Ethics and the Environment
An Introduction

This lively introduction relates environmental ethics to the discipline of philosophy and to important environmental questions and conflicts.

Dale Jamieson (Author)

9781108834179, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 November 2024

290 pages
25 x 17.5 x 2 cm, 0.643 kg

'Jamieson has offered us an impressively up-to-date an introduction to ethics and major environmental issues, and a spirited defense of a meaningful life in the Anthropocene. He succeeds brilliantly in introducing students, who may know nothing of Mill, Kant, Singer, Leopold, or the naturalistic fallacy, to ethics, environmental philosophy, and the challenges of the Anthropocene. His metaethical framework provides a robust and dynamic backbone to the inquiry. This is philosophy at its pedagogical finest: accessible yet sophisticated, practical yet profound.' Nicolas Delon, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

This new edition of a widely used and cited introduction to ethics and the environment offers a broad and lively discussion of nature's future, focusing on climate change, conservation, and justice for both our contemporaries and future generations. It discusses the nature of environmental problems and their relationship to economics, religion, technology, and aesthetics. It includes incisive discussions of our moral relations with other animals, and of how animals are used in our food systems. It also provides a deep discussion of the value of nature, which takes up ecofeminist and deep ecology views as well as sentientism and biocentrism.  It discusses the plurality of values, and applies this analysis to some conflicts from the author's home state of California. The volume is comprehensively revised and updated, with several new chapters, and concludes with a compelling discussion of the question “How should I live?” in this new epoch of the Anthropocene.

1. The Environment as an Ethical Question
2. Human Morality
3. Moral Philosophy
4. Normative Ethics
5. Humans and Other Animals
6. Animals, Food and the Environment
7. The Value of Nature
8. The Plurality of Values
9. California Conflicts
10. Nature's Future
11. How Should I Live?

Subject Areas: Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ]