SUNY series in Environmental Philosophy and Ethics

Offers a unified vision for approaching human ethical responses to what science is telling us about the crises facing our environment and climate.

Toward Environmental Wholeness proposes a new understanding of environmental wholeness that is needed to address the ethical challenges posed by environmental and climate crises. Relying on the studies of numerous historians, Patrick H. Byrne traces the complex developments in environmental and climate change sciences and how they have posed complex ethical challenges. Drawing upon the thought of Bernard Lonergan, he shows how seemingly contradictory contributions from diverse ethical traditions can be brought together into a framework for responding to what the developing sciences are telling us about our current situation and evaluating our realistic options. Byrne reveals how the limitations of a utilitarian approach to environmental ethics had to be expanded into more holistic approaches and the difficulties those approaches encountered-especially the Romantic notions of a pristine, unchanging nature to be preserved and humans as alien. Environmental and climate change sciences have revealed the complex, dynamic natural and human systems that now call for a more dynamic vision of the whole as the basis for environmental ethics. The book also examines how the initiatives of Pope Francis' Laudato si' and the United Nations' Strategic Development Goals are responding to these challenges.

Argues that, to make progress within environmental ethics, philosophers must explicitly engage in environmental metaphysics.

Much of early environmental ethics was born out of the belief that the ecological crisis can only truly be solved by overcoming a pernicious worldview that limits all intrinsic value to human beings. Returning to this originating impulse, Value, Beauty, and Nature contends that, to make progress within environmental ethics, philosophers must explicitly engage in environmental metaphysics. Grounded in an organicist process worldview, Brian G. Henning shows that it is possible to make progress in key debates within environmental philosophy, including those concerning the nature of intrinsic value; anthropocentrism; hierarchy; the moral significance of beauty; the nature of individuality; teleology and the naturalistic fallacy; and worldview reconstruction. A Whiteheadian fallibilistic, naturalistic, event ontology allows for the recovery of systematic, speculative metaphysical thought without a revanchist movement toward a necessitarian philosophia perennis. Thus, in contrast to the claims of environmental pragmatists, Value, Beauty, and Nature demonstrates that environmental ethics would greatly benefit from an adequate metaphysical foundation and, of the candidate metaphysical systems, Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy of organism is the most adequate.

Analyzes the different feelings, drives and instincts we have inherited from other species, to suggest a new understanding of ourselves as part of an eco-political community.

Against the idea of social contract theories that suggest humans invented the political, Gerard Kuperus argues that we have always been political and that our species came into existence in a world that was already political. By studying the rich social and political lives of other animals, Ecopolitics provides suggestions for how to think and feel differently about ourselves, our relationship to other people, and the places and beings around us. Kuperus suggests we understand ourselves as part of an ecopolitical community consisting of humans and other living beings as well as inanimate objects. By recognizing nature itself as utterly political and seeing ourselves as a part of this larger political unity, we can come to face the real challenges of our times. This means that we are not simply putting ourselves in nature as we are. We are also changing who we are.

Explores how humans and wildlife such as wolves can cohabit with mutual respect in the same territories.

2023 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

Starting from a specific case, the spontaneous return of wolves to France and the intense conflicts that event has triggered, the French philosopher Baptiste Morizot invites us to think about what he calls "diplomacy with living beings." How can we conceive of cohabitation with the most recalcitrant wildlife, large predators in particular, and what concrete solutions need to be invented to make this happen? Drawing on knowledge gleaned from history and philosophy as well as from ethology, scientific ecology, and biology, Wild Diplomacy prompts us to ask what relations we want to reinvent with living beings today and how we might fundamentally reimagine our status as living beings among other life forms. This prize-winning book has broken new ground in contemporary French environmental philosophy.

Follows Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland as they travel together in South America and then go their separate ways, in the process illustrating two very different ways of understanding humanity's place in the natural world.

