Eco-Philosophy
Four books and a dozen-odd articles back up and elaborate Chapter 6’s sketch of Environmental Philosophy in pragmatic, pluralist, multicentric modes, reconstructing the world piece by piece while reaching for transformative re-imaginations at the same time.
Back to Earth: Tomorrow’s Environmentalism
(Temple University Press, 1994)
My first book length book length venture into the field.
Publisher description:
In the face of our receding connection to nature and direct experience of the world, Anthony Weston proposes a different kind of environmentalism. Weston argues that we must restore our links with the natural world, exploring a multitude of practices to bring wilderness, animals, and the Earth closer to individuals and into daily life. Using specific, sometimes deeply unsettling, accounts of the state of animals and the land, Weston makes clear that as humans we must put aside our presuppositions about our own centrality and superiority. Instead, for example, we would do well to consider the means by which animals communicate and understand boundaries, thereby establishing what Weston terms "transhuman etiquettes." While acknowledging that environmentalist policies such as recycling and protecting habitat and species remain crucial, Weston argues that we must go further and deeper. One essential effort is to affirm our participation in this world through a rediscovery of touch and smell; noticing the details of nature; restoring the great annual celebrations that remind us of the turn of the seasons and the migrations of birds; building houses in new Earth-friendly ways; and planning neighborhoods that allow for other-than-human beings and wild areas as well as ourselves.
Table of Contents
- Has Environmentalism
- Forgotten the Earth?
- Animals Next to Us
- Animals on the Borderlines
- The Land Sings
- Desolation
- Coming to Our Senses
- Transhuman Etiquettes
- Is It Too Late?
The background of the cover is a woodprint by Frank Utpatel, a much-loved regional artist of Southern Wisconsin in my days of yore.
An Invitation to Environmental Philosophy
Edited by Anthony Weston
(Oxford University Press, 1998)
Contributors: David Abram, Jim Cheney, Val Plumwood, Holmes Rolston, Anthony Weston
OUP’s description:
“Brief, inviting, and provocative, this book is a perfect introduction to the burgeoning field of environmental ethics. It animates the basic questions, tells compelling stories, and offers a range of philosophical responses as complementary--not antagonistic--exploratory strategies vital to this growing topic. The book is built around five individually authored chapters, each a representative contribution by a major author in the field. Each chapter covers a central topic in environmental ethics in a somewhat different style. An epilogue offers both a bibliographical guide to these topics and many related issues and a practical guide to environmental action.”
Table of Contents
Introduction, Anthony Weston
- A More-Than-Human World, David Abram
- Is it Too Late?, Anthony Weston
- Paths Beyond Human-Centeredness: Lessons from Liberation Struggles, Val Plumwood
- Ethics on the Home Planet, Holmes Rolston, III
- The Journey Home, Jim Cheney
Epilogue: Going On, Anthony Weston
The watercolor is by me: West Meadow Beach, near Setauket, Long Island, NY.
The Incompleat Eco-Philosopher: Essays from the Edges of Environmental Ethics
(SUNY Press, 2009)
Publisher’s description:
“This collection of germinal work in the field by Anthony Weston presents his pragmatic environmental philosophy, calling for reconstruction and imagination rather than deconstruction and analysis. It is a philosopher's invitation to environmental ethics in an unexpectedly inviting and down-to-earth key. On the pragmatic view advanced here, environmental values are thoroughly natural—what else could they be?—and are open-ended and in flux. Rather than passing judgment on the world as it is, we are called to rediscover and remake the world as it might be. We require an environmental etiquette more than a formal ethic; an etiquette whose development must be an ongoing process; and a process in turn that is genuinely multicentric, challenging us to negotiate our place among the exuberant variety of living and other forms.”
Chapters are mostly previously published articles, just linked here but abstracted in detail under “Articles” below.
Table of Contents
Preface
- Introduction
- Before Environmental Ethics, first published in Environmental Ethics14 (1992). Description below.
- Self-Validating Reduction: A Theory of the Devaluation of Nature, first published in Environmental Ethics18 (1996). Description below
- Environmental Ethics as Environmental Etiquette (with Jim Cheney), first published in Environmental Ethics21 (1999). Description below
- Multicentrism: A Manifesto, first published in Environmental Ethics26 (2004). Description below
- De-Anthropocentrizing the World: Environmental Ethics as a Design Challenge. First published as Chapter 6 of Jobs for Philosophers.
