This article discusses the encounter between virtue ethics and environmental ethics and the ways in which environmental virtue ethics confronts nonhuman axiology and the controversial theme of moral anthropocentrism. It provides a reasoned review of the relevant literature and a historical–conceptual rendition of how environmental and virtue ethics came to converge as well as the ways in which they diverge. It explains that contrary to important worries voiced by some non-anthropocentric environmental ethicists, environmental virtue ethics enables and requires a rich (...) and nuanced engagement with nonhuman values of all sorts—intrinsic as well as extrinsic, moral as well as nonmoral, anthropocentric as well as non-anthropocentric—and neither presupposes nor implies moral anthropocentrism in its normativity. Finally, the article considers the fortunes of, and some challenges for, environmental virtue ethics in its application to the ethics of climate change, an increasingly central topic in environmental ethics. This article proceeds as follows: the first section introduces virtue ethics; the second section looks at axiological and normative themes in environmental ethics; the third section discusses environmental virtue ethics; and the fourth section considers its application to climate change. The fifth section draws some conclusions. (shrink)

This paper explores early Australasian philosophy in some detail. Two approaches have dominated Western philosophy in Australia: idealism and materialism. Idealism was prevalent between the 1880s and the 1930s, but dissipated thereafter. Idealism in Australia often reflected Kantian themes, but it also reflected the revival of interest in Hegel through the work of ‘absolute idealists’ such as T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, and Henry Jones. A number of the early New Zealand philosophers were also educated in the idealist tradition (...) and were influential in their communities, but produced relatively little. In Australia, materialism gained prominence through the work of John Anderson, who arrived in Australia in 1927, and continues to be influential. John Anderson had been a student of Henry Jones, who might therefore be said to have influenced both main strands of Australian philosophical thought. (shrink)

In Zhuangzi’s philosophy, the intellectual virtues of humility and open-mindedness are best understood in the context of his epistemic perspectivism. The method, which urges knowers to pursue various and diverse points of view and incorporate them into a broad perspective, is justified by a second-order realization that all perspectives are partial and limited. This in turn urges a meta-virtue of humility, defined as a disposition in which knowers become aware of their epistemic limitations. Humility, consequently, encourages the virtue of open-mindedness, (...) defined as the willingness and ability to surpass existing personal perspectives. Zhuangzi endorses the method and its attendant virtues to achieve what he calls great knowing. I propose that we gain a clearer sense of the role of humility and open-mindedness by also considering Zhuangzi’s treatment of the vices, which are addressed with as much frequency as the virtues. Zhuangzi’s treatment of arrogance and closed-mindedness reveals how humility and open-mindedness operate as corrective virtues, in the sense that they compensate for evident and familiar deficiencies in the epistemic practices of knowers in Zhuangzi’s time. Humility and open-mindedness enable knowers to acquire new points of view that reliably produce knowledge. (shrink)

This paper identifies the duty to care for the public interest in the commonly valued ecological goods of the Gulf as one of the basic essential features of the moral significance of the federal policies that govern the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. I argue that the Clean Water Act and the Oil Protection Act implicitly provide for a communitarian interpretation of the public and ecological goods of this event that warrants a virtue ethical account of normativity that is ultimately expressed (...) in the duty to care, a duty that is one of the central moral principles that underlies the punitive damages doctrine. (shrink)