Abstract

Because commercialism tends toward environmental degradation, selection and treatment of the philosophical canon are environmental matters. Environmentalists and others who teach early modern and modern philosophy should, I argue, alter typical pedogogical approaches that (usually unwittingly) reinforce common assumptions underlying commercialism and promote anti-environmental perspectives. Typical treatments of Hobbes, Locke, Descartes, Kant, Hume, and Bentham focus on human selfishness, mind-body dualism, the subjectivity of values, and the mathematical nature of reality, positions that are frequently identified as contributing causes both of the environmental crisis and of commercialism. The alternative, I argue, is to place canonical thinkers in historical perspective within a history of ideas that also includes such writers as Montaigne, Erasmus, Reid, Burke, Goethe, and Emerson. Such courses can be historically accurate, pedagogically sound, and environmentally benign.