Virtue Ethics and the Environment

Whatever its origins, EVE (Environmental Virtue Ethics) now appears to be a vital part of the environmental philosophy landscape. Environmental virtue ethics has become a vital part of the environmental philosophy landscape. Whether as an alternative or a complement to other theoretical approaches, environmental virtue ethics clarifies our environmental choices and responsibilities: • By deploying a multifaceted set of virtue and vice concepts, it provides a rich, nuanced descriptive and normative language for our relationships and interactions with nature. • By exploring the connection between human flourishing and nature, it complements duty-based and fear-based justifications for environmentally progressive behavior and policies. • By providing an ecologically informed account of human flourishing that is attentive to the full range of environmental values, it offers an alternative to consumption-oriented conceptions of human flourishing. • By specifying the kind of character conducive to environmental appreciation and personal restraint, it contributes to sketching the parameters of a genuinely sustainable society: one which doesn’t careen from one environmental problem to the next, seeking techno-fixes, but instead might really solve them. This is an exciting collection of essays that addresses compelling issues, not just in environmental virtue ethics, but in environmental philosophy and environmental practice as a whole. Whatever its origins, EVE (Environmental Virtue Ethics) now appears to be a vital part of the environmental philosophy landscape. Whether you look to it for an alternative to other theoretical approaches to environmental ethics, or as a complement to them, there are a number of ways EVE clarifies our environmental choices and responsibilities. This is an exciting collection that addresses compelling issues, not only in EVE, but in environmental philosophy more broadly. In addition to their individual merits, these articles collectively demonstrate the value of EVE to environmental philosophy and the value of environmental philosophy in helping create sustainable societies and preserve nature. Recent movement on negotiating a strong successor to the Kyoto Treaty gives some hope that the world is waking up to the moral imperative to protect the Earth. But whether people will be willing to ratchet down our economic demands and reshape our economies to reflect this hoped-for moral progress remains to be seen. Previously published in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, Volume 23 (1-2), 2010