The premise of environmental management pivots on managing the people-environment relationship. Yet this field remains dominated by the idea of managing the environment not the relationship, and as such continues to enact dualistic and reductionist traditions. Deep ecology's relational ontology offers a means of moving beneath and beyond such traditions. Specifically, the theory of internal relations as manifest within Arne Naess's gestalt ontology - if developed with regard to relational work emerging within cultural geography - is an aspect of deep (...) ecology that has relevance and implications for environmental management's theory and practice. Such a stance provides qualified support for Warwick Fox's identification of the significance of Self-realisation within deep ecological philosophy, and counters attempts by some deep ecology proponents to write Fox and his work out of the history and future prospects of deep ecology. (shrink)

Rationalism is the key to the connected oppressions of women and nature in the West. Deep ecology has failed to provide an adequate historical perspective or an adequate challenge to human/nature dualism. A relational account of self enables us to reject an instrumental view of nature and develop an alternative based on respect without denying that nature is distinct from the self. This shift of focus links feminist, environmentalist, and certain forms of socialist critiques. The critique of anthropocentrism is not (...) sacrificed, as deep ecologists argue, but enriched. (shrink)

(1998). ‘Ecofeminism’ in geography. Philosophy & Geography: Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 243-249.

Seminal essays on environmental philosophy from Indian, Chinese, and Japanese traditions of thought. Environmental Philosophy in Asian Traditions of Thought provides a welcome sequel to the foundational volume in Asian environmental ethics Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought. That volume, edited by J. Baird Callicott and Roger T. Ames and published in 1989, inaugurated comparative environmental ethics, adding Asian thought on the natural world to the developing field of environmental philosophy. This new book, edited by Callicott and James McRae, includes (...) some of the best articles in environmental philosophy from the perspective of Asian thought written more recently, some of which appear in print for the first time. Leading scholars draw from the Indian, Chinese, and Japanese traditions of thought to provide a normative ethical framework that can address the environmental challenges being faced in the twenty-first century. Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, and Daoist approaches are considered along with those of Zen, Japanese Confucianism, and the contemporary philosophy of the Kyoto School. An investigation of environmental philosophy in these Asian traditions not only challenges Western assumptions, but also provides an understanding of Asian philosophy, religion, and culture that informs contemporary environmental law and policy. J. Baird Callicott is University Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Texas and author and editor of many books, including Beyond the Land Ethic: More Essays in Environmental Philosophy, also published by SUNY Press. James McRae is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Westminster College in Missouri. He is the coeditor (with Robert Arp and Adam Barkman) of The Philosophy of Ang Lee. (shrink)

In A World Not Made for Us, Keith R. Peterson provides a broad reassessment of the field of environmental philosophy, taking a fresh and critical look at three classical problems of environmentalism: the intrinsic value of nature, the need for an ecological worldview, and a new conception of the place of humankind in nature. Peterson makes the case that a genuinely critical environmental philosophy must adopt an ecological materialist conception of the human, a pluralistic value theory that emphasizes the need (...) for value prioritization, and a stratified categorical ontology that affirms the basic principle of human asymmetrical dependence on more-than-human nature. Integrating environmental ethics with the latest work in political ecology, Peterson argues it is important to understanding that the world is not made for us, and that coming to terms with this fact is a condition for survival in future human and more-than-human communities of liberation and solidarity. (shrink)

The concept of natural otherness can be found throughout the environmental ethics literature. Drawing on this concept, this article pursues two aims. For one, it argues for an account of individual natural otherness as stable difference as opposed to accounts of natural otherness that put more emphasis on independence for the purpose of differentiating individual natural otherness from the concept of wildness. Secondly, this account of natural otherness is engaged to argue for a particular way of theorising the moral standing (...) of individual nonhuman entities. While individual natural otherness in itself does not provide an account of whether an entity matters morally in itself (that is, whether it is morally considerable); it points to an account of incommensurable moral significance for all entities which are attributed moral considerability. That is an often-overlooked alternative to egalitarian or hierarchical accounts or moral significance. Individual natural otherness understood in this way in turn provides another explanatory story for why relational accounts of environmental ethics that strongly emphasise the importance of concepts such as wildness are particularly salient. (shrink)

The application of hierarchy theory to ecological systems presents those who seek a radical change in human perspectives toward nature with a unique window of opportunity. Because hierarchy theory has enabled scientific ecologists to discover that the window through which one chooses to observe a system influences its reality, they may now be more amenable to including the perspectives of deep and feminist ecologists into their self-definition. A synergy between deep, feminist, and scientific ecology could improve environmental policy by encouraging (...) more ecofeminists to encompass the marginalisation of nonhuman life-forms within the ethic of care, more deep ecologists to encompass the issues of overconsumption and militarisation within the anthropocentric-biocentric polarity, and more scientific ecologists to scrutinise the politics behind their investigations. (shrink)