- What If Teaching Went Wild? First published in Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 9 (2004). Description in Pedagogy section.
- Galapagos Stories: Evolution, Creation, and the Odyssey of Species, first published in Soundings LXXXVI (2003).
- Eco-Philosophy in Space. First appearance of my exo-philosophical thinking.
The cover is a landscape on Mars.
Mobilizing the Green Imagination: An Exuberant Manifesto
(New Society Publishers, 2012)
Publisher’s blurb:
Elegant and audacious possibilities that push the boundaries of contemporary environmentalism
Dysfunctional cities, catastrophic climate change, ever-deepening distance from nature-today we see environmental disaster everywhere we look. In Mobilizing the Green Imagination , philosophical provocateur Anthony Weston urges us to move beyond ever more desperate attempts to “green” the status quo, toward entirely different and far more inviting ecological visions:
• Life after transportation-decentralized work, inventive infill and self-sufficient micro-communities to facilitate life in place
• Adaptation with attitude-cities that welcome the rising waters
• A Great Second Chance-moving beyond exploitation of the whole natural world
• A cosmic ecology-why not a green space program?
These postcards from beyond the leading edge of today’s green thinking are bold, audacious, extravagantly hopeful and profoundly inspiring-the perfect antidote to the despair brought on by too many “doom and gloom” scenarios. Nothing less than a complete reinvention of contemporary environmentalism, Mobilizing the Green Imagination belongs in the back pocket of anyone who dares to dream of a brighter future and a better world.
Table of Contents
Preface
- Where is the Vision?
- Other Worlds are Possible
- Way Beyond Recycling
- Life After Transportation
- Adaptation with Sass
- A More-Than-Human World
- Fellowship with Animals
- The World’s Great Liturgies
- To the Stars
Leading up to the 2012 publication of Mobilizing the Green Imagination I prepared a summary and introduction for students that you can read.
By the way, this earthy figure is not me.
There is a legacy website for this book at http://www.mobilizingthegreenimagination.com though not recently updated.
Major Articles
… as they happened.
- Beyond Intrinsic Value
Environmental Ethics 7 (4) 1985: 321–339
This early essay proposes an environmental ethic in the pragmatic vein. I begin by suggesting that the contemporary debate in environmental ethics is forced into a familiar but highly restrictive set of distinctions and problems by the traditional notion of intrinsic value, particularly by its demands that intrinsic values be self-sufficient, abstract, and justified in special ways. I criticize this notion and develop an alternative that stresses the interdependent structure of values, a structure which at once roots them deeply in our selves and at the same time opens them to critical challenge and change. Finally, I apply this alternative view back to environmental ethics. It becomes easy to justify respect for other life forms and concern for the natural environment, and indeed many of the standard arguments only become stronger, once the demand to establish intrinsic values is removed. - Non-Anthropocentrism in a Thoroughly Anthropocentrized World
The Trumpeter (1991)
Anthropocentrism is reinforced not only by human-centered ideas but by the increasingly human-dominated environments that shape how we think and live. In such a thoroughly anthropocentrized world, non-anthropocentric ethics remain abstract and difficult to articulate because meaningful encounters with nonhuman beings and wild nature have largely been eliminated. Philosophical arguments alone cannot overcome this limitation; instead, non-anthropocentrism must grow out of renewed practices and relationships that reopen space for genuine interaction with other species and natural places. The primary task is to “de-anthropocentrize” the world—through quieter, more ecologically embedded communities and shared human-nonhuman environments—so that a truly non-anthropocentric ethic can gradually co-evolve. - Before Environmental Ethics
Environmental Ethics 14 (4) 1992: 321–338
Widely reprinted elsewhere. Contemporary non-anthropocentric 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 and exploratory methods. We cannot reach theoretical finality; we can only co-evolve an ethic with transformed practices. - Between Means and Ends
The Monist 75 (2) (April 1992): 236–249
Many important values are neither mere means nor ultimate intrinsic ends but instead exist as immediate experiences and as parts of larger patterns of life. I criticize Environmental Ethics for focusing on intrinsic value, arguing that this framework isolates and simplifies what we value in nature, overlooks everyday and relational experiences, and can even justify fragmented solutions like preserving species while destroying their habitats. I propose instead a holistic “ecology of values,” where interconnected patterns of meaning—especially everyday encounters with nature—are framed and integrated without appealing to ultimate ends. - Self-Validating Reduction: A Theory of the Devaluation of Nature
