Environmental philosophy

Environmental philosophy is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with the natural environment and humans' place within it.[1] It asks crucial questions about human environmental relations such as "What do we mean when we talk about nature?" "What is the value of the natural, that is non-human environment to us, or in itself?" "How should we respond to environmental challenges such as environmental degradation, pollution and climate change?" "How can we best understand the relationship between the natural world and human technology and development?" and "What is our place in the natural world?" As such, it uniquely positions itself as a field set to deal with the challenges of the 21st Century. Environmental philosophy includes environmental ethics, environmental aesthetics, ecofeminism, environmental hermeneutics, and environmental theology.[2] Some of the main areas of interest for environmental philosophers are:

Marco Casagrande Sandworm, Beaufort04 Triennial of Contemporary Art, Wenduine, Belgium 2012

Contemporary issues

Modern issues within environmental philosophy include but are not restricted to the concerns of environmental activism as well as the questions raised by environmental science and technology. These include issues related to the depletion of finite resources and other harmful and permanent effects brought on to the environment by humans, as well as the ethical and practical problems raised by philosophies and practices of environmental conservation, restoration, and policy in general.[3] At the same time environmental philosophy deals with the value human beings attach to different kinds of environmental experience, particularly how experiences in or close to non-human environments contrast with urban or industrialized experiences, and how this varies across cultures.

Modern history

Environmental Philosophy re-emerged as a major social movement in the 1970s. The movement was an attempt to connect with humanity's sense of alienation from nature in a continuing fashion throughout history.[4] This was very closely related to the development at the same time of ecofeminism, an intersecting discipline. Since then its areas of concern have expanded significantly.

The field is today characterized by a notable diversity of stylistic, philosophical and cultural approaches to human environmental relationships, from personal and poetic reflections on environmental experience and arguments for panpsychism to Malthusian applications of game theory or the question of how to put an economic value on nature's services. A major debate arose in the 1970s and 80s was that of whether nature has intrinsic value in itself independent of human values or whether its value is merely instrumental, with ecocentric or deep ecology approaches emerging on the one hand versus consequentialist or pragmatist anthropocentric approaches on the other.[5]

Another debate that arose at this time was the debate over whether there really is such a thing as wilderness or not, or whether it is merely a cultural construct with colonialist implications. Since then, readings of environmental history and discourse have become more critical and refined. In this ongoing debate, a diversity of dissenting voices have emerged from different cultures across the globe questioning the dominance of Western assumptions, helping to transform the field.[6]

In recent decades, there has been a significant challenge to deep ecology and the concepts of nature that underlie it, some arguing that there is not really such a thing as nature at all beyond some self-contradictory and even politically dubious constructions of an ideal other that ignore the real human-environmental interactions that shape our world and lives.[7] This has been alternately dubbed the postmodern, constructivist, and most recently post-naturalistic turn in environmental philosophy. Environmental aesthetics, design and restoration have emerged as important intersecting disciplines that keep shifting the boundaries of environmental thought, as have the science of climate change and biodiversity and the ethical, political and epistemological questions they raise. Today, environmental philosophy is a burgeoning and increasingly relevant field.

Deep ecology movement

Main article: Deep ecology

In 1984, George Sessions and Arne Naess articulated the principles of the new Deep Ecology Movement.[8] These basic principles are:

See also

References

Notes

  1. 1 2 Belshaw, Christopher (2001). Environmental Philosophy. Chesham: Acumen. ISBN 1-902683-21-8.
  2. ↑ "International Association of Environmental Philosophy". Retrieved 2008-07-30.
  3. ↑ Sarkar, 2012. "Environmental philosophy: from theory to practice," Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, West Sussex.
  4. ↑ Weston, 1999. "An Invitation to Environmental Philosophy," Oxford University Press, New York, New York.
  5. ↑ Benson, 2000.
  6. ↑ Callicott & Nelson, 1998.
  7. ↑ Vogel, 1999; Keulartz, 1999.
  8. ↑ Drengson, Inoue, 1995. "The Deep Ecology Movement," North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California.

Further reading

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