There are major problems in the way in which the environmental 'ethics' question is now being framed – problems which could lead to growing confusion and disillusionment, unless they are rapidly addressed and understood. It is on such problems that this paper focuses. We point to three dimensions of the environmental 'phenomenon' which prevailing accounts of environmental ethics are tending to overlook. We then identify several ways in which incomplete ethical models tend to be reflected in actual environmental policy discourse. (...) Finally, we suggest three hitherto-absent ingredients which will need to be recognised if future models of the ethics question are to be able to reflect, and hence to engage adequately with, social reality. (shrink)

Deep ecology and ecofeminism are contemporary environmental philosophies that share the desire to supplant the predominant Western anthropocentric environmental frameworks. Recently thinkers from these movements have focused their critiques on each other, and substantial differences have emerged. This essay explores central aspects of this debate to ascertain whether either philosophy has been undermined in the process and whether there are any indications that they are compatible despite their differences.

(1998). ‘Ecofeminism’ in Geography. Ethics, Place & Environment: Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 243-249.

Vitriolic debates between supporters of the intrinsic value and the care approaches to environmental ethics make it sound as though these two sides share no common ground. Yet ecofeminist Jim Cheney holds up Holmes Rolston's work as a paragon of feminist sensibility. I explore where Cheney gets this idea from and try to root out some potential connections between intrinsic value and care approaches. The common ground is explored through Alasdair Maclntyre's articulation of a narrative ethics and the development of (...) the notion of an ecological and evolutionary tradition. (shrink)

Narrative and exploration: toward a poetics of knowledge in nursingThe dualism of subject and object has been a traditional model for nursing knowledge. That model is portrayed here as an epistemological exile. Our self‐imposed exile from the lived world of nursing can be remedied by inquiry based on engagement rather than distance. One model for engaged inquiry is explorers'journeys in remote regions. Knowledge of a region can be local or colonial, according to the explorer's stake in the region as homeland (...) or territory. Nursing is an existential region where people live. In the exploration of nursing as homeland, knowledge takes the form of local narrative, the story of a place told by its inhabitants. Narrative inquiry offers nursing an epistemology that is both ethically and aesthetically congruent with its practice of engagement. (shrink)

I bring several ecofeminist critiques of deep ecology to bear on mainstream animal rights theories, especially on the rights and utilitarian treatments of the animal research issue. Throughout, I show how animal rights issues are feminist issues and clarify the relationship between ecofeminism and animal rights.

In this essay I examine the relevance of the vocabulary of an ethics of care to ecofeminism. While this vocabulary appears to offer a promising alternative to moral extensionism and deep ecology, there are problems with the use of this vocabulary by both essentialists and conceptualists. I argue that too great a reliance is placed on personal lived experience as a basis for ecofeminist ethics and that the concept of care is insufficiently determinate to explicate the meaning of care for (...) nature. (shrink)

Let us begin with a fundamental realization: No amount of thinking and no amount of public policy have brought us any closer to understanding and solving the problem of crime. The more we have reacted to crime, the farther we have removed ourselves from any understanding and any reduction of the problem. In recent years, we have floundered desperately in reformulating the law, punishing the offender, and quantifying our knowledge. Yet this country remains one of the most crime-ridden nations. In (...) spite of all its wealth, economic development, and scientific advances, this country has one of the worst crime records in the world.With such realization, we return once again—as if starting anew—to the subject of crime, a subject that remains one of our most critical indicators of the state of our personal and collective being. If what is to be said seems outrageous and heretical, it is only because it is necessarily outside the conventional wisdom both of our understanding of the problem and of our attempt to solve it. (shrink)

After presenting a brief history of the idea of a human right to an adequate environment as it has evolved in the United Nations documents, I assess this approach to our moral responsibility with regard to the environment. I argue that although this rights approach has some substantial weaknesses, these are outweighed by such clear advantages as its action-guiding nature and its political potency.

: This essay examines the content and significance of the notion of "identification" as it appears in the works of theorists of deep ecology. It starts with the most frequently expressed conception of identification—termed "identification-as-belonging"—and distinguishes several different variants of it. After reviewing two criticisms of deep ecology that appear to target this notion, it is argued that there is a second, less frequently noticed type of identification that appears primarily in the work of Arne Naess—"identification-as-kinship." Following this analysis, it (...) is suggested that identification-as-kinship may be less vulnerable to the criticisms that are aimed at identification-as-belonging. (shrink)

