The paper discusses the critical need for ethical rethinking in relation to the environmental crisis in contemporary world. Beyond the present diversified perspectives in environmental ethical discourse (Anthropocentrism, Animal liberation/rights theory, Biocentrism and Ecocentrism), the paper makes a strong case for holism. The paper argues that while each of these schools of thought in environmental ethics has significant relevance and contributions to make, considered separately, they are for the most part, insufficient and inadequate toward revamping and (...) protecting the world environment from further deterioration. As a consequence, the paper establishes that only a Holistic Environmental Ethics that synergistically adapts, integrates and encompasses the positive aspects of these four environmental ethical theories in a holistic whole is promising in challenging the environmental crisis. (shrink)

I briefly discuss first philosophy (metaphysics), including different “paradigms’ of first philosophy in the history of Western philosophy. I then discuss the rise of environmental ethics as a new field of philosophy and the debate over anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric values. I suggest that ecocentric value theories could constitute a new first philosophy using the “paradigm” of value in first philosophy and why they should constitute a first philosophy.

A brief history of environmental consciousness in the western world places our views in perspective and provides a context for understanding the maze of related and unrelated thoughts, philosophies, and practices that we call “environmentalism”. Environmental ethics is a collection of independent ethicalgeneralizations, not a tight, rationally ordered set of rules. Environmental ethics is a collection of interrelated independent tendencies - a process field that is brought together for a long time. Ethics really results (...) from people’s perceptions, attitudes and behaviour. Society is facing many important decisions about the useof science and technology. These decisions affect the environment, human health, society and international policy. To resolve these issues, and develop principles to help us make decisions we need to involve anthropology, sociology, biology, medicine, religion, psychology, philosophy, and economics; we must combine the scientific rigour of biological data, with the values of religion and philosophy to develop a world-view. The goal of environmental ethics is not to convince us that we should be concerned about the environment. Instead of it, environmental ethics focuses on the moral foundation of environmental responsibility, and how far this responsibility extends. The challenge of duty-based eco-centrism is to explain how conflicts are to be resolved between human‐centered duties and environment-centered ones. An adequate duty-based approach to environmental obligation requires prioritizing environmental duties according to a ranked importance of the various ecosystems in question. Conflicts between prioritized environmental and human duties, then, can only be resolved on a case by case basis. Although eco-centrism fails as a normative theory, eco-centrism may have merit as a way of expressing emotionaloutrage at environmental damage and demanding change. (shrink)

The pivotal claim in environmental ethics is that humans in their cultures are out of sustainable relationships to the natural environments comprising the landscapes on which these cultures are superimposed. But bringing such culture into more intelligent relationships with the natural world requires not so much “naturalizing culture” as discriminating recognition of the radical differences between nature and culture, on the basis of which a dialectical ethic of complementarity may be possible. How far nature can and ought be (...) managed and be transformed into humanized nature, resulting in “the end of nature,” is a provocative question. Environmental ethics ought also to seek nature as an end in itself. (shrink)

The pivotal claim in environmental ethics is that humans in their cultures are out of sustainable relationships to the natural environments comprising the landscapes on which these cultures are superimposed. But bringing such culture into more intelligent relationships with the natural world requires not so much “naturalizing culture” as discriminating recognition of the radical differences between nature and culture, on the basis of which a dialectical ethic of complementarity may be possible. How far nature can and ought be (...) managed and be transformed into humanized nature, resulting in “the end of nature,” is a provocative question. Environmental ethics ought also to seek nature as an end in itself. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of imagination in environmental ethics and introduce an imaginative dimension as an essential part of environmental ethics. Imagination constitutes a basic condition for ethical thinking and action. Matters of environmental ethics have revealed the indispensable role of imagination in ethics. I’ll advance an imagination-based environmental ethics by developing Hans Jonas’ ethical thought. From his viewpoint, various effects of our action on nature (...) and future generations, generally out of our sight, have become an ethical concern. This necessitates the exercise of imagination because we must “imagine” those distant effects to act in an environmentally responsible way. Jonas’ “heuristics of fear” is an imaginative approach necessary for responsible action. Further, I reinterpret the role of imagination as motivating our “will to know.” In conclusion, I suggest the importance of environmental education as cultivating ecological imagination from the standpoint of environmental ethics. (shrink)

