Abstract

Environmental ethics must inescapably address philosophy of self, since any viable ethic must be founded on satisfactory metaphysics. First and foremost, the environmental philosopher must ask: What is an adequate ontology of the self? I look at Descartes, Foucault, and Whitehead, and conclude that only Whitehead's self is metaphysically cogent. Upon close scrutiny, the normative implications are fascinating; Whiteheadian ontology mandates an environmental ethic. After formulating an "organismic" environmental ethic derived from Whiteheadian philosophy, I conclude by elaborating the metaethical advantages of this ethic over the theories of Holmes Rolston 3d, Deep Ecology, and J. Baird Callicott