Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association

Volume 79, 2005

Social Justice

"Greening" James L. Marsh's "Philosophy after Catonsville"

American Catholic Philosophical Association President James Marsh is calling for a “Philosophy after Catonsville.” This paper begins by examining Catonsville as specifically American, Catholic, and philosophical. “Wildness” is then presented as it has emerged recently as a category in environmental philosophy and is shown to necessitate a social ecology for Catonsville. Finally, Marsh’s problematic relationship to ecology will be presented and resolved by discussing the necessary entailment of social ecology by his trilogy of Post-Cartesian Meditations, Critique, Action, and Liberation, and Process, Praxis, and Transcendence. By the end of this paper, wildness will have established a crucial connection between Catonsville, Marsh’s “greened” critical theory, and social ecology as a necessary condition for the possibility of a “Philosophy after Catonsville.”