Environmental Philosophy

Volume 9, Issue 1, Spring 2012

Jacob Metcalf, Thom van Dooren
Pages v-xiv

Editorial Preface

The collection of essays in this special issue of Environmental Philosophy addresses the role that temporality, or lived time, should have in environmental philosophy, and especially ethics. The role of time in environmental ethics has largely been restricted to an empty container for human agency to do good or ill. By understanding time as material, produced, constructed, maintained, lived, multiple, and a more-than-human concern, the authors in this collection are able to ask which times are liveable for humans and non-humans alike. Once the specificities of lived time are accounted for, it becomes clear that not all temporalities are identical and synchronous, and that environmental philosophy must attend to the ruptures in ecological time.