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1. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 14 > Issue: 4

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2. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 14 > Issue: 4
Peter Quigley

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I argue that with the advent of poststructuralism, traditional theories of representation, truth, and resistance have been seriously brought into question. References to the “natural” and the “wild” cannot escape the poststructural attack against foundational concepts and the constituting character of human-centered language. I explore the ways in which environmental movements and literary expression have tended to posit pre-ideological essences, thereby replicating patterns of power and authority. I also point to how environmentalism might be reshaped in light of poststructuralism to challenge power without reference to authority.
3. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 14 > Issue: 4
Robert Frodeman

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I examine the close relationship between radical environmentalism and postmodernism. I argue that there is an incoherence within most postmodernist thought, born of an unwillingness or incapacity to distinguish between claims true from an ontological or epistemological perspective and those appropriate to the exigencies of political life. The failure to distinguish which differences make a difference not only vitiates postmodernist thought, but also runs up against some of the fundamental assumptions of radical environmentalism.

discussion papers

4. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 14 > Issue: 4
Anthony Weston

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Contemporary nonanthropocentic environmental ethics is profoundly shaped by the very anthropocentrism that it tries to transcend. New values only slowly struggle free of old contexts. Recognizing this struggle, however, opens a space for—indeed, necessitates—alternative models for contemporary environmental ethics. Rather than trying to unify or fine-tune our theories, we require more pluralistic andexploratory methods. We cannot reach theoretical finality; we can only co-evolve an ethic with transformed practices.
5. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 14 > Issue: 4
Christopher Manes

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A viable environmental ethics must confront “the silence of nature”—the fact that in our culture only humans have status as speaking subjects. Deep ecology has attempted to do so by challenging the idiom of humanism that has silenced the natural world. This approach has been criticized by those who wish to rescue the discourse of reason in environmental ethics. I give a genealogy of nature’s silence to show how various motifs of medieval and Renaissance origins have worked together historically to create the fiction of “Man,” a character portrayed as sole subject, speaker, and telos of the world. I conclude that the discourse of reason, as a guide to social practice, is implicated in this fiction and, therefore, cannot break the silence of nature. Instead, environmental ethics must learn a language that leaps away from the motifs of humanism, perhaps by drawing on the discourse of ontological humility found in primal cultures, postmodern philosophy, and medieval contemplative tradition.
6. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 14 > Issue: 4
Christine J. Cuomo

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Karen Warren has argued that environmental ethics must be feminist and that feminist ethics must be ecological. Hence, she endorses ecofeminism as an environmental ethic with power and promise. Recent ecofeminist theory, however, is not as powerful as one might hope. In fact, I argue, much of this theory is based on values that are potentially damaging to moral agents, and that are not in accord withfeminist goals. My intent is not to dismantle ecofeminism, but to analyze and clarify some of the philosophical problems with recent ecofeminist work and to point out a more promising direction for ecofeminist ethics.

book reviews

7. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 14 > Issue: 4
Deborah Slicer

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8. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 14 > Issue: 4
Pete A. Y. Gunter

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9. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 14 > Issue: 4
Dolores LaChapelle

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10. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 14 > Issue: 4
Ann S. Causey

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11. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 14 > Issue: 4
Luís S. Barreto

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12. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 14 > Issue: 4
David Johns

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13. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 14 > Issue: 4

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index

14. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 14 > Issue: 4

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referees

15. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 14 > Issue: 4

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16. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 14 > Issue: 3

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17. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 14 > Issue: 3
Ariel Salleh

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I discuss conceptual confusions shared by deep ecologists over such questions as gender, essentialism, normative dualism, and eco-centrism. I conclude that deep ecologists have failed to grasp both the epistemological challenge offered by ecofeminism and the practical labor involved in bringing about social change. While convergencies between deep ecology and ecofeminism promise to be fruitful, these are celebrated in false consciousness, unless remedial work is done
18. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 14 > Issue: 3
John Martin Gillroy

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In this essay, I argue that environmental risk is a strategic situation that places the individual citizen in the position of an imprisoned rider who is being exploited without his or her knowledge by the preferences of others. I contend that what is at stake in policy decisions regarding environmental risk is not numerical probabilities or consistent, complete, transitive preferences for individual welfare, but rather respect for the human agency of the individual. Human agency is a prerequisite to one’s utility function and is threatened and exploited in the strategic situation that produces the imprisoned rider. This problem is created by the policy maker’s assumption that his or her task is to assume rational preferences and aggregate them. The guidelines for evaluation and justification of policy should move beyondwelfare preferences and involve an active state protecting human agency and empowering the imprisoned rider. Only in this way can we free all citizens (a priori) from fear of exploitation by those who would impose collective and irreversible risk on each of them in violation of their unconditional right to their own agency.

discussion papers

19. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 14 > Issue: 3
Roger Paden

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In their attempt to develop a nonanthropocentric ethic, many biocentric philosophers have been content to argue for the expansion of the moral community to include natural entities. In doing so, they have implicitly accepted the idea that the conceptions of moral duties developed by anthropocentric philosophers to describe the moral relationships that hold between humans can be directly applied to thehuman/nature relationship. To make this expansion plausible, they have had to argue that natural entities have traits that are similar to the morally relevant traits of human beings, e.g., interests, the capacity to experience pleasure and pain, or “purpose.” Not only are these arguments often unconvincing, but it seems implausible that the same moral concepts and principles that govern human relationshipsalso should govern human/nonhuman relationships. Many nonanthropocentric ethics, I argue, are (mistakenly) anthropomorphic. They anthropomorphize nature and they anthropomorphize our relationship with nature. To go beyond this relationship I recommend the development of a nonanthropomorphic biocentric ethic. Such an ethic requires us to understand better what nature is and what role nature plays in moral experience and action. In such an ethic, I argue, nature is viewed as a transcendent “thing” with a transcendental moral significance.
20. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 14 > Issue: 3
Robert W. Loftin

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Scientists often collect (kill) organisms in pursuit of human knowledge. When is such killing morally permissible? I explore this question with particular reference to ornithology and against the background of animal liberation ethics and a land ethic, especially Mary Anne Warren’s account that finds the two ethics complementary. I argue that the ethical theories offered provide insufficient guidance. As a step toward the resolution of this serious problem, I offer a set of criteria to determine when collecting is morally permissible.