Ecofeminism is one of the newest varieties of feminism, and it seems to be one of the brightest. There's something appealing in combining feminist and ecological concerns, and something positively seductive in the implied possibility of one big solution out there somewhere that will end not only the oppression of women but the abuse of nature as well. There seems to be something right about ecofeminism too: it points out that our culture has formed a conceptual association between women and (...) nature which certainly does seem to exist and certainly does seem to have undesirable consequences. And it points out a dichotomy between humans and nonhuman nature that is fundamental to our culture's world-view--this also certainly seems to exist and also certainly seems to have undesirable consequences. (shrink)

본 논문의 목적은 21세기 생명윤리, 환경윤리, 생태윤리 문제 해결 가능한 이론적 대안으로 에코페미니즘을 소개하고 2007 개정 도덕 교과서의 내용요소에 구체적으로 적용하여 실천하려는 것이다. 생태학과 페미니즘이 결합된 에코페미니즘은 기존 전통윤리학이 지닌 인식론·방법론의 한계를 극복하기 위해 떠오른 급진적 대안으로 생태주의 ― 심층생태주의, 사회생태주의 ― 와 함께 오늘날 인류가 직면한 인구문제, 자원고갈, 환경오염 문제를 해결하는데 적합한 이론 및 실천운동으로 평가된다. 본문에서는 에코페미니즘의 이론적 배경을 중심으로 2007 개정 도덕 교과서에서 다루는 낙태와 재생산보조기술을 중심으로 한 생명공학 등의 생명윤리 문제, 그리고 자연자원에 대한 고갈 및 환경위기를 (...) 다루는 환경·생태윤리 문제, 부족한 식량문제를 해결하기 위한 에코페미니즘의 유효성과 필요성 및 한계에 대하여 논하고 있다. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 10.2 (2005) 101-135 [Access article in PDF] Truth, Knowledge and the Wild World Jim Cheney One ought not to put too much stock in the word 'philosophy'.... [T]here are alternative ways of intelligently engaging the world. To construe one's thinking in terms of belief is characteristic of a particular kind of world view and it remains to be seen whether those who share an indigenous (...) world view conceive of experience in such an overtly intellectualized manner. Leroy N. Meyer and Tony Ramirez (1996, 104)1 Wilderness treats me like a human being. Tom Birch2As Holmes Rolston III has said, "A principal characteristic of human life is that it develops into biography. In that sense, humans do not want their values in nature, any more than they want other goods in life, to come seriatim, like beads on a string.... Humans want a storied residence in nature where the passage of time integrates past, present, and future in a meaningful career" (Rolston 1988, 351). This is what I had hoped for: a narrative of storied residence in Midwest prairie, lake, and river country, and in the mountains and deserts of Idaho, with the history of the development of an environmental ethic (or ethos) left largely implicit within that larger narrative, leaving readers to reflect as they may on the philosophical dimensions of the journey. To leave traditional philosophical [End Page 101] modes of expression completely behind proved impossible (for now), but it has been for me a worthwhile exercise to locate my reflections on "truth, knowledge, and the wild world" in something of a narrative form. It is the lakes and rivers, prairies, mountains, and deserts that have remained implicit. They have cast their spell, however, on any attempt to impose cultural order on the relationship between truth, knowledge, and the wild world. I Looking back on it, it seems that my entire philosophical career has been implicated—in one way or another, directly and indirectly—in these two questions: "How important is truth to knowledge and epistemology?" and "What is the role of natural environments in the production of knowledge?" Furthest back, at the very origin of my philosophical life, reflections on philosophical knowledge were inevitably posed and thought about in natural environments, particularly in my meditations as I drifted in the early morning mist on the St. Croix River and several Minnesota lakes, especially Cedar Lake. Even now, when I am trying to make my way to a new understanding of some philosophical issue, I walk along the shores of Lake Michigan and the Milwaukee River, or sit by rivers and lakes in Idaho, a place that became my second home after meeting my partner, Fran. Northern White Cedars stand in our yard, front and back; Western Red Cedar holds our house in its embrace.There is no question in my mind that natural environments are the deepest sources of whatever philosophical understandings I may have come to. In terms of formal studies, however, the question of the role of natural environments in the production of knowledge did not emerge for me until, well into my teaching career, I discovered the newly-emerging field of environmental ethics. It was at that point that the deepest wellspring of my philosophy and my life came together with my professional philosophical interests—in an uneasy balance. Until that time, as I think of it now, my philosophical track through the curious environment of the academy, however well it prepared me to think about central issues in environmental ethics, was mostly marked by a fascination with glittering baubles and gemstones and did not truly touch the soil, water, and atmosphere of my life.Questions of truth, knowledge, and epistemology took center stage from the beginning of my formal philosophical studies. As an undergraduate [End Page 102] at Berkeley, Thompson Clarke introduced me (in three courses) to the skeptical implications of Ordinary Language Philosophy that had escaped the attention of J. L. Austin and others. This baptism into the rigors of skeptical philosophy left me pretty much convinced, as my partner and... (shrink)

