Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World. Holmes Rolston III

Ethics ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 100 (1) ◽  
pp. 195-197
Author(s):  
Peter S. Wenz
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Holmes Rolston Iii

1. Origins

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Robin Attfield
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Human Impacts ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Silent Spring ◽  
Holmes Rolston Iii ◽  
Ecological Science ◽  
Arne Næss ◽  
Arne Naess

For centuries we have been changing the natural world around us, through hunting and farming; building, mining, and engineering; and travelling and trading. But we can no longer take it for granted. ‘Origins’ outlines the rise of ecological science in the 20th century and the new awareness of the unexpected side-effects of human impacts on the environment raised by Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac (1949) and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962). It also describes the emergence of environmental ethics with the work of philosophers Richard Routley, Arne Naess, and Holmes Rolston III. One common feature of their contributions was their rejection of a human-interests-only or ‘anthropocentric’ approach to ethics.

Reading Nature Religiously

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-188
Author(s):  
Nancy Menning
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Lectio Divina ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Essential Aspect ◽  
Environmental Virtue ◽  
To Come ◽  
Spiritual Reading

Our ability to live well depends not only on what we do, but also on who we are. With respect to human-land relationships, we need to become more virtuous. And virtue is cultivated through practice. This paper transforms classical spiritual reading practices into a means of cultivating environmental virtue. Lectio divina is a longstanding practice for reading scripture religiously, motivated by a desire to come to a deeper understanding of and richer relationship with the sacred dimensions of experience. I describe an adaptation of lectio divina suitable for reading nature religiously and offer two illustrations. By reading nature religiously, we may develop environmental virtues, becoming more attentive, more thoughtful, more committed, more reverent, and more humble as we encounter the natural world. This model of a practice for cultivating environmental virtue enriches an essential aspect of environmental ethics, enhancing our prospects for attaining human and ecological flourishing.

The Dialectical Links Between Environmental Ethics and Sciences

1998 ◽  
pp. 49-57
Author(s):  
Ricardo Rozzi
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Reciprocal Relationships ◽  
Misleading Interpretation ◽  
New Vision ◽  
The One ◽  
Radical Transformation

Ecologists formulate their scientific theories influenced by ethical values, and in turn, environmental ethicists value nature based on scientific theories. Darwinian evolutionary theory provides clear examples of these complex links, illustrating how these reciprocal relationships do not constitute a closed system, but are undetermined and open to the influences of two broader worlds: the sociocultural and the natural environment. On the one hand, the Darwinian conception of a common evolutionary origin and ecological connectedness has promoted a respect for all forms of life. On the other hand, the metaphors of struggle for existence and natural selection appear as problematic because they foist onto nature the Hobbesian model of a liberal state, a Malthusian model of the economy, and the productive practice of artificial selection, all of which reaffirm modern individualism and the profit motive that are at the roots of our current environmental crisis. These metaphors were included in the original definitions of ecology and environmental ethics by Haeckel and Leopold respectively, and are still pervasive among both ecologists and ethicists. To suppose that these Darwinian notions, derived from a modern-liberal worldview, are a fact of nature constitutes a misleading interpretation. Such supposition represents a serious impediment to our aim of transforming our relationship with the natural world in order to overcome the environmental crisis. To achieve a radical transformation in environmental ethics, we need a new vision of nature.

scholarly journals Experiential education against environmental denial in environmental ethics education: a case study

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-109
Author(s):  
Tomaž Grušovnik ◽  
Ana Arzenšek
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Education ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Experiential Education ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Ethics Education ◽  
Natural World ◽  
University Level ◽  
The University ◽  
Positive Results

Recent research shows that ‘environmental denial’ (the denial of anthropogenic impact on the natural world) plays an important role in environmental education. The difficulty in changing our detrimental habits stems from the fact that identities in our societies are bound up with consumerist practices. Because we cannot simply give up practices that shape our identity, environmental education has to fi nd ways of substituting unhealthy habits with environmentally acceptable ones. One method of achieving this is through experiential education based on experiences with the natural world and their importance for identity formation. The paper presents a case study involving experiential education in environmental ethics, implemented at the university level. Findings show that the implementation of experiential education technique (fi eld trip) yielded positive results in connection with students’ overcoming of environmental denial and consequential change of their environmental outlook.

