With the turning of wilderness areas into wildlife parks and the returning of developed areas of land to the forces of nature, intermediate hybrid realms surface in which wild and managed nature become increasingly entangled. A partitioning of environmental philosophy into ecoethics and animal welfare ethics leaves these mixed territories relatively uncharted—the first dealing with wild (animals), the second with the welfare of captive or domestic animals. In this article, we explore an environmental philosophy that considers explicitly these mixed situations. (...) We examine a recent Dutch policy of introducing domesticated and semi-wild large herbivores in newly developed nature areas. Larger issues are at stake, such as the intertwinement of nature and culture, the dynamic character of de-domestication processes, and the relation between concepts of authenticity and the wild. We sketch a pluralistic, dynamic, and pragmatic environmental philosophy that is capable of dealing with the complicated ethicalproblems concerning creatures and land caught between domestication and the wild. (shrink)

Max Hallman has put forward an interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophy according to which Nietzsche is a prototypical deep ecologist. In reply, I dispute Hallman’s main interpretive claim as well as its ethical and exegetical corollaries. I hold that Nietzsche is not a “biospheric egalitarian,” but rather an aristocratically individualistic “high humanist.” A consistently naturalistic transcendentalist, Nietzsche does submit a critique of modernity’s Christian-inflected anthropocentrism (pace Hallman), and yet—in his later work—he endorses exploitation in the quest for nobility (contra Hallman). I (...) conclude thatecophilosophers need to exercise hermeneutical caution in any attempt to appropriate Nietzsche for environmentally ethical designs, lest they illegitimately ventriloquize their own moral voices into an authoritative but alien mouthpiece. (shrink)

I argue that Nietzsche’s thinking, contrary to the interpretation of Martin Heidegger, is compatible with an ecologically oriented, environmentally concemed philosophizing. In support of this contention, I show that Nietzsche’s critique of traditional Western thinking closely parallels the critique of this tradition by environmentalist writers such as Lynn White, Ir. I also show that one of the principal thrusts of Nietzsche’s own philosophizing consists of the attempt to overcome the kind of thinking that has provided a theoretical foundation for the (...) technological control and exploitation of the natural world. Finally, I show that Nietzsche’s notion of the will to power, at least in several of its fonnulations, has certain affinities to the ecosystem approach of modem ecologists. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a systematic inquiry into the significance of Nietzsche’s philosophy to environmental ethics. Nietzsche’s philosophy of nature is, I believe, relevant today because it makes explicit a fundamental ambiguity that is also characteristic of our current understanding of nature. I show how the current debate between traditional environmental ethics and postmodern environmental philosophycan be interpreted as a symptom of this ambiguity. I argue that, in light of Nietzsche’s critique of morality, environmental ethics is a highly paradoxical (...) project. According to Nietzsche, each moral interpretation of nature implies a conceptual seizure of power over nature. On the other hand, Nietzsche argues, the concept of nature is indispensable in ethics because we have to interpret nature in order to have a meaningful relation with reality. I show that awareness of this paradox opens a way for a form of respect for nature as radical otherness. (shrink)

Against the background of a growing interest in Nietzsche’s moral philosophy, several articles have appeared in these pages in recent years dealing with his relation to environmental ethics. While there is much here that is helpful, these essays still fail to do full justice to Nietzsche’s understanding of optimal human relations to the natural world. The context of his life helps to highlight some ecological aspects to his thinking that tend to be overlooked. His ideas about the Overhuman in Thus (...) Spoke Zarathustra undermine the traditional anthropocentric attitude toward nature. By understanding Nietzsche’s idea of will to power primarily as interpretation, following his suggestion that we engage the world as a play of interpretive forces, and paying attention to the relevant parallels with Chinese Daoism and Mahaμyaμna Buddhism, it is clear that Nietzsche takes a salutary step beyond biocentrism to a Dionysian celebration of existence as a whole. (shrink)

This is a forward for the reissue of Moles's book, Nietzsche's Philosophy of Nature and Cosmology. I first summarize the main arguments in the book and then explain why contemporary readers should be very interested in engaging with this book.