_Hunting - Philosophy for Everyone_ presents a collection of readings from academics and non-academics alike that move beyond the ethical justification of hunting to investigate less traditional topics and offer fresh perspectives on why we hunt. The only recent book to explicitly examine the philosophical issues surrounding hunting Shatters many of the stereotypes about hunting, forcing us to rethink the topic Features contributions from a wide range of academic and non-academic sources, including both hunters and non-hunters.

Any mediation of the humanity-nature divide driven by environmental concern must satisfactorily account for ecologically destructive human behavior. Holmes Rolston, III argues that human cultures should “follow nature” when interacting with nature. Yet he understands culture to necessarily degrade ecosystems, and allows that purely cultural values could legitimate the destruction of nature itself. Edward O. Wilson, meanwhile, argues that culture’s evolutionary function is to fit humanity to its niche; culture necessarily follows “epigenetic rules” naturally selected for this purpose. However, because (...) humanity cannot but follow these rules, any human behavior—even (post)modern societies’ ecologically catastrophic behavior—is entirely natural. Therefore, Rolston’s reconciliation is too weak and Wilson’s too strong. Yet the two can be mutually modifying. Rolston’s “pure” culture should follow the natural value of human nature; yet, humans must be free to disobey (at their peril) Wilson’s epigenetic rules. Humanity thus becomesreconciled to nature by freely following its own nature, which is violated when the wider natural world is treated unnaturally. (shrink)

Hunting - Philosophy for Everyone presents a collection of readings from academics and non-academics alike that move beyond the ethical justification of hunting to investigate less traditional topics and offer fresh perspectives on why we hunt. The only recent book to explicitly examine the philosophical issues surrounding hunting Shatters many of the stereotypes about hunting, forcing us to rethink the topic Features contributions from a wide range of academic and non-academic sources, including both hunters and non-hunters.

Hunting---Philosophy for Everyone Presents a thought-provoking collection of new essays from across the academic and non-academic spectrum that move far beyound ...

Abstract. On the naive reading, “radical social constructivism” would be the result of “deconstructing” science. Science would simply be a contingent construction in accordance with social determinants. However, postmodernism does not necessarily abandon fidelity to the objects of thought. Merold Westphal's Derridean philosophy of religion emphasizes that even theology need not eliminate the transcendence of the divine other. By drawing an analogy between natural and supernatural transcendence, I argue that science is similarly called to responsibility in the encounter with that (...) which lies outside its horizon of expectation. Science's rational autonomy is overcome by the heteronomy of realities that precede it. Understanding species as homeostatic property clusters is an example of nonessentialist, postmodern, and scientific realism. Science is still a vehicle for encountering natural alterity, thus decentering the relativism thought to characterize postmodernism. However, natural science must not attempt to place the whole of being at human disposal if it is to fulfill the potential of Westphal's philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Extending ethical considerability to animals consistently takes the form of imperialism: progressing outward from the core of human morality, it incorporates only those animals deemed relevantly similar to humans while rejecting or reforming those lifeforms which are not. I develop an ethic of animal treatment premised on the species difference of undomesticated animals, which has the potential to reunite not only animal and environmental ethics, but environmental and interhuman ethics: each species has evolutionarily specified patterns of behavior for the proper (...) treatment of members of its own species and members of other species. (shrink)

Extending ethical considerability to animals consistently takes the form of imperialism: progressing outward from the core of human morality, it incorporates only those animals deemed relevantly similar to humans while rejecting or reforming those lifeforms which are not. I develop an ethic of animal treatment premised on the species difference of undomesticated animals, which has the potential to reunite not only animal and environmental ethics, but environmental and interhuman ethics: each species has evolutionarily specified patterns of behavior for the proper (...) treatment of members of its own species and members of other species. (shrink)

Bernard Charbonneau’s The Green Light is a classic text of French environmentalism, first published in 1980 but unavailable in English until now. Philosophically, I found the book to be underwhelming, but Charbonneau makes no apologies for this:The author’s viewpoint is...not that of a specialist,...of a bona fide philosopher or poet, but that of a man who needs air to breathe, water to drink and dive in, time and space to play, silence to sleep or reflect...who has felt in his bones (...) and his eye each of the blows the land has endured.Charbonneau’s motivations for writing are personal, but not private; the introduction which chronicles his own background, struggles, and heartbreak might be the most compelling part... (shrink)

The Alberta tar sands, and the proposed pipelines which would carry their bitumen to international markets, comprise one of the most visible environmental controversies of the early twenty-first century. Jacques Ellul’s theory of technology presents ostensibly physical phenomena, such as the tar sands, as social phenomena wherein all values are subsumed under the efficient mastery of nature. The effect of technological rationality is totalizing because technical means establish themselves as the exclusive facts of the matter, which creates a socio-political environment (...) wherein ethical engagement is precluded. Analyzing the tar sands controversy through Ellul’s hermeneutic challenges environmental ethics to a more radical stance than the continuation of the technological worldview, and thus offers meaningful and hopeful alternatives to the status quo. (shrink)

Judging a place as wasteland or homeland is a matter of perspective: presupposed values, knowledge through acquaintance, and comportment. Therefore, contra Martin Drenthen, the value of wilderness is a judgement call, not a conceptual necessity. I show this by first distinguishing wilderness from “wildness,” then culture from civilization, and finally, by situating Nietzsche’s teachings of the will to power in the context of a devalued world-view.Nevertheless, I agree with Drenthen that some understandings of wilderness are more appropriate than others. When (...) wild nature is understood to be “good” in an axiologically transcendent sense, morality and humanness per se are not undermined, and the transcendence of wildness is still sufficiently immanent to avoid the drive to devalue it. Even though such conceptualization can be attained by civilized urbanites, it seems to be optimally actualized in life by non-civilized cultures. This leads to implications that are not easy for us to accept, but deserve our serious consideration nonetheless. (shrink)