In Ecology on the Ground and in the Clouds, Andrea Nye raises a question: In a time of climate change and environmental crisis, where should we look for inspiration? Is it to Alexander von Humboldt, the "inventor of nature" who viewed the cosmos from the lofty peak of Mount Chimborazo? Or is it to Humboldt's travel partner, the botanist Aimé Bonpland, who left Europe behind for forty years of conservation, agroforestry, and cooperative farming in the newly independent Republic of Argentina? For Bonpland, order and harmony are not unveiled with European reason and insight; they are made on the ground by intelligent, honorable, and diverse working men and women. Cosmos is not a hidden balance of nature; it is order in thought and action that ensures what we do is coherent and for the common good. It is fair and efficient government, just adjudication of disputes, and good management. It is loving attention to intricate "cogs and wheels" of natural processes at the same time as imagining new forms of beauty and stability in human communities and working landscapes.

Proposes a nonanthropocentric reassessment of key themes and approaches in environmental philosophy

In A World Not Made for Us, Keith R. Peterson provides a broad reassessment of the field of environmental philosophy, taking a fresh and critical look at three classical problems of environmentalism: the intrinsic value of nature, the need for an ecological worldview, and a new conception of the place of humankind in nature. He makes the case that a genuinely critical environmental philosophy must adopt an ecological materialist conception of the human, a pluralistic value theory that emphasizes the need for value prioritization, and a stratified categorial ontology that affirms the basic principle of human asymmetrical dependence on more-than-human nature. Integrating environmental ethics with the latest work in political ecology, Peterson argues it is important to understand that the world is not made for us, and that coming to terms with this fact is a condition for survival in future human and more-than-human communities of liberation and solidarity.

Engages the global ecological crisis through a radical rethinking of what it means to inhabit the earth.

FINALIST for the 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Philosophy category

Meditating on the work of American poet and environmental activist Gary Snyder and thirteenth-century Japanese Zen Master Eihei Dōgen, Jason M. Wirth draws out insights for understanding our relation to the planet's ongoing ecological crisis. He discusses what Dōgen calls "the Great Earth" and what Snyder calls "the Wild" as being comprised of the play of waters and mountains, emptiness and form, and then considers how these ideas can illuminate the spiritual and ethical dimensions of place. The book culminates in a discussion of earth democracy, a place-based sense of communion where all beings are interconnected and all beings matter. This radical rethinking of what it means to inhabit the earth will inspire lovers of Snyder's poetry, Zen practitioners, environmental philosophers, and anyone concerned about the global ecological crisis.

Explores the evolution of Heidegger's thinking about nature and its relevance for environmental ethics.

In Naturalizing Heidegger, David E. Storey proposes a new interpretation of Heidegger's importance for environmental philosophy, finding in the development of his thought from the early 1920s to his later work in the 1940s the groundwork for a naturalistic ontology of life. Primarily drawing on Heidegger's engagement with Nietzsche, but also on his readings of Aristotle and the biologist Jakob von Uexküll, Storey focuses on his critique of the nihilism at the heart of modernity, and his conception of the intentionality of organisms and their relation to their environments. From these ideas, a vision of nature emerges that recognizes the intrinsic value of all living things and their kinship with one another, and which anticipates later approaches in the philosophy of nature, such as Hans Jonas's phenomenology of life and Evan Thompson's contemporary attempt to naturalize phenomenology.

An original and insightful account of nature and our place in it from one of France's preeminent historians of philosophy.

One of France's preeminent historians of philosophy, Marcel Conche has written and translated more than thirty-five books and is recognized for his groundbreaking and authoritative work in Greek philosophy, as well as on Montaigne. In Philosophizing ad Infinitum, one of his most remarkable and daring books, Conche articulates a unique and powerful understanding of nature, inclusive of humanity, as infinite in time and space-ever self-renewing, eternal, and beyond complete understanding or control.

In today's world the notion of infinity is at the core of the crisis humanity faces understanding nature. For the last two hundred years economies have been running at full speed, fueled by the implicit belief that natural resources are infinite; however, it is clear that they are not and that humanity needs to radically rethink the foundations of environmental and economic systems. Conche seeks to begin this rethinking, illustrating along the way insightful and sometimes unorthodox ideas about Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Bergson, and others.

A rich hermeneutic account of the way virtue is understood and developed.

