Anchored in the diverse ecological practices of communities in southern Italy and Aotearoa/New Zealand, this book devises a unique and considered theoretical response to the shortcomings of global politics in the Ecocene—a new temporal epoch characterised by the increasingly frequent intrusion of ecological processes into political life. -/- Dismantling the use of the term ‘Anthropocene’ as a descriptor for our current ecological and political paradigm, this bold and resolutely original contribution proposes a restorative ethics of mutualism. An emancipatory theory intended (...) to re-invigorate human agency in the face of contemporary ecological challenges, it posits an effective means to combat the environmental destruction engendered by modernity. -/- Using ecology alongside European moral and Māori philosophies to re-conceptualise the ecological remit of politics, this book’s granular approach questions the role played by contemporary political ontologies in the separation of humans and environments, offering an in-depth view of their renewed interrelation under mutualism. -/- Ecocene Politics will be essential to researchers and students in the fields of politics, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and geography. It will be of further interest to those working in the fields of political ecology, environmental humanities, and Anthropocene studies, as well as to general readers seeking a theoretical approach to the political issues posed by current ecological crises. (shrink)

This paper investigates the concept of rewilding by looking at its uses so far and its implementation by Rewilding Europe, one of the leading rewilding organizations today. Juxtaposing theory with...

Multiple concepts of nature are at play in environmental theory and practice. One that has gripped several theorists is the idea of nature as referring to that which is independent of humans and human activity. This concept has been subject to forceful criticism, notably in the recent work of Steven Vogel. After clarifying problematic and promising ways of charac­terizing independent nature, I engage Vogel’s critique. While the critique is compelling in certain respects, I argue that it fails to appreciate what (...) I take to be an important motivating concern of those drawn to the concept of independent nature, or something like it. I offer a characterization of that concern—a worry about problematic instrumentalization of the nonhuman world—and suggest why this concern, and the idea of independent nature which helps to make it intelligible, should continue to inform environmental theory and practice. In offering a qualified defense of the concept of independent nature, and of its value, I assume that such a concept is only one possible tool in a multi-pronged approach to environmental theorizing, deliberation, action, and policy. (shrink)

I will entertain and reject three arguments which putatively establish that the individuals produced through de-extinction ought to be the same species as the extinct population. Forms of these arguments have appeared previously in restoration ecology. The first is the weakest, the conceptual argument, that de-extinction will not be de-extinction if it does not re-create an extinct species. This is misguided as de-extinction technology is not unified by its aim to re-create extinct species but in its use of the remnants (...) of extinct populations as a resource. The second is the argument from authenticity; the populations produced by de-extinction technologies will be inauthentic if they are not of the extinct species and, therefore, will not be valuable. I argue authenticity is not required in conservation as the value of authenticity varies between people and cultures, and the novelty of de-extinct species will be equally desirable in many cases. The third argument is from retributive justice; we need the de-extinct population to have the same species identity as we owe a moral debt to the extinct population. I find the case for retributive justice unconvincing and argue that acting as if we have a duty to resurrect extinct species will result in a world with less species. Ultimately all the arguments that connect de-extinction technology to species identity fail, leaving us to consider a more complex calculus for the justification of de-extinction in conservation. (shrink)

In the 1920s and 1930s, an attempt was made to resurrect the aurochs (Bos primigenius primigenius), the extinct wild ancestor of contemporary domestic cattle. The back-bred species that was produced are called ‘Heck cattle’. I argue that the attempt to create the Heck cattle as a form of resurrected aurochs, and their subsequent use in rewilding projects (as in the Oostvaardersplassen in the Netherlands) is a prime example of the continuous human project of the domination of nature. The consideration of (...) domination as an extreme form of management serves as a critical lens on the policy of rewilding, similar to long-standing critiques of the policy of ecological restoration by this author. Rewilding projects do not re-create a ‘wild’ nature free from human intervention and activity. Rewilding is another form of the human management of natural processes to achieve anthropocentric goals. My examination of the Heck cattle in the rewilding process is intentionally provocative because there is a connection to Nazism. I will argue that policies of rewilding have historical antecedents (and parallels in philosophical meaning) to the Nazi plans for re-creating an authentic Aryan landscape in the lands of Eastern Europe. The case history of the Heck cattle projects illustrates the danger of pursuing radical forms of management of the natural world. (shrink)

De-extinction raises anew ontological and epistemological problems that have engaged environmental philosophers for decades. This essay re-examines these issues to provide a fuller understanding—and a critique—of de-extinction. One of my claims is that de-extinction as a philosophical problem merely recycles old issues and debates in the field (hence, “zombie” arguments). De-extinction is a project that arises out of the assertion of human domination of the natural world. Thus the acceptance of de-extinction as an environmental policy is an expression of a (...) human-nature relationship that disvalues the natural world and subjugates nature completely to the interests of humanity. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary volume consist of papers on various problems in contemporary ethics. It presents the following issues: equalizing the level of positive liberty, the phenomenon of human cooperation, ethical questions related to artificial intelligence, extending ethical obligations toward artifacts, and soteriological threads of alienation criticism of religion.