In the history of ethical thoughts of China and the West, ethical relations are always regarded as social relations among people, and the objects to which ethical norms apply are targeted for social business or man’s behavior. What traditional ethics concerns is ethical relationship among people or ethical feature of socialbusiness or man’s behavior. By comparison with it, environmental ethics has a good reputation for its research on ethical relationship between human being and natural environment. It has (...) been discussing and reconstructing ethical relationship between man and nature from the very beginning, and requires ethical solicitude or moral concern for natural environment. As a result, environmental ethics has to answer the question how it is possible. However, the mainstream views in environmental ethics, based on the position of moral expansion and non-anthropocentrism, can't and won't explain how environmental ethics is possible. What environmental ethics deals with is no other than the ethical relationship between man and man represented by the relationship between man and nature, what it confirms is no other than our obligations and duties to others and next generations when dealing with the relationship between man and nature, and finally, the criterion of evaluation it pursues in dealing with the man-nature relationship is no other than the integrated and long-run interest of all human beings. All these are the ground on which the contemporary environmental ethics stands possibly. (shrink)

With the rise of Practical and Professional Ethics has risen Environmental Ethics. Ethical reflections pertaining to environmental and ecological problems is not new; in the recent times we have been discussing these issues in a more methodical and organised way. Methodicity taking centre stage in moral philosophical scrutiny of matters pertaining to life and world finds sceptics throwing stiff challenges to the method of ‘activism’ involving common men for their moral perceptions and resolution of the said (...) ethical issues. Sceptics also challenge those who prefer ‘theoreticism’ involving ethicists and their sacred normative theories for the resolution of the said ethical issues. The paper tries to expound and face these sceptical challenges so that environmental ethics is not turned to a bundle of nonsense. (shrink)

Environmental debates are frequent nowadays. It is a common trend to seek the solutions of these issues in the fields of science and technology. There are at least two main arguments in support of this view. The first is that science provides objective answers that are based on fact. And the second is that the ecological threat that confronts us can only be measured with the help of advanced technology. The present paper tries to show that although science and (...) technology are of great help in solving these issues, environmental problems are not exclusively of a scientific or technical nature. This paper is divided into two sections. The first section tries to show why these problems are not exclusively scientific or technical in nature. And the second section tries to unveil the need for environmental ethics in the present-day society. (shrink)

Ethics and Organizations provides a rich and valuable overview of an increasingly important issue for management and organizations in contemporary society. Debates about equal opportunities, environmental responsibility, consumer redress, and corporate governance have given ethics a prominent place in the study of organizations in their social and natural environments. Within the organization, new management styles that seek to energize employees by manipulating their beliefs have highlighted the moral-ethical principles at issue in contemporary management. At the same time, (...) debates around postmodernism and relativism have moved ethics to a new centrality in contemporary social theory. This volume addresses the questions that these and other developments raise for the study of management and organizations, from a multidisciplinary perspective. Ethics and Organizations will be invaluable to advanced-level students and academics engaged in analyzing the moral, political, and ethical dimensions of organization theory and organizational practice. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is that the ethics of environmental economy must search for a virtue-ethical basis. The traditional utilitarian approach has been the dominant ethical paradigm in neoclassical economics, but it is very problematic regarding environmental issues. Alternative orientations for an environmentally responsible economy can be found from the history of economics, especially from the Aristotelian tradition, and recent discussions about values in nature. Through these, one can look for economic virtues which are ecologically sound (...) and, at the same time, socially and culturally possible. Some such virtues do already exist which must be interpreted only ecologically. Others can be found from the economic ethics of Antiquity. Economic virtues are usually followed unconsciously and alternatives are scarce. The ethics of ecological economics must develop ecologically meaningful virtues: through that it can make a place for new environmentally sound practices and policy. (shrink)

Holism in environmental ethics is concerned with a harmonious relationship between man and nature. Hinduism seeks to identify and evaluate the distinctive ecological attitudes, values and practices of human beings by making clear their relations with the intellectual and ethical thought within scripture, ritual, myth,symbols, cosmology, and sacrament. In Hinduism the relation between man and nature is like the relationship between the microcosm (Pindānda) and the macrocosm (Brahmānda). The Panċamahābhuta in the Hindu tradition emphasizes that God is assigned (...) to every bhutas, and human beings have no specialauthority over the other nonhuman. Even the Yoga system of Pātanjali also tries to integrate environmental policies with the daily needs of human beings. Hindu philosophy believes that an animal killer is considered as a murderer and goes directly to the hell. This justifies the intrinsic value of the nonhuman species, which entail them to come under the purview of morality. On the basis of the various attitudes in Hinduism we can develop an ecological paradigm and strategy which is based on the concept of Vasudheiva Kutumbakam: every entity and organism is a part of one large extended family which is presided over by the eternal mother Earth. This position will help us to formulate a global environmental ethics by individuals, theologians, environmental philosophers and groups, scientists, politicians, economists, industrialists, and different government and non-governmental social organizations. (shrink)