Despite its ancient roots, virtue ethics has only recently been fully appreciated as a resource for environmental philosophy. Other approaches dominated by utilitarian and duty-based appeals for sacrifice and restraint have had little success in changing behavior, even to the extent that ecological concerns have been embraced. Our actions often do not align with our beliefs. Fundamental to virtue ethics is an acknowledgment that neither good ethical rules nor good intentions are effective absent the character required to bring them to fulfillment. Brian Treanor builds on recent work on virtue ethics in environmental philosophy, finding an important grounding in the narrative theory of philosophers like Paul Ricoeur and Richard Kearney. Character and ethical formation, Treanor argues, are intimately tied to our relationship with the narratives through which we view the human place in the natural world. By reframing environmental questions in terms of individual, social, and environmental narratives about flourishing, Emplotting Virtue offers a powerful vision of how we might remake our character so as to live more happily, more sustainably, and more virtuously in a diverse, beautiful, wondrous, and fragile world.

Articulates the fundamental importance of ontology to Hans Jonas's environmental ethics.

Despite his tremendous impact on the German Green Party and the influence of his work on contemporary debates about stem cell research in the United States, Hans Jonas's (1903–1993) philosophical contributions have remained partially obscured. In particular, the ontological grounding he gives his ethics, based on a phenomenological engagement with biology to bridge the "is-ought" gap, has not been fully appreciated. Theresa Morris provides a comprehensive overview and analysis of Jonas's philosophy that reveals the thread that runs through all of his thought, including his work on the philosophy of biology, ethics, the philosophy of technology, and bioethics. She places Jonas's philosophy in context, comparing his ideas to those of other ethical and environmental philosophers and demonstrating the relevance of his thought for our current ethical and environmental problems. Crafting strong supporting arguments for Jonas's insightful view of ethics as a matter of both reason and emotion, Morris convincingly lays out his account of the basis of our responsibilities not only to the biosphere but also to current and future generations of beings.

A bold and original work in ecocosmology and metaphysics.

In For Love of Matter Freya Mathews challenges basic assumptions of Western science, modern philosophy, and environmental philosophy, arguing that the environmental crisis is a symptom of a larger, metaphysical crisis. Western science rests on the premise that the world is an inert backdrop to human presence rather than a communicative presence in its own right, one capable of dialogical congress with us. Mathews explores the transformative effects of a substitution of the latter, panpsychist premise for the former, materialist one. She suggests that to exist in a dialogical modality is to enter an expanded realm of eros in which the self and world are mutually kindled into a larger, more incandescent state of realization. She argues that any adequate philosophical response to the so-called "environmental crisis" cannot be encompassed within the minor discipline of environmental philosophy but must instead address the full range of existential questions.

Leading scholars critically assess the pioneering environmental philosophy of J. Baird Callicott.

Land, Value, Community provides an in-depth critical study of the theories of J. Baird Callicott, one of the world's foremost environmental philosophers. An international group of scholars representing philosophy, ecology, ecofeminism, Native American studies, political science, and religion studies critically assesses Callicott's contributions to environmental ethics and philosophy and presents alternative perspectives from their own work. Each section consists of several authors focusing on one aspect of Callicott's thought, raising questions not only for Callicott but also for anyone affected by environmental issues. A noteworthy feature of the book is Callicott's own response to his critics. This volume allows readers to explore multiple avenues in their search for answers to the significant philosophical questions raised by environmental problems.

Explores how humans can take the lives of animals and plants while maintaining a proper respect both for ecosystems and for those who live in them.

We eat, inevitably, at the expense of other living creatures. How can we take the lives of plants and animals while maintaining a proper respect for both ecosystems and the individuals who live in them-including ourselves? In this book philosopher J. Claude Evans challenges much of the accepted wisdom in environmental ethics and argues that human participation in the natural cycles of life and death can have positive moral value.

With a guide for the nonphilosophical reader, and set against the background of careful and penetrating critiques of Albert Schweitzer's principle of reverence for life and Paul Taylor's philosophy of respect for nature, Evans uses hunting and catch-and-release fishing as test cases in calling for a robust sense of membership in the natural world. The result is an approachable, existential philosophy that emphasizes the positive value of human involvement in natural processes in which life and death, giving and receiving, self and other are intertwined.

