MA Environmental Ethics and Sustainability

An important branch of environmental philosophy, environmental ethics considers the actual, possible and appropriate ethical relationships between humanity and non-human nature. Emerging during the early 1970s the field has come to exert a significant influence over a large number of human science disciplines and political debates in relation to conservation and sustainability. Considering questions such as our obligation to future generations, to other species and even non-living aspects of the natural world such as landscape or geology, the course reviews key developments in the field and explores the most significant contributions from key figures such as Holmes Rolston, William Cronon, J Baird Callicot and Anthony Weston. A particular emphasis of the course will be the implication of different understandings of environmental value for the wider project of sustainability. Modules will consider variously:

  • The early development of environmental ethics.
  • Aldo Leopold and 'The Land Ethic'
  • Environmental ethics and politics: deep ecology, eco-feminism and social ecology
  • Environmental ethics and public policy
  • Environmental ethics, conservation and wilderness values
  • Traditional Western moral philosophy and environmental value
  • Animal rights
  • Environmental ethics and the law
  • Environmental value and sustainable development

Indicative Reading

  • Aristotle. Politics, trans. E. Barker, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948.
  • Anker, P. and Witoszek, N. 1998. 'The Dream of the Biocentric Community and the Structure of Utopias', Worldviews 2: 239-56.
  • Attfield, R. 1987. A Theory of Value and Obligation, London: Croom Helm.
  • -----. 1998. 'Saving Nature, Feeding People, and Ethics', Environmental Values 7: 291-304.
  • Bentham, J. 1789. Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1948.
  • Birch, T. 1990 'The Incarceration of Wilderness: Wilderness Areas as Prisons', Environmental Ethics 12:3-26.
  • Bookchin, M. 1980. Toward an Ecological Society, Montreal: Black Rose Books.
  • -----. 1987. 'Social Ecology Versus Deep Ecology', Green Perspectives: Newsletter of the Green Program Project, numbers 4, 5 reprinted in Witoszek and Brennan 1999, pp. 281-301.
  • -----. 1990. The Philosophy of Social Ecology, Montreal: Black Rose Books.
  • Brennan, A. 1984. 'The Moral Standing of Natural Objects', Environmental Ethics 6: 35-56
  • -----. 1988. Thinking About Nature, London Routledge.
  • -----. 1995. 'Ethics, Ecology and Economics', Biodiversity and Conservation 4: 798-811.
  • -----. 1998a. 'Poverty, Puritanism and Environmental Conflict', Environmental Values 7: 305-31.
  • -----. 1998b. 'Bioregionalism -- a Misplaced Project?', Worldviews 2: 215-37.
  • -----. 1999 'Comment: Pluralism and Deep Ecology', in Witoszek and Brennan 1999
  • Callicott, J. B. 1980. 'Animal Liberation, A Triangular Affair', reprinted in Callicott 1989, pp. 15-38.
  • -----. 1985. 'Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics', reprinted in Callicott 1989, pp. 157-74.
  • -----. 1988. 'Animal liberation and Environmental Ethics: Back Together Again', reprinted in Callicott 1989, pp. 49-59.
  • -----. 1989. In Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays in Environmental Philosophy, Albany: SUNY Press.
  • -----. 1999. Beyond the Land Ethic: More Essays in Environmental Philosophy, Albany: SUNY Press.
  • Carson, R. 1963. Silent Spring, London: Hamish Hamilton.
  • Cheney, J. 1989. 'Postmodern Environmental Ethics: Ethics as Bioregional Narrative', Environmental Ethics 11: 117-34.
  • Clark, S. R. L. 1977. The Moral Status of Animals, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Cohen, M. P. 1984. The Pathless Way: John Muir and American Wilderness, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
  • Collins, S. 1974. A Different Heaven and Earth, Valley Forge: Judson Press.
  • Crisp, R. 1998. 'Animal Liberation is not an Environmental Ethic: A Response to Dale Jamieson', Environmental Values 7: 476-8.
  • d'Eaubonne , F. 1974. Le Feminisme ou la Mort, Paris: P. Horay
  • Devall and Sessions 1985. Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered, Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith.
  • de Shalit, A. 1994. Why Does Posterity Matter? London: Routledge.
  • -----. 1996. 'Ruralism or Environmentalism?' Environmental Values 5: 47-58.
  • Diesendorf, M. and Hamilton, C. 1997. Human Ecology, Human Economy, St Leonards, NSW: Allen and Unwin.
  • Dobson, A. 1990. Green Political Thought, London: Harper Collins.
  • Dobson, A. (ed.) 1999 Fairness and Futurity: Essays on Environmental Sustainability and Social Justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  • Eckersley, R. 1992. Environmentalism and Political Theory, London: UCL Press.
  • Elliot, R. 1982. 'Faking Nature', Inquiry 25: 81-93.
  • -----. 1997. Faking Nature, London: Routledge.
