As incoming Editor and Deputy Editor we describe our impression of the current situation that those committed to understanding and upholding environmental values find themselves in. We consider some of the factors that make enviornmental concern difficult to maintain, including conditions that affect us as academics, publishers, global citizens and activists. We describe some of the emerging trends that have appeared in Environmental Values in recent years, in philosophy, ecological economics, critical social science and widening interdisciplinarity in the environmental humanities. (...) We highlight the journal's commitment to engaged, plural and open investigation of environmental values and consider what we might expect and hope for in the coming years. (shrink)

The key role that animals play in our aesthetic appreciation of the natural world has only gradually been highlighted in discussions in environmental aesthetics. In this article I make use of the phenomenological notion of 'perceptual sense' as developed by Merleau-Ponty to argue that open-ended expressive-responsive movement is the primary aesthetic ground for our appreciation of animals. It is through their movement that the array of qualities we admire in animals are manifest qua animal qualities. Against functionalist and formalist accounts, (...) I defend and develop an account of expressive-responsive movement as the primary perceptual sense of animals. I go on to suggest that the primacy of movement in the aesthetic appreciation of animals is also the primary sense of animal 'wildness', and that a key part of the rewilding paradigm should be the development of such appreciation. (shrink)

This article develops a new way of understanding the integration of emotions in practical life and the practical appraisal of emotions, drawing on insights from both J-P. Sartre and R. G. Collingwo...

Distinguishing between the source and the locus of value enables environmental philosophers to consider not only what is of value, but also to try to develop a conception of valuation that is itself ecological. Such a conception must address difficulties caused by the original locational metaphors in which the distinction is framed. This is done by reassessing two frequently employed models of valuation, perception and desire, and going on to show that a more adequate ecological understanding of valuation emerges when (...) these models are fully contextualized in the intersecting life worlds of the ecological community. Ecological evaluation takes place in ongoing encounters between these worlds and a crucial part in this process is assigned to living beings that are “open-endedly open,” that is, open not only to what the world affords them and others, but open to an indefinite field of possible valuational encounters between all kinds of beings. Ecological valuation overcomes some of the conceptual failings of contemporary attempts to evaluate nature: “The Economics of Ecology and Biodiversity” and “Valuing Nature.”. (shrink)

This paper rethinks positive aesthetics as a group of aesthetic practices rather than a set of doctrines or judgments. The paper begins by setting out a general approach to aesthetic practices based on Pierre Hadot’s notion of philosophical “spiritual exercises.” Three practices of positive aesthetics are then described: focusing the beauty of each thing; envisioning the beauty of everything; and allowing the beauty of all things. The paper warns against possible dangers to which each practice may fall prey, dangers that (...) divert the practice from its perception cultivating and enhancing potential. The paper ends by drawing out key implications of this way of considering positive aesthetics for our understanding of beauty, negativity and artificiality. (shrink)