This Paper argues that to protect at-risk communities — and all Americans — from the deadly effects of environmental racism, Congress must pass the Environmental Justice for All Act. The Act is intended to “restore, reaffirm, and reconcile environmental justice and civil rights.” It does so by restoring an individual’s right to sue in federal court for discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or national origin regardless of intent under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, strengthening the National (...) Environmental Policy Act, and providing economic incentives focused on environmental justice. (shrink)

The American environmental philosopher J. Baird Callicott argues that we human beings are ethically obliged to promote and protect the environment as an intrinsic value. To do so, we should adopt a scientifically and philosophically informed postmodern land ethic which protects and nurtures the great chain of being (pyramids of energy) from soil to civilization. The practice of this Leopoldian land ethic requires that we transform our modernist utilitarian and Cartesian ethics which instrumentalize and alienate nature. Two key (...) works by Callicott outline his position as a mainstream academic deep ecologist: Earth’s Insights (1994) and Beyond the Land Ethic (1999). The French cultural and political philosopher, Luc Ferry, argues that deep ecological ideologies, such as Callicott’s, threatenthe historical enterprise of modernist humanism. The appeal of deep ecologists lies in their romantic and anti-Cartesian ideologies. In his book, The New Ecological Order (1995; Le nouvel ordre écologique, 1992), Ferry criticizes the deep ecologists (and he includes Callicott in this group) for their unjustified attacks on the traditions of humanism. In the conclusion to his book, deep ecological radicalism is equated with an anti-cosmopolitan “barbarism”. Ferry feels that the ideals of the European enlightenment and its modernist anthropocentrism which privileges human autonomy, freedom, and democratic ideals, have been undermined by the forces of the political left. (shrink)

Foreword -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction to corporate social responsibility and ethics -- Business ethics and the meetings and events industry -- Strategies for sustainable meetings -- Social responsibility and culture -- Meetings, events, and environmental science -- Shared value and strategic corporate responsibility -- Communication, marketing, and public relations -- Sustainable supply chains for meetings and events -- Sustainability measurement and evaluation -- Sustainability reporting for meetings and events -- Risk management and legal considerations -- (...) Backcasting and scenario planning for a sustainable meetings and events industry -- Glossary -- Index. (shrink)

The so-called Brundtland-Report defines Sustainable Development as a conception of intra- and intergenerational justice, which is to be realized by a globally just distribution of possibilities for satisfying human basic needs as well as assuring such possibilities for future generations. Hence, any political and/or societal decision is addressed by the ethical demands of Sustainable Development insofar it affects possibilities for satisfying human basic needs. In particular, this concerns – contrary to the widespread opinion that Sustainable Development only has to deal (...) with problems of environmental ethics – the legitimization of biomedical applications. After all, especially such decisions often face the problem of measuring and trading-off potential advantages and disadvantages regarding possibilities for satisfying human basic needs. Based on the example of decisions about establishing biobanks, my talk firstly will show that Sustainable Development actually demands much more from political and societal decisions than just being concerned about environmental ethics. Secondly, it will clarify these demands in detail. Thirdly, it will address the issues of how these demands can be implemented adequately. My talk therefore will show which conditions political and/or societal decision processes have to meet in order to comply with Sustainable Development. (shrink)

The so-called Brundtland-Report defines Sustainable Development as a conception of intra- and intergenerational justice, which is to be realized by a globally just distribution of possibilities for satisfying human basic needs as well as assuring such possibilities for future generations. Hence, any political and/or societal decision is addressed by the ethical demands of Sustainable Development insofar it affects possibilities for satisfying human basic needs. In particular, this concerns – contrary to the widespread opinion that Sustainable Development only has to deal (...) with problems of environmental ethics – the legitimization of biomedical applications. After all, especially such decisions often face the problem of measuring and trading-off potential advantages and disadvantages regarding possibilities for satisfying human basic needs. Based on the example of decisions about establishing biobanks, my talk firstly will show that Sustainable Development actually demands much more from political and societal decisions than just being concerned about environmental ethics. Secondly, it will clarify these demands in detail. Thirdly, it will address the issues of how these demands can be implemented adequately. My talk therefore will show which conditions political and/or societal decision processes have to meet in order to comply with Sustainable Development. (shrink)