  • Elliot, R. and Gare, A. (eds) 1983. Environmental Philosophy: A Collection of Readings, Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
  • Feinberg, J. 1974. 'The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations', in W. T. Blackstone (ed.), Philosophy and Environmental Crisis, Athens: University of Georgia Press, pp. 43-68.
  • Ferré, F. 1996. 'Persons in Nature: Toward an Applicable and Unified Environmental Ethics', Ethics and the Environment 1: 15-25.
  • Ferry, L. 1995. The New Ecological Order, translated C. Volk, Chicago: Chicago University Press.
  • Fox, W. 1984. 'Deep Ecology: A New Philosophy of Our Time?' The Ecologist 14: 194-200.
  • Green, K. 1994. 'Freud, Wollstonecraft and Eco-feminism', Environmental Ethics 16: 117-34.
  • Grosz, E. 1989. Sexual Subversions, London: Allen and Unwin.
  • Gruen, L. and Jamieson, D. (eds) 1994. Reflecting on Nature, New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Guha, R. 1989. 'Radical American Environmentalism and Wilderness Preservation: A Third World Critique', Environmental Ethics 11: 71-83.
  • -----. 1999. 'Radical American Environmentalism Revisited', in Witoszek and Brennan (eds.) 1999, pp. 473-9
  • Hayward, Tim, and O'Neill, John, (eds.) 1997 Justice, Property and the Environment: Social and Legal Perspectives, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Co., 1997.
  • Hettinger, N and Throop, B. 1999. 'Refocusing Ecocentrism', Environmental Ethics, 21: 3-21
  • Horkheiner, M. and Adorno, T. 1969. Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. Cumming, J., New York: Seabury Press 1972.
  • Hume, D. 1751. An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. T. L. Beauchamp, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
  • Jamieson, D. 1998. 'Animal Liberation is an Environmental Ethic', Environmental Values 7: 41-57.
  • Kant, I. 'Duties to Animals and Spirits', in Louis Infield trans., Lectures on Ethics, New York: Harper and Row, 1963.
  • Karliner, J. 1997 The Corporate Planet, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books
  • Katz, E. 1991. 'Restoration and Redesign: The Ethical Significance of Human Intervention in Nature', Restoration and Management Notes 9: 90-6.
  • -----. 1997. Nature as Subject, New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
  • Kheel, M. 1985. 'The Liberation of Nature: A Circular Affair', Environmental Ethics 7: 135-49
  • King, R. 2000. 'Environmental Ethics and the Built Environment', Environmental Ethics 22: 115-31
  • King, Y. 1989a. 'The Ecology of Feminism and the Feminism of Ecology', in J. Plant (ed.), Healing the Wounds, Philadelphia: New Society Publishers: 18-28.
  • King, Y. 1989b. 'Healing the Wounds: Feminism, Ecology, and Nature/Culture Dualism', in A. M. Jaggar and S. R. Bordo (eds.) Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconstruction of Being and Knowing, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, pp. 115-41.
  • Korten, D 1999 The Post-CorporateWorld, Hartford: Kumarian Press
  • Leopold, A. 1949. A Sand County Almanac, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Light, A. 1996. 'Callicott and Naess on Pluralism', Inquiry 39: 273-294.
  • -----. 2001. 'The Urban Blindspot in Environmental Ethics', Environmental Politics 10: 7-35.
  • Light, A. and Katz, E. 1996. Environmental Pragmatism, London: Routledge.
  • List, P. C. 1993. Radical Environmentalism, Belmont: Wadsworth.
  • Lo, Y. S. 1999. 'Natural and Artifactual: Restored Nature as Subject', Environmental Ethics 21: 247-66.
  • -----. 2001. 'The Land Ethic and Callicott's Ethical System (1980-2001): An Overview and Critique', Inquiry 44: 331-58.
  • Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J., and Behrens, W. W. 1972. The Limits to Growth, New York: New American Library.
  • Mill, J. S. 1874. 'Nature', in Three Essays on Religion, London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer.
  • Montaigne, M. de 1991. The Complete Essays, trans. M. A. Screech, Harmondworth: Penguin.
  • Mumford, L. 1934. Technics and Civilization, London: Secker and Warburg.
  • Mumford, L. 1961. The City in History, New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich
  • Næss, A. 1973. 'The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement', Inquiry 16, reprinted in Sessions 1995, pp. 151-5.
  • -----. 1989. Ecology, Community, Lifestyle, trans. and ed. D. Rothenberg, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Nash, R, (ed) 1990. American Environmentalism: Readings in Conservation History, New York: McGraw-Hill.
  • Norton, B. 1991. Toward Unity Among Environmentalists, New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Norton, B., Hutchins, M., Stevens, E. and Maple, T. L. (eds) 1995. Ethics on the Ark, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
  • O'Neill, J. 1992. 'The Varieties of Intrinsic Value', Monist 75: 119-137.