The transgressive ontological character of hybrids—entities crossing the ontological binarism of naturalness and artificiality, e.g., biomimetic projects—calls for pondering the question of their ethical status, since metaphysical and moral ideas are often inextricably linked. The example of it is the concept of “moral considerability” and related to it the idea of “intrinsic value” understood as a non-instrumentality of a being. Such an approach excludes hybrids from moral considerations due to their instrumental character. In the paper, we revisit the boundaries of (...) moral considerability by reexamining the legitimacy of identifying intrinsic value with a non-instrumental one. We offer the concept of “functional value,” which we define as a simultaneous contribution to the common good of the ecosystem and the possibility to disclose the full variety of aspects of a being’s identity. We argue that such a value of hybrids allows us to include them into the scope of moral considerability. (shrink)

The transgressive ontological character of hybrids—entities crossing the ontological binarism of naturalness and artificiality, e.g., biomimetic projects—calls for pondering the question of their ethical status, since metaphysical and moral ideas are often inextricably linked. The example of it is the concept of “moral considerability” and related to it the idea of “intrinsic value” understood as a non-instrumentality of a being. Such an approach excludes hybrids from moral considerations due to their instrumental character. In the paper, we revisit the boundaries of (...) moral considerability by reexamining the legitimacy of identifying intrinsic value with a non-instrumental one. We offer the concept of “functional value,” which we define as a simultaneous contribution to the common good of the ecosystem and the possibility to disclose the full variety of aspects of a being’s identity. We argue that such a value of hybrids allows us to include them into the scope of moral considerability. (shrink)

Olmsted was an influential landscape architect whose works include many parks, recreation grounds and more. Inspired by Romantic and transcendentalist thinkers, he developed ‘pastoral transcendentalism’, a style of designing parks that mimicked natural spaces to reproduce their values within cities. Although environmental justice scholars have pointed out how these designs limit access to parks, I argue that environmental philosophers have not adequately discussed Olmsted, particularly his axiology of nature. Reflecting on it reveals how environmental injustice consists not only of restricting (...) access to nature to protect its essential value – for Olmsted, scenery that could induce a contemplative mindset – but in delimiting nature's value without consideration of how people actually appreciate it. (shrink)

The most alive is the wildest (Henry David Thoreau, Walking)Simply put, rewilding seeks to foster the wildness of an area or to return it to a previous state of wilderness1. Although there is no co...

Many ecological economists have argued that some natural capital should be preserved for posterity. Yet, among environmental philosophers, the preservation paradox entails that preserving parts of nature, including those denoted by natural capital, is impossible. The paradox claims that nature is a realm of phenomena independent of intentional human agency, that preserving and restoring nature require intentional human agency, and, therefore, no one can preserve or restore nature (without making it artificial). While this article argues that the preservation paradox is (...) more difficult to resolve than ordinarily recognized, it also concludes by sketching a positive way to understand what it means to preserve natural capital during the Anthropocene. (shrink)

Environmental ethics is the discipline in philosophy that studies the moral relationship of human beings to, and also the value and moral status of, the environment and its nonhuman contents. This entry covers: (1) the challenge of environmental ethics to the anthropocentrism (i.e., humancenteredness) embedded in traditional western ethical thinking; (2) the early development of the discipline in the 1960s and 1970s; (3) the connection of deep ecology, feminist environmental ethics, and social ecology to politics; (4) the attempt to apply (...) traditional ethical theories, including consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics, to support contemporary environmental concerns; and (5) the focus of environmental literature on wilderness, and possible future developments of the discipline. (shrink)

This dissertation undertakes a philosophical analysis of “natural capital” and argues that this concept has prompted economists to view Nature in a radically novel manner. Formerly, economists referred to Nature and natural products as a collection of inert materials to be drawn upon in isolation and then rearranged by human agents to produce commodities. More recently, nature is depicted as a collection of active, modifiable, and economically valuable processes, often construed as ecosystems that produce marketable goods and services gratis. Nature (...) is depicted as consisting of various unproduced mechanisms or “natural machines” that are first discovered and then channeled so as to serve human ends. In short, nature as an ideal is a kind of garden that is characterized by natural objects purposefully arranged by intentional human agents. This dissertation first lays out working definitions of the key terms, such as capital and Nature, and then traces the historical roots of natural capital in the writings of eminent classical political economists, such as Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx. I then examine the question of substitutes for “critical natural capital”, and argue that the preservation paradox is warranted: no one can restore or preserve a part of Nature without turning it into an artifact. Following the recent work of Debra Satz and Michael Sandel, I finish my dissertation by situating the question of natural capital in the broader context of whether some goods should not be for sale, particularly those I define as Basic Ecological Goods. (shrink)