Feminist philosophy has taken too long to engage seriously with aesthetics and has been even slower in confronting natural beauty in particular. There are various possible reasons for this neglect, including the relative youth of feminist aesthetics, the possibility that feminist philosophy is not relevant to nature aesthetics, the claim that natural beauty is not a serious topic, hesitation among feminists to perpetuate women's associations with beauty and nature, and that the neglect may be merely apparent. Discussing each of these (...) possibilities affords a better understanding of, but none justify the neglect of natural beauty in feminist aesthetics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 7.2 (2002) 12-26 [Access article in PDF] Karen Warren's Ecofeminism Trish Glazebrook Karen Warren's Ecofeminism Ecofeminism has conceptual beginnings in the French tradition of feminist theory. In 1952, Simone de Beauvoir pointed out that in the logic of patriarchy, both women and nature appear as other (de Beauvoir 1952, 114). In 1974, Luce Irigaray diagnosed philosophically a phallic logic of the Same that precludes representation (...) of woman's alterity, so that it subjects women to man's domination (Irigaray 1974). In the same year, Françoise d'Eaubonne coined the term, "l'eco-féminisme," to point to the necessity for women to bring about ecological revolution, and used the slogan, "Feminism or death [Le féminisme ou la mort]" (d'Eaubonne 1974, 221), to argue that the phallic order is the source of a double threat to human being: overpopulation, and the depletion of resources. Exploitation of female reproductive power has caused an excess of births, and hence overpopulation; while an excess of production has exploited natural resources to the point of their destruction. Though "feminism or death" was a battle cry, it was also a warning that human being cannot survive patriarchy's ecological consequences.In North America, the alliance between feminism and ecology likewise began in 1974, when Sandra Marburg and Lisa Watson hosted a conference at Berkeley entitled "Women and the Environment." The following [End Page 12] year, Rosemary Radford Ruether pointed out that "Women must see that there can be no liberation for them and no solution to ecologi- cal crisis within a society whose fundamental model of relationships continues to be one of domination" (Ruether 1975, 204). She called for a unification of feminist and ecological interests in the vision of a society transformed from values of possession, conquest, and accumulation to reciprocity, harmony, and mutual interdependence. In 1991, Karen Warren edited an issue of Hypatia devoted entirely to ecofeminism, which was later expanded and republished under the title Ecological Feminist Philosophies. This anthology was ground-breaking, because in it Warren consolidated a collection of diverse voices, not into an ecofeminist platform as such, but into a vision of the lay of the land, as it were, with respect to ecofeminism.Although Warren has been writing as an ecofeminist since 1987, it was not until 2000 that she published a sustained treatment in her own voice: Ecofeminist Philosophy: A Western Perspective on What It Is and Why It Matters. This book is the culmination of her thinking for over a decade. Her perspective, very much in the spirit of d' Eaubonne and Ruether, is as political, social, and practical as it is philosophical, and constitutes a research program that extends beyond the walls of the Academy in its challenge to the social order. The book can be used to answer some of the criticisms that ecofeminism has received. I will use Warren's work to address in particular the validity of the foundational ecofeminist assumption that environmental issues are feminist issues; the charge against feminism in general that it reflects only the needs of white, middle-class, Western women; the claim, especially in reference to spirituality, that ecofeminism reinscribes gender essentialism; and the challenge ecofeminism offers to traditional philosophy, including how such an inclusivist movement can respond to the history of philosophy without simply reproducing its exclusionary politics. Feminism and Environmentalism Ecofeminists insist that feminism and environmentalism are inherently connected, but it is not always clear what the nature of that connection is. In general, ecofeminist work applies feminist analyses to environmental issues, so the claim is not so much that feminist worries are environmentally grounded, as that environmental issues warrant feminist analysis. Carolyn Merchant's (1980) analysis of the history of science, for example, [End Page 13] uncovers misogyny at the heart of the modern conquest of nature. Yet the ideology of Man's (sic) dominion over nature is not new with Bacon, and is evident in Christian teachings concerning the expulsion from the Garden of Eden at Genesis 3,17-24. Adam is sent from the garden with instructions to till the ground and... (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)

Based on a turn to the rational human subject in Descartes, Kant and Feuerbach, this paper critically examines four efforts at shaping sustainability discourse: the definition of sustainability in Our common future; stewardship Christian theology; forms of partisan justice; and GDP as measure of economic growth. These efforts made certain advances, but because they share the underlying anthropocentric bias of Western philosophy, they fail to step out of the current sustainability paradigm. The paper closes with two suggestions of how to (...) de-centre the human subject and to build a network-view of all species. (shrink)

Some feminists and animal advocates defend what I call the Linked Oppressions Thesis, according to which the oppression of women and the oppression of animals are linked causally, materially, normatively, and/or conceptually. Alasdair Cochrane offers objections to several versions of the Linked Oppressions Thesis and concludes that the Thesis should be rejected in all its forms. In this paper I defend the Thesis against Cochrane's objections as well as objections leveled by Beth Dixon, and argue that the failure of these (...) objections illuminates the idea of linked oppressions as well as misunderstandings of the Linked Oppressions Thesis, and may provide guidance to philosophers theorizing animal rights from a feminist perspective. (shrink)

Ecofeminism is theoretically diverse, as drawn from various ecofeminists who understand women-nature relationships differently. The common ground, however, is that they all draw on the concept of gender to understand this close relationship. This paper explores the ecofeminist view behind the mobilization of women for conservation, a subsequent reimagining of age-old stork-related myths and a reinterpretation of symbols of intangible culture, and an attempt at confronting the erstwhile anthropocentric nature of conservation. The qualitative case study focuses on the Hargila Army, (...) a community-based conservation initiative in Dadara, Assam, primarily led by women, aiming to conserve the greater adjutant stork, locally known as Hargila. The rural women’s lived experiences with the stork and its habitat – trees and wetlands – transform the ecological and wildlife issue into a feminist one. There are varied ways embedded in tradition and culture through which they have been carrying out stork conservation. The research is significant for it addresses a research gap on women’s environmentalism in the context of Assam, which has been neglected in literature reviewed for the purpose. It also empirically contributes to the ongoing dialogue on ecofeminism in action. (shrink)