Ecofeminism, a new vein in feminist theory, critiques the ontology of domination, whereby living beings are reduced to the status of objects, which diminishes their moral significance, enabling their exploitation, abuse, and destruction. This article explores the possibility of an ecofeminist literary and cultural practice, whereby the text is not reduced to an "it" but rather recognized as a "thou," and where new modes of relationship-dialogue, conversation, and meditative attentiveness-are developed.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 7.1 (2002) 24-38 [Access article in PDF] Arne Naess, Val Plumwood, and Deep Ecological SubjectivityA Contribution to the "Deep Ecology-ecofeminism Debate" Christian Diehm Karen Warren's recent essay, "Ecofeminist Philosophy and Deep Ecology," begins by noting that the philosophical positions found under the heading "deep ecology" are anything but monolithic. This point, which has been overlooked by deep ecologists as often as by others, is crucial (...) for those who are interested in the "deep ecology-ecofeminism debate," for just as one must specify which of the ecofeminisms are in question, so too one must be clear about which of the deep ecologies is being debated, if one is to make one's way through the complex relationships between them. In the course of her article, Warren recounts with approval Val Plumwood's "Nature, Self and Gender: Feminism, Environmental Philosophy, and the Critique of Rationalism," an essay which locates, discusses, and critiques three versions of the "self" that various deep ecologists offer. In light of Plumwood's comments, Warren argues that the work of Arne Naess differs significantly from other deep ecologists such that "Naess' deep ecology position is or could be compatible with ecofeminism" (Warren 1999, 255). [End Page 24]In this essay, I propose to continue the analysis offered by Warren by examining how Naess might respond individually to the objections Plumwood voices. This will be done by looking closely at Naess's articulation of what he refers to as the "ultimate premises" of his view, premises that are not necessarily aspects of deep ecology per se, but of his own ecophilosophy, "Ecosophy 'T'." 1 I will argue that even though Naess may not be subject to Plumwood's most immediate criticisms, her work exposes the problematic tendency of his philosophy of identification to stress sameness in relations with others. I will conclude by suggesting a critical revision of the notion of identification that would allow one to retain key features of Naess's view—most notably his gestaltist understanding of the "self" or "subject" and his emphasis on "Self-realization" as an ultimate norm—while responding to the problems that Plumwood's work exposes. The Self as Transpersonal One of the three senses of self specified by Plumwood is the "transpersonal" self. Her discussion of the transpersonal self focuses on the work of Warwick Fox who, in his Toward a Transpersonal Ecology, describes three "varieties of identification": personal, ontological, and cosmological. 2 Fox favors the latter two because they are less local than personal identification, and this is due to the fact that they are not rooted in the immediate reality in which one moves, but rather within broader, more encompassing views, and thus are said to be "impartial" (Fox 1995, 256). As such, it is claimed that these trans-personal forms of identification escape the problem that accompanies personal identification, which is that, qua personal, it is necessarily biased in favor of those with whom one has personal contact, and thus seems to "have far more to do with the cause of possessiveness, greed, exploitation, war, and ecological destruction than with the solution to these seemingly intractable problems" (262). But this is not meant to imply an outright rejection of personal identification, and Fox cites as proof of this Naess's approval of the "felt nearness" of others as a principle for resolving conflicts. Fox's point is to show that trans-personal identification "proceeds from a sense of the cosmos... and works inward to each particular individual's sense of commonality with other entities" (258), but that within this framework personal identification remains important as "an inescapable aspect of living and... plays a fundamental role in human development" (266-7).Plumwood's critique of this view is that the privileging of the transpersonal [End Page 25] over the personal repeats a patriarchal gesture of the exclusion of a "corrupting and self-interested" particularity in favor of an impersonal and abstract universality (Plumwood 1991, 15). And, ultimately, such a position "cannot allow for the deep and highly... (shrink)

Let us begin with a fundamental realization: No amount of thinking and no amount of public policy have brought us any closer to understanding and solving the problem of crime. The more we have reacted to crime, the farther we have removed ourselves from any understanding and any reduction of the problem. In recent years, we have floundered desperately in reformulating the law, punishing the offender, and quantifying our knowledge. Yet this country remains one of the most crime‐ridden nations. In (...) spite of all its wealth, economic development, and scientific advances, this country has one of the worst crime records in the world.With such realization, we return once again—as if starting anew—to the subject of crime, a subject that remains one of our most critical indicators of the state of our personal and collective being. If what is to be said seems outrageous and heretical, it is only because it is necessarily outside the conventional wisdom both of our understanding of the problem and of our attempt to solve it. (shrink)