A philosophical exploration of the problematic nature of the disposable.

Plastic bags, newspapers, pizza boxes, razors, watches, diapers, toothbrushes … What makes a thing disposable? Which of its properties allows us to treat it as if it did not matter, or as if it actually lacked matter? Why do so many objects appear to us as nothing more than brief flashes between checkout-line and landfill?

In An Ontology of Trash, Greg Kennedy inquires into the meaning of disposable objects and explores the nature of our prodigious refuse. He takes trash as a real ontological problem resulting from our unsettled relation to nature. The metaphysical drive from immanence to transcendence leaves us in an alien world of objects drained of meaningful physical presence. Consequently, they become interpreted as beings that somehow essentially lack being, and exist in our technological world only to disappear. Kennedy explores this problematic nature and looks for possibilities of salutary change.

A groundbreaking exploration of Heidegger and embodiment, from which a radical ethical perspective emerges.

The Incarnality of Being addresses Martin Heidegger's tendency to neglect the problem of the body, an omission that is further reflected in the field of Heidegger scholarship. By addressing the corporeal dimension of human existence, author Frank Schalow uncovers Heidegger's concern for the materiality of the world. This allows for the ecological implications of Heidegger's thought to emerge, specifically, the kinship between humans and animals and the mutual interest each has for preserving the environment and the earth. By advancing the theme of the "incarnality of being," Schalow brings Heidegger's thinking to bear on various provocative questions concerning contemporary philosophy: sexuality, the intersection of human and animal life, the precarious future of the earth we inhabit, and the significance that reclaiming our embodiment has upon ethics and politics.

Explores how continental philosophy can inform environmental ethics.

This groundbreaking collection explores the intersection of phenomenology with environmental philosophy. It examines the relevance of Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas for thinking through the philosophical dilemmas raised by environmental issues, and then proposes new phenomenological approaches to the natural world. The contributors demonstrate phenomenology's need to engage in an ecological self-evaluation and to root out anthropomorphic assumptions embedded in its own methodology. Calling for a reexamination of beliefs central to the Western philosophical tradition, this book shifts previously marginalized environmental concerns to the forefront and blazes a trail for a new collaboration between phenomenologists and ecologically-minded theorists.

A comprehensive look at how John Dewey's ethics can inform environmental issues.

Hugh P. McDonald's John Dewey and Environmental Philosophy breaks new ground by applying Dewey's insights to a new approach to philosophy of the environment; the concern for the rights of animals; the preservation of rare species, habitats, and landscapes; and the health of the whole ecology. The book summarizes much of the current literature on environmental ethics, concentrating on the writings of major figures in the movement: Tom Regan, J. Baird Callicott, Holmes Rolston, and Bryan Norton. The heart of the book consists of a detailed analysis of Dewey's ethics, his theory of intrinsic value, and his holistic approach to moral justification. Arguing against the idea that Dewey's philosophy is anthropocentric, McDonald makes a strong case that using Dewey's philosophy will result in a superior framework for environmental ethics.

Seeks to redraw the boundaries between the fields of geology and environmental philosophy.

Using a unified vision of geology, consisting of equal parts geo-poetry, geo-politics, geo-theology, and geo-science, Geo-Logic redraws the boundaries between philosophy and the earth sciences. Although each discipline makes crucial contributions to contemporary environmental concerns, neither will fulfill its potential until it transforms itself by engaging the other. This book offers examples of how to relate environmental philosophy to science, public policy, and real world problems, and shows what is epistemologically distinctive about scientific work and how to respond to the cultural dynamics that are pulling these issues into the public sphere. Frodeman advocates humanizing the earth sciences and bringing philosophy into the field.

Argues that the environmental crisis is symptomatic of much deeper crises in modern civilization.

