scholarly journals Christian Ethics and Ecologies of Violence

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 509
Author(s):  
Kreider

This essay introduces “ecologies of violence” as a problem for Christian ethics. Understanding the links between violence and the natural environment will be critical to the pursuit of justice, peace, and sustainability in the twenty-first century. Yet these links often evade political action and escape moral attention because they do not fit comfortably within any of the fields requisite to address them. In most cases, the available resources for confronting these issues—“environmental issues” and “peace and conflict issues”—exist in separate toolkits, and no single discourse has developed resources to address their progressively merging spheres of concern. The essay outlines four types of ecological violence, examines recent work in Christian ethics relevant to them, and then argues for a dialogical method of ethics to confront them. Doing Christian ethics at the intersections of violence and environmental issues will require careful attention to environmental ethics as well as to the ethics of violence. More than that, it will require judicious efforts to navigate between them within case-based and place-based ethical analyses. Ecologies of violence invite Christian ethics to develop possibilities of ethical discernment and reparative action that do justice to the deep entanglement of ecological and sociopolitical systems.

1996 ◽  
pp. 16-26
Author(s):  
Dionisiy Lyahovych

Ecological ethical duty is a kind of philosophical and theological reflection on environmental issues, and at the same time finding the appropriate foundation for environmental ethics. By the term "ethical duty" we mean the search for environmental value, the nature of which would have the effect of inducing the appropriate personal and social behavior and thus influenced the customs and culture of the people.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mari Korpela

Increasing numbers of “Western” families spend several months a year in Goa, India, and the rest of the time in the parents’ passport countries or elsewhere. These “lifestyle migrants” are motivated by a search for “a better quality of life”, and the parents often claim that an important reason for their lifestyle choice is that it is better for the children to be in Goa, where they have enriching experiences and enjoy playing freely outdoors, in a natural environment. This article discusses parents’ and children’s views of this lifestyle. It argues that although the lifestyle sometimes causes moral panic among outsider adults who see regular transnational mobility as a sign of instability, a closer look reveals that there are various aspects of stability in the children’s lives. Paying careful attention to the parents’ and children’s own accounts, and the empirical realities of their lives, enables us to reach beyond normative judgements.


2014 ◽  
Vol 962-965 ◽  
pp. 1509-1512
Author(s):  
Lin Liu ◽  
Pin Lv

There are various signs indicating that the Earth's natural environment is changing toward unfavorable direction for species, which is highly suspected to be connected with human activities. In the last century, people all over the world have realized the severity of environmental issues. In the long history, Chinese ancient had already development good rules and methods to reach balance between economic development and environment sustainability. This paper will discuss how environmental concepts forms and which methods could be applied in the future.


2004 ◽  
Vol 8 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 227-242
Author(s):  
Christine Benton ◽  
Raymond Benton

AbstractIn this paper we argue for the importance of the formal teaching of environmental ethics. This is, we argue, both because environmental ethics is needed to respond to the environmental issues generated by the neoliberal movement in politics and economics, and because a form of environmental ethics is implicit, but unexamined, in that which is currently taught. We maintain that students need to become aware of the latent ethical dimension in what they are taught. To help them, we think that they need to understand how models and metaphors structure and impact their worldviews. We describe how a simple in-class exercise encourages students to experience the way metaphors organize feelings, courses of action, and cognitive understandings. This is then intellectualized by way of Clifford Geertz's concept of culture and his model for the analysis of sacred symbols. From there we present a brief interpretation of modern economics as the embodiment of the dominant modern ethos. This leads into a consideration of ecology as a science, and to the environmental ethic embodied in Aldo Leopold's "Land Ethic." We close with a personal experience that highlights how environmental teaching can make students aware of the presence of an implicit, but unexamined, environmental ethic.