Environmental Ethics 18 (2) 1996: 115–132
Disvaluing nature—a cognitive act—usually leads quickly to devaluing it too: to real-world exploitation and destruction. Worse, in fact, nature in its devalued state can then be held up as an excuse and justification for the initial disvaluation. In this way, dismissal and destruction perpetuate themselves. I call this process “self-validating reduction.” It is crucial to recognize the cycle of self-validating reduction, both in general and specifically as it applies to nature, if we are to have any chance of reversing it. - Instead of Environmental Education
in Bob Jickling (ed.), Proceedings of the Yukon College Symposium on Ethics, Environment, and Education (1996)
If "education" is problematic as such, as radical critics such as Illich and Holt argue, then environmental education is problematic too—likely even more so. Despite the seemingly uncontroversial character of the goal of "ecological literacy," I argue that this notion is deeply flawed: it replaces a living sense of connectedness with a mandated and technical set of skills—perfect for schools, but that is just the problem. In its place I suggest a broader understanding of what we are about as environmentally concerned citizens and educators: reconstructing the larger lifeworld in a way more connected to and consistently engaged with the more-than-human world. Schools have a role to play within this reconstruction, but the essential process is much larger and must engage all of us. - Universal Consideration as an Originary Practice
Environmental Ethics 20 (3) 1998: 279–289
Tom Birch has decisively transformed the so-called “considerability” question by arguing that all things must be “considerable” from the start in “the root sense” if we are to determine what further kinds of value they may have. Spelling out this kind of “root” or “deep” consideration proves to be difficult, however, especially in light of post-Kantian conceptions of mind. Such consideration may also ask of the world too ready a kind of self-revelation. This paper proposes another, complementary version of universal consideration: as a kind of practical invitation, as a way of creating the space within which a response can emerge or an exchange coevolve. I conclude by locating this vision within a picture of ethics as a whole that brings what I call its “originary” stage, rather than its formal stage, into focus. - Environmental Ethics as Environmental Etiquette
with Jim Cheney, Environmental Ethics 21 (2) 1999: 115–134
An ethics-based epistemology is necessary for environmental philosophy—a sharply different approach from the epistemology-based ethics that the field has inherited, mostly implicitly, from mainstream ethics. In this paper, we try to uncover this inherited epistemology and point toward an alternative. In section two, we outline a general contrast between an ethics-based epistemology and an epistemology-based ethics. In section three, we examine the relationship between ethics and epistemology in an ethics-based epistemology, drawing extensively on examples from indigenous cultures. We briefly explore several striking implications of an ethics-based epistemology in sections four and five. - Galapagos Stories, or: Evolution, Creation, and the Odyssey of Species
Soundings 86 (2003): 375–390
In the Galápagos, Darwinian science and Creationist belief coexist in tension. I argue that the conflict is fueled not just by evidence but by the mechanistic language used to describe evolution, which obscures life’s creativity and responsiveness. I propose reframing evolution as an ongoing “odyssey” marked by improvisation and “species creativity,” opening space for dialogue across perspectives while emphasizing our shared participation in a dynamic living world. - Multicentrism: A Manifesto
Environmental Ethics 26 (1) 2004: 25–40
The familiar “centrisms” in environmental ethics aim to make ethics progressively more inclusive by expanding a single circle of moral consideration. I propose a radically different kind of geometry. Multicentrism envisions a world of irreducibly diverse and multiple centers of being and value—not one single circle, but many circles, partly overlapping, each with its own center. Moral consideration necessarily becomes plural and ongoing, and moral action takes place within an open-ended context of negotiation and covenant. - Working the Dark Edges
Canadian Journal of Environmental Education 19 (2014): 70–79
Environmentalism's wider and wilder possibilities today appear as regions of seeming darkness that bracket or frame acceptable environmental thinking. One of these barely-mentionable darknesses is outer space: the cosmos. Another is the inner and chthonic powers of the land and natural beings generally. This essay aims to bring these two kinds of darkness briefly but provocatively into view, both in the interests of a more expansive sense of environmentalism's possibilities and to point toward some pedagogies that might edge us farther in such directions.