In this sequel to For Love of Matter: A Contemporary Panpsychism, also published by SUNY Press, Freya Mathews argues that replacing the materialist premise of modern civilization with a panpsychist one transforms the entire fabric of culture in profound ways. She claims that the environmental crisis is a symptom of deeper issues facing modern civilization arising from the loss of the very meaning of culture. To come to grips with this crisis requires a change in the metaphysical premise of modernity deeper than any as yet envisaged even by the radical ecology movement. This is a change with profound implications for the full range of existential questions and not merely for questions regarding our relationship with "nature."

Explores the ancient and perennial notion of the four elements as environmental ideas.

Bachelard called them "the hormones of the imagination." Hegel observed that, "through the four elements we have the elevation of sensuous ideas into thought." Earth, air, fire, and water are explored as both philosophical ideas and environmental issues associated with their classical and perennial conceptions. David Macauley embarks upon a wide-ranging discussion of their initial appearance in ancient Greek thought as mythic forces or scientific principles to their recent reemergence within contemporary continental philosophy as a means for understanding landscape and language, poetry and place, the body and the body politic. In so doing, he shows the importance of elemental thinking for comprehending and responding to ecological problems. In tracing changing views of the four elements through the history of ideas, Macauley generates a new vocabulary for and a fresh vision of the environment while engaging the elemental world directly with reflections on their various manifestations.

Introduction to Gregory Bateson's unique perspective on the relationship of humanity to the natural world.

Gregory Bateson (1904–1980), anthropologist, psychologist, systems thinker, student of animal communication, and insightful environmentalist, was one of the most important holistic thinkers of the twentieth century. Noel G. Charlton offers this first truly accessible introduction to Bateson's work, distilling and clarifying Bateson's understanding of the "mind" or "mental systems" as being present throughout the living Earth, in systems and creatures of all kinds. Part biography, part overview of the evolution of his ideas, Charlton's book situates Bateson's thought in relation to that of other ecological thinkers. This long-awaited volume opens up this challenging thinker's body of work and introduces it to a new generation of readers.

Collected essays present Weston's pragmatic environmental philosophy, calling for reconstruction and imagination rather than deconstruction and analysis.

This collection of germinal work in the field by Anthony Weston presents his pragmatic environmental philosophy, calling for reconstruction and imagination rather than deconstruction and analysis. It is a philosopher's invitation to environmental ethics in an unexpectedly inviting and down-to-earth key. On the pragmatic view advanced here, environmental values are thoroughly natural-what else could they be?-and are open-ended and in flux. Rather than passing judgment on the world as it is, we are called to rediscover and remake the world as it might be. We require an environmental etiquette more than a formal ethic; an etiquette whose development must be an ongoing process; and a process in turn that is genuinely multicentric, challenging us to negotiate our place among the exuberant variety of living and other forms.

Examines the significance of animal environments in contemporary continental thought.

German biologist Jakob von Uexküll focused on how an animal, through its behavioral relations, both impacts and is impacted by its own unique environment. Onto-Ethologies traces the influence of Uexküll's ideas on the thought of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Gilles Deleuze, as they explore how animal behavior might be said to approximate, but also differ from, human behavior. It is the relation between animal and environment that interests Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Deleuze, and yet it is the differences in their approach to Uexküll (and to concepts such as world, body, and affect) that prove so fascinating. This book explores the ramifications of these encounters, including how animal life both broadens and deepens the ontological significance of their respective philosophies.

Leading environmental thinkers investigate the complexities of boundary formation and negotiation at the heart of environmental problems.

Nature's Edge brings together leading environmental thinkers from the natural sciences, geography, political science, religion, and philosophy to explore the complex facets of boundary formation and negotiation at the heart of our environmental problems. The contributors provide a fresh look at how our lives depend on the lines drawn and ask how those lines must be reinscribed, blurred, or even erased to prepare for a sustainable future.

Resolving environmental problems calls for the negotiation of multiple, intersecting boundaries-natural, social, political, geographical, and ethical. From the differentiation of species to the formation of communities and moral values, environmental theorists are constantly confronted with a palimpsest of thresholds and mappings: Can nature and culture be divided? Are natural divisions discovered or created? How do political borders and moral economies shape community-building and social transformation?