Author(s):  
Elizabeth Hinson-Hasty

This chapter examines three feminist responses to Reinhold Niebuhr’s thought and contemporary Christian Realism—conflict, integration, and conversation. The chapter emphasizes the need for future conversation between feminists, realists, and ethicists across a wide variety of fields with people living in the most vulnerable and precarious economic circumstances in the US and around the world. More attention and exploration of Christian concepts of sin and redemption relevant within the contemporary context are worthy of attention. Fostering more intentional conversation across established disciplinary boundaries and with the world’s most vulnerable people will chart a new course in Christian ethics and nurture a more authentic American moral conscience in light of the greatest moral and theological problems of the twenty-first century.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 60
Author(s):  
Ajayi C. Omoogun ◽  
Etuki E. Egbonyi ◽  
Usang N. Onnoghen

<p>The period of environmentalism heightened environmental concern and subsequently the emergence of Environmental Education that is anchored on awareness. It is thought that increase in environmental awareness will reverse the misuse of the environment and its resources. Four decades after the international call for Environmental Education, Earth’s degradation is far from abating as it’s pristinity is consistently and irreversibly being eroded by no less than from anthropocentric activities. Humans have seen themselves as the dominant species that is apart and not part of the organisms that constitute the environment. The philosophical value free nature concepts and the theological assumption that human are the ultimate species together with the rise of capitalism and its surrogates consumerism together conspire to diminuate environmental health. To protect the environment therefore, we must refocus EE to change human’s view of the environment and attitude towards the utilization of its resources. Environmental education can become more effective in creating respect for the environment. This paper examined the failure of efforts at addressing environmental issues via environmental education. The paper posits that environmental problems are on the increase due to lack of deliberate responsibility and stewardship, lack of a unique EE curricula and ineffective pedagogy. We suggest therefore that EE can target human perception and attitude and direct then towards biocentric stewardship for the environment. This can be achieved through a deliberate pedagogy of environmental values that promotes sustainable attitude and respect for the environment. Humans must bear the burden of responsibility to ensure the wellbeing of the environment. We must replace the philosophical value free nature concepts that nature is a common commodity and the theological assumption that humans are the ultimate species. We must also rethink our consumerism nature and the endless faith in the efficacy of technology to solve reoccurrence human induced ecological problems. These issues must be embedded in the school curriculum. Pedagogical approach to EE should essentially be the experiential model. The school curriculum must be the carrier and doer of these values that are crucial to the sustainability of the environment. Environmental ethics, environmental code of conduct, environmental nationalism, nature as manifestation of God, ascetic consumerism are recommended as key component of environmental curricula and pedagogy.<strong> </strong></p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-21
Author(s):  
Hryhorii Vasianovych ◽  
Olena Budnyk ◽  
Hasrat Arjjumend

This article substantiates the essence of ecological ethics in the context of modern scientific research. The emphasis lies on the need to develop a strategy and approach of human behavior amid the natural environment, rational nature management, protection and restoration of the surrounding world. The new methodological thinking is characterized by philosophical foundation of ecological ethics (ecological consciousness, ecological thinking, ecological values, ecological activity, etc.). The idea of development of environmental ethics based on principles of Christian and Philosophic noology is introduced. The world outlook is changing rapidly with its positive and negative aspects. It requires humanization of natural environment as well as a human being by forming ecological consciousness. There is a necessity of humanization of technosphere and abandoning technocratic thinking, which is anti-culture itself and, at times, it endangers human race on the Earth.


2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauran Whitworth

This article considers the effectiveness of queer environmental ethics in the Anthropocene, a word increasingly used to describe the anthropogenic destruction of ecosystems that marks our current geological era. Taking as my subject the contemporary ecosexuality movement popularised by performance artists Annie Sprinkle and her co-collaborator and partner Elizabeth Stephens, I explore the ethics behind ecosexuals’ encounters with the natural environment. Stephens and Sprinkle's performances, captured in their documentary Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story (2013), make clear ecosexuality's concurrent urgency and playfulness, which is embodied in a theatrical environmental sensibility that I call eco-camp. Eco-camp is a mode of florid performance, spectacle and ostentatious sex-positivity that champions new forms of relationality between humans and other earthly inhabitants. Drawing from diverse theoretical perspectives, including Mikhail Bakhtin's (1968) carnivalesque, Chris Cuomo's (1998) ethics of flourishing and Cynthia Willett's (Willett et al., 2012; Willett, 2014) theorisation of feminist humour, I argue that ecosexuality's campy ecological ethics provide an alternative to the didacticism and moralism that characterise much contemporary environmentalism. In the spirit of carnival, the tragi-comic and, at times, parodic tone of ecosexuality generates an affective dissonance that spurs us to feel the full effects of our discordance with nature.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document