  • -----. 1993. Ecology, Policy and Politics, London: Routledge.
  • Ouderkirk, W. and Hill, J. (eds.) 2002. Land, Value, Community: Callicott and Environmental , Albany: State University of New York.
  • Palmer, C. forthcoming. 'Placing Animals in Urban Environmental Ethics'; to appear in Journal of Social Philosophy 2003.
  • Passmore, J. 1974. Man's Responsibility for Nature, London: Duckworth, 2nd ed., 1980.
  • Plumwood, V. 1993. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, London: Routledge.
  • -----. 1999. 'Comments: Self-Realization and Man Apart? The Reed-Næss Debate', in Witoszek and Brennan (eds.) 1999, pp. 206-10.
  • -----. 2002 Environmental Culture, London: Routledge
  • Porter, G. and Welsh Brown, J. 1991. Global Environmental Politics, Boulder: Westview Press.
  • Regan, T. 1983. The Case for Animal Rights, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
  • Regan, T. and Singer, P. (eds.) 1976. Animal Rights and Human Obligations, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
  • Rolston, H. 1975. 'Is There an Ecological Ethic?', Ethics 85: 93-109.
  • -----. 1989. Philosophy Gone Wild, New York: Prometheus Books.
  • -----. 1996. 'Feeding People versus Savng Nature?', in W. Aiken and H. LaFollette (eds.) World Hunger and Morality, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, pp. 248-67
  • Rousseau, J. J. 1782. Reveries of the Solitary Walker, trans. P. France, Penguin Books, 1979.
  • Routley, R. 1973. 'Is there a need for a new, an environmental ethic?' Proceedings of the 15th World congress of Philosophy, vol. 1 pp. 205-10, Sophia: Sophia Press (see also Sylvan, R.).
  • Routley, R. and Routley, V. 1980. 'Human Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics' in Mannison, D., McRobbie, M. A., and Routley, R. (eds.) Environmental Philosophy, Canberra: Australian National University, Research School of Social Sciences, pp. 96-189.
  • Sagoff, M. 1984. 'Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Bad Marriage, Quick Divorce', Osgoode Hall Law Journal 22:297-307.
  • -----. 1988. The Economy of the Earth, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Schmidtz, D. and Willott, E. 2002 Environmental Ethics: What Really Matters, What Really Works, New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Sessions, G. (ed) 1995. Deep Ecology for the 21st Century, Boston: Shambhala 1995.
  • Shrader-Frechette, K. 1984. Science Policy, Ethics and Economic Methodology, Dordrecht: D Reidel
  • -----. 1987. 'The real risks of risk-cost-benefit analysis', in P. T. Durbin (ed.), Technology and Responsibility, Dordrecht: D Reidel, pp. 343-57.
  • -----. 1996. 'Individualism, Holism, and Environmental Ethics', Ethics and the Environment 1: 55-69.
  • Singer, P. 1975. Animal Liberation, New York: Random House.
  • -----. 1993. Practical Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed.
  • Stone, C. D. 1972. 'Should Trees Have Standing?', Southern California Law Review 45:450-501 ; later published with a descriptive introduction as Should Trees Have Standing?, Los Angeles: Kaufmann, 1974, and reprinted in Schmidtz and Willott 2002.
  • Stretton, H. 1976. Capitalism, Socialism and the Environment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Taylor, P. 1981. 'The Ethics of Respect for Nature', Environmental Ethics 3: 197-218.
  • -----. 1986. Respect for Nature, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Varner, G. 1998. In Nature's Interests? Interests, Animal Rights, and Environmental Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  • -----. 2000. 'Sentientism', in D. Jamieson (ed.) A Companion to Environmental Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell, pp.192-203.
  • Vogel, S. 1996. Against Nature: The Concept of Nature in Critical Theory, Albany: State University of New York Press.
  • Warren, K. J. 1987. 'Feminism and Ecology: Making Connections', Environmental Ethics 9: 3-21.
  • -----. 1990. 'The Power and Promise of Ecological Feminism', Environmental Ethics 12: 125-46.
  • -----. 1999. 'Eco-feminist Philosophy and Deep Ecology', in Witoszek and Brennan (eds.) 1999, pp. 255-69.
  • Warren, K. J. (ed) 1994. Ecological Feminism, London: Routledge.
  • White, L. 1967. 'The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis', Science, 55:1203-1207 ; reprinted in Schmidtz and Willott 2002.
  • Williams, B. 1992. 'Must a Concern for the Environment be Centred on Human Beings?', reprinted in his Making Sense of Humanity and Other Philosophical Papers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995: 233-40.
  • Witoszek, N. 1997. 'Arne Næss and the Norwegian Nature Tradition', Worldviews 1: 57-73.
  • Witoszek, N. and Brennan, A. (eds) 1999. Philosophical Dialogues: Arne Næss and the Progress of Eco-Philosophy, New York: Rowan and Littlefield.