Refounding Environmental Ethics: Pragmatism, Principle, and Practice

by Ben A. Minteer

Providing a bold and original rethinking of environmental ethics, Ben Minteer'sa"Refounding Environmental Ethics"awill help ethicists and their allies resolve critical debates in environmental policy and conservation practice. Minteer considers the implications of John Dewey's pragmatist philosophy for environmental ethics, politics, and practice. He provides a new and compelling intellectual foundation for the fieldOCoone that supports a more activist, collaborative and problem-solving philosophical enterprise. Combining environmental ethics, democratic theory, philosophical pragmatism, and the environmental social sciences, Minteer makes the case for a more experimental, interdisciplinary, and democratic style of environmental ethicsOCoone that stands as an alternative to the field's historically dominant OC nature-centeredOCO outlook. Minteer also provides examples of his pragmatic approach in action, considering a wide range of application and issues, including invasive species, ecological research, biodiversity loss, protected area management, and conservation under global climate change.

214 pages, Hardcover

First published November 4, 2011

About the author

Ben A. Minteer writes about conservation, the wild, zoos, and the evolution of American environmental thought. His current work explores the wilderness idea and its expression in landscape photography, from Carleton Watkins and Ansel Adams to the present day.

Ben is a professor of environmental ethics and conservation in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University in Tempe, where he also holds the Arizona Zoological Society Endowed Chair. At ASU, he teaches a set of undergraduate and graduate courses in environmental ethics and the history and philosophy of conservation.