Thoreau’s Environmental Ethics in Walden

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Cafaro, Philip
The Concord Saunterer (Journal of the Thoreau Society) 10 (2002), pages 17-63

In developing a strong environmental ethics, no thinker has more to offer us than Henry Thoreau. Thoreau is a leading critic of anthropocentrism: the view that only human beings have rights or “intrinsic value” and that other creatures are solely valuable as human resources and may be used any way we see fit. Thoreau has much to say about what recognizing nature’s intrinsic value demands from us and provides important practical suggestions for how we can live up to those demands. Perhaps even more important, Thoreau provides an example of how to lead a happy, flourishing life while still respecting nature. I contend that Walden provides a fully developed and inspiring environmental virtue ethics, which links environmental protection to human happiness and flourishing. This ethics demands restraint from us in our dealings with nature, but in return it offers us hope that we ourselves will lead better lives. I thus points the way toward a positive, life-affirming environmental ethics.

CafaroThoreausEnvironmentalEthicsinWalden.pdf

Gluttony, Arrogance, Greed, and Apathy: An Exploration of Environmental Vice

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Cafaro, Philip
Cafaro, P., Sandler, R. (eds.) (2004): Environmental Virtue Ethics. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, pages 135-158

Traditional virtue ethics recognized that human flourishing depends on a supportive social environment. Hence traditional virtue theories defined vices or character defects in terms of their harm to both individuals and society. An environmental virtue ethics builds on the recognition that human flourishing also depends on appreciating and sustaining healthy, biologically diverse natural environments. This article discusses four key environmental vices that harm vicious people, the human and nonhuman beings around them, and the environment broadly considered. Such an exploration suggests both self-interested and altruistic reasons to improve our environmental behavior.

CafaroGluttonyArroganceGreedApathy.pdf

The Naturalist’s Virtues

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Cafaro, Philip
Philosophy in the Contemporary World, Volume 8/2 ( 2001), pages 85-99

This paper argues that studying natural history helps make us more virtuous; that is, better and happier people. After sketching a broad conception of virtue, I discuss how naturalizing may improve our moral character and help develop our intellectual, aesthetic and physical abilities. I next assert essential connections between nonanthropocentrism and wisdom, and between natural history study and the achievement of a nonanthropocentric stance toward the world Finally, I argue that the great naturalists suggest a noble, inspiring alternative to the gross consumption and trivial pleasures offered by our destructive modern economy: the exploration, understanding and appreciation of nature. I conclude that a better understanding of our enlightened self-interest would do as much to further environmental protection as the acknowledgment of nature’s intrinsic value.

CafaroTheNaturalistsVirtues.pdf

Humanity’s future imperiled by cultural lags

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Catton, William R. Jr.
Unpublished manuscript. Translation into German published in Natur und Kultur Vol. 1/2 (2000), pages 3-25

Human societies exploiting Earth’s ecosystems beyond carrying capacity make ideas about human dominion obsolete. Formerly successful policies become disastrous. Reliance on nonrenewable resources plus widespread overfishing, overgrazing and deforestation disrupts ecosystems. With six billion humans using Earth three ways (as supply depot, activity space, and disposal site) mutual interference between these uses escalates. Technological advances, once progressive, now enlarge per capita resource appetites and impacts, reducing the number of humans the planet can continue supporting. Sustainability requires enormous efficiencies, a period of “negative population growth,” and equitable exchange relationships between differently endowed regions or nations.

CattonCulturalLags.pdf