Environmental Ethics: An Overview for the Twenty-First Century

摘要

Though broadly philosophical reflections on nature and our place within it can be tracked to antiquity, the development of the field of environmental ethics as a distinct sub-discipline within contemporary academic philosophy has a far shorter history. Its landmark moments include the 1968 publication of Lynn White Jr's influential critique of Christianity's environmental record "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis," J. Baird Callicott's teaching of the world's first course in environmental ethics in 1971 at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, the pathfind-ing papers "Is There a Need for a New, an Environmental, Ethic?" and "The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement: A Summary" by the Australian philosopher Richard Routley and the Norwegian Arne Naess respectively in 1973, and the founding of the journal Environmental Ethics in 1979. The field slowly grew with a range of now well-known voices such as Holmes Rolston III, Bryan Norton and Carolyn Merchant first making themselves heard through the 1970s to 1990s, and the development of specific positions such as ecofeminism, deep ecology, and various forms of ecocentric theory, until at last these concerns became mainstream within the academy over the past 20 years. Such is the relatively familiar story of the field's development as frequently taught to undergraduate students.