The so-called Brundtland-Report defines Sustainable Development as a conception of intra- and intergenerational justice, which is to be realized by a globally just distribution of possibilities for satisfying human basic needs as well as assuring such possibilities for future generations. Hence, any political and/or societal decision is addressed by the ethical demands of Sustainable Development insofar it affects possibilities for satisfying human basic needs. In particular, this concerns – contrary to the widespread opinion that Sustainable Development only has to deal (...) with problems of environmental ethics – the legitimization of biomedical applications. After all, especially such decisions often face the problem of measuring and trading-off potential advantages and disadvantages regarding possibilities for satisfying human basic needs. Based on the example of decisions about establishing biobanks, my talk firstly will show that Sustainable Development actually demands much more from political and societal decisions than just being concerned about environmental ethics. Secondly, it will clarify these demands in detail. Thirdly, it will address the issues of how these demands can be implemented adequately. My talk therefore will show which conditions political and/or societal decision processes have to meet in order to comply with Sustainable Development. (shrink)

We take kelp as material entities immersed in a multitude of relations with other creatures (for whom kelp serves as both nourishment and shelter) and inorganic elements of the milieu it resides in, on the one hand, and as a figuration: a material-semiotic “map of contestable worlds” that encompasses entangled threads of “knowledge, practice and power” (Haraway 1997, 11) in its local and global sense, on the other. While drawing on our field notes from the congress and feminist posthumanities and (...) environmental humanities literatures (e.g. Alaimo 2016; Åsberg & Braidotti 2018; Sandilands & Erickson 2010; Iovino & Opperman 2014) – with a special focus on the so-called blue humanities/oceanic humanities (e.g. DeLoughrey 2019) – that unpack human/nonhuman relations in the context of the current environmental crisis and the accompanying “slow violence” (Nixon 2011), we mobilise a reflection on and make a proposal for “thinking with kelp” as a multi-faceted methodology of transversal and transdisciplinary knowledge production and practices: situated (Haraway 1988), enfleshed, transcorporeal (Alaimo 2010), collaborative, and committed to an ethics of multispecies response-ability (Haraway 2008). (shrink)

We take kelp as material entities immersed in a multitude of relations with other creatures (for whom kelp serves as both nourishment and shelter) and inorganic elements of the milieu it resides in, on the one hand, and as a figuration: a material-semiotic “map of contestable worlds” that encompasses entangled threads of “knowledge, practice and power” (Haraway 1997, 11) in its local and global sense, on the other. While drawing on our field notes from the congress and feminist posthumanities and (...) environmental humanities literatures (e.g. Alaimo 2016; Åsberg & Braidotti 2018; Sandilands & Erickson 2010; Iovino & Opperman 2014) – with a special focus on the so-called blue humanities/oceanic humanities (e.g. DeLoughrey 2019) – that unpack human/nonhuman relations in the context of the current environmental crisis and the accompanying “slow violence” (Nixon 2011), we mobilise a reflection on and make a proposal for “thinking with kelp” as a multi-faceted methodology of transversal and transdisciplinary knowledge production and practices: situated (Haraway 1988), enfleshed, transcorporeal (Alaimo 2010), collaborative, and committed to an ethics of multispecies response-ability (Haraway 2008). (shrink)

Agrarian political philosophies since ancient Greece stress the role of agriculture in forming political solidarity and civic virtue. More recent transformations suggest a way to conjoin these elements of what makes a polity politically sustainable with environmental sensitivity and literacy.

