Volume 8, Issue 2, Fall/Winter 2001
Environmental Virtue Ethics
Donald N. Blakeley
Pages 37-49
Neo-Confucian Cosmology, Virtue Ethics, and Environmental Philosophy
This paper explores the extent to which the Confucian concept of ren (humaneness) has application in ways that are comparable to
contemporary versions of environmental virtue ethics. I argue that the accounts of self-cultivation that are developed in major texts of the Confucian tradition have important direct implications for environmental thinking that even the Neo-Confucians do not seriously entertain.