced Medical Treatment-A Biopolitical Analysis (2015). His articles have been published in BMC Medical Ethics; Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy; Topoi; and Medicina e Morale.

Marcello Di Paola is Assistant Professor of History of Philosophy at the Department of Humanities, University of Palermo, Italy. He works in environmental philosophy, particularly climate change, the Anthropocene, and the philosophy of plants. Among his publications are Ethics and Politics of the Built Environment: Gardens of the Anthropocene (2017), and the co-edited volumes Handbook of the Philosophy of Climate Change (2023), Plant Ethics: Concepts and Applications (2018), and Canned Heat: Ethics and Politics of Global Climate Change (2014).