Strange Natures

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Seymour
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Natural Categories

This book investigates the ways in which contemporary queer fictions offer insight on environmental issues through their performance of a specifically queer understanding of nature, the nonhuman, and environmental degradation. By drawing upon queer theory and ecocriticism, this book examines how contemporary queer fictions extend their critique of “natural” categories of gender and sexuality to the nonhuman natural world, thus constructing a queer environmentalism. The book's thoughtful analyses of works such as Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues, Todd Haynes's Safe, and Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain illustrate how homophobia, classism, racism, sexism, and xenophobia inform dominant views of the environment and help to justify its exploitation. Calling for a queer environmental ethics, the book delineates the discourses that have worked to prevent such an ethics and argues for a concept of queerness that is attuned to environmentalism's urgent futurity, and an environmentalism that is attuned to queer sensibilities.

Why Environmental Ethics Matters to International Relations

2000 ◽  
Vol 99 (640) ◽  
pp. 361-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Barkdull
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Natural World

Environmental ethics [should] not be seen as an add-on to be approached after the important issues of security and economics have been settled. Instead, we [should] recognize that all our important social choices are inherently about the ‘natural’ world we create.

scholarly journals Environmental Education And Metaethics

2004 ◽  
Vol 8 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 185-197
Author(s):  
Owen Goldin
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Environmental Education ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Environmentally Responsible

AbstractContrā Dale Jamieson, the study of the metaethical foundations of environmental ethics may well lead students to a more environmentally responsible way of life. For although metaethics is rarely decisive in decision making and action, there are two kinds of circumstances in which it can play a crucial role in our practical decisions. First, decisions that have unusual features do not summon habitual ethical reactions, and hence invite the application of ethical precepts that the study of metaethics and ethical theory isolate and clarify. Second, there are times in which the good of others (including organisms and systems in the natural world) may well be given greater weight in one's ethical deliberations if theory has made clear that the good to be promoted is ontologically independent of one's own good.

Ecology and Vision

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew T. Eggemeier
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Contemplative Practice ◽  
Annie Dillard ◽  
Environmental Practice ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

This essay analyzes the significance of contemplative practice for the development of environmental ethics. The writings of Mary Oliver, Annie Dillard, and Tim Lilburn are examined as examples of the way in which the cultivation of a contemplative way of seeing the world constitutes an important environmental practice. While Oliver, Dillard, and Lilburn differ in the strategies they employ to facilitate this contemplative experience, they converge in their view that the work of learning to see the natural world with contemplative attention is a spiritual act that is not only significant in its own right but which also serves to support the development of an environmental ethics.

scholarly journals Sacramental view of creation: Denis Edwards on God’s presence in natural world

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Roszak
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Divine Action ◽  
Theological Perspective ◽  
Great Merit ◽  
The Relationship

This review article summarises and engages critically with two books published by ATF Press in 2017 and 2020. One of them is Denis Edwards’s book that reflects his theological approach to nature, divine action and environmental ethics. The second book is a series of papers inspired by his theological approach. The great merit consists of establishing a fresh meaning of nature from the theological perspective. The article gathers three main themes present in the book: the meaning of nature, the inclusive character of the theology of nature and the relationship between God and nature from the Trinitarian perspective.Contribution: The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the recent development of the theology of nature and the share Denis Edwards had in it. The theology of nature needs to be ‘extended’ in order not just to include the relationship between the human and God, but the goal of the entire creation, and to point to the theological reasons for such an approach.

A Estética do Invisível Na Natureza

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (29) ◽  
pp. 7-17
Author(s):  
Cristina Beckert ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Holmes Rolston Iii ◽  
The Invisible

This paper aims at showing the interdependence between aesthetic and ethic values in appreciating nature. The Kantian concept of sublime guides us in the first part, exhibiting the primacy of ethics over aesthetics, as the sublime reveals it self to be an analogon of the moral law and the respect due to it. The second part, based on the holistic tendency in Environmental Ethics hold by Holmes Rolston III and others, analyses how the relation is inverted by means of an aesthetic of the invisible, where the sublime in nature refers to the whole and is hidden under the apparent ugliness of the parts.

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