"Individual or Community? Two Approaches to Ecophilosophy in Practice"
Should environmental philosophers—or practical conservationists—focus their attentions on particular living creatures, or on the community of which they, and we, are part?
Should environmental philosophers—or practical conservationists—focus their attentions on particular living creatures, or on the community of which they, and we, are part?
David Schmidtz argues that “the philosophies of both conservation and preservationism can fail by their own lights, since trying to put their respective principles of conservationism or preservationism into institutional practice can have results that are the opposite of what the respective philosophies tell us we ought to be trying to achieve.”
Robyn Eckersley discusses the concepts of “human racism” and ecocentricm in relation to Tony Lynch and David Wells’ argument that any attempt to develop a non-anthropocentric morality must invariably slide back to either anthropocentrism (either weak or strong) or a highly repugnant misanthropy in cases of direct conflict between the survival needs of humans and nonhuman species.
Allan Greenbaum presents his notion of nature connoisseurship.
In this essay, Freya Mathews argues that the moral point of view involves a feeling for the inner reality of others and explains the consequences of this idea for other-than-human life forms and systems.
In this special section on Green Wars, Bram Büscher examines the case of rhino poaching in South Africa, arguing that we are seeing the uneven emergence of new geographies of conservation focused on preempting threats (ontopower).