Explanation of the reason of ecological crisis – a key to development of a valuable paradigm new to the western mentality. The western variant of development has led to accident of self-destruction of the person or its exit on autotrophic stay out of the Earth. The dream cosmists (Tsiolkovsky, Vernadsky, Teilhard de Chardin, etc.) is half carried out, say, in connection with an exit racketeers in space. In traditional culture this exit was always: «Dao», the Buddhism, and shamanism. In traditional (...) culture the relation to an inhabitancy was regulated always by the developed system of a taboo and the restrictions producing internalinterfacing space unities. Time puts a problem of judgement of this unity for an exit from environmental problems. (shrink)

Values have always tended to play a central role in discourse on the environment, a tendency which is currently particularly evident in the biodiversity context. Traditionally, arguments about the environment have invoked instrumental value to highlight the necessity or utility of a healthy environment for people and intrinsic value to emphasize the importance of protecting nature for its own sake. More recently, this value dichotomy has been challenged, and the notion of a third value category – relational value – has (...) been introduced into the political and social conservation discussion. In the field of environmental philosophy, the idea of a third category of environmental value already has a longer tradition. This article describes and compares several philosophical accounts of third-category environmental value to contribute to a better characterization of relational value and thus to a better understanding of the role this type of value can play in environmental discourse and policy. (shrink)

Environmental ethics deals with discussing the ethical framework of environmental values, their organization and regulation, and their ethical premises. One of the main cul-de-sacs that environmental ethics has is its anthropocentrism that can be observed through its diverse ethical approaches—even ecocentric ones, developed as non-anthropocentric egalitarian alternatives. This article aims to question the exclusiveness of Anthropos, the practices, values, and discourses that determine the scope and course of environmental ethics, and the exclusion of (...) nonhuman animals or more-than human beings from its focus. It first examines the main approaches in environmental ethics (land ethic, deep ecology, social ecology, and postmodern environmental ethics)—biocentric, ecocentric, anthropocentric, socialist, postmodern—and reveals that they are but limited to the human perspective, deeply rooted in human exceptionalism. All of these approaches provide us with a critical frame that still needs to be deconstructed so that they will not project an anthropocentric orientation. This article posits that the compass of environmental ethics, recently aligning itself to embrace the more-than-human world in its ecocentric attitude, still needs to be revisited for its discourses of exclusion. At this point, new materialism functions as a prolific theoretical site as it diminishes the classical boundaries between human and animal or subject and object that anthropocentric environmental ethics relies on. With such concepts as “agential realism” (Barad), “transcorporeal ethics” (Alaimo), “vibrant matter” (Bennett), or “storied matter” (Oppermann and Iovino) the new materialist view of the human and the nonhuman evolves to end set dualities in the discourses of environmental ethics. This article concludes that the new materialist theory destabilizes any anthropocentric position in environmental ethics and includes more-than-human beings in its ethical focus, discarding any dualities that serve anthropocentrism or human exceptionalism. (shrink)

I discuss the nature and genesis of international development ethics as well as its current areas of consensus, controversies, challenges, and agenda. A relatively new field of applied ethics, international development ethics is ethical reflection on the ends and means of socioeconomic change in poor countries and regions. It has several sources: criticism of colonialism and post-World War II developmental strategies; Denis Goulet's writings; Anglo-American philosophical debates about the ethics of famine relief; and Paul Streeten's and (...) Amartya Sen's approaches to development. Development ethicists agree that the moral dimension of development theory and practice is just as important as the scientific and policy components. What is often called "development" may be bad for people, communities, and the environment. Hence, the process of development should be reconceived as beneficial change, usually specified as alleviating human misery and environmental degradation in poor countries. (shrink)

Environmental ethics is apparently caught in a dilemma. We believe in human species partiality as a way of making sense of many of our practices. However as part of our commitment to impartialism in ethics, we arguably should extend the principle of impartiality to other species, in a version of biocentric egalitarianism of the kind advocated by Paul Taylor. According to this view, not only do all entities that possess a good have inherent worth, but they have (...) equal inherent worth, and in particular no species is superior to any other. In this paper, I elaborate a Heideggerian environmental virtue ethics that slips between the horns of the dilemma. Central to this ethics is the relation of “dwelling” and the many virtues of dwelling, according to which the world is seen as “holy” in a variety of ways. This ethics is importantly local in respect of time and place, but also has universalistic aspects. To understand such an ethics, it is necessary to grasp Heidegger’s notion of truth as “aleithia” or opening, which enables us to escape the metaphysical dilemmas besetting ethics in the analytic tradition, including standard virtue ethics. Elaborating this notion occupies a large part of the paper. (shrink)

Quarterly publication discussing various topics in environmental ethics, including features, discussion papers, book reviews, editorial commentaries, and other text related to environmental philosophies. Some issues also include announcements and other news related to the environmental studies community.