Engendering Questions: Developing Feminist Ethics With Levinas

Zionism, Place, and the Other: Toward a Levinasian International Relations
William Paul Simmons

Abstract: This essay expands on the recent writings on Levinas's politics by discussing his explicit comments about international relations.  Levinas embraces neither a naive idealism, nor a cold realism.  Instead, he searches for a third way, that is, an oscillation between idealism and realism.  There is a place for realism, but the power of the state must be held in check by the ethical responsibility for the Other.  This oscillation is examined in relation to Levinas's writings on "place" and Zionism.  Levinas also calls for an oscillation between the enrootedness to a place or nation and the higher ethical responsibility for the Other.  The essay concludes with a discussion of some very controversial remarks Levinas made about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  

Resisting Silence In the Face of Evil: Re-Thinking the Holocaust, Speaking the Unspeakable, With Emmanuel Levinas
Bob Plant

Abstract: In the following paper I shall outline a number of preliminary ideas concerning the relationship between the Holocaust and certain themes which emerge in the works of Emmanuel Levinas.  As this relationship is distinctly twofold, my analysis will include both a textual and a rather more speculative component.  That is to say, while I shall argue that reading Levinas specifically as a post-Holocaust thinker clarifies a number of his philosophical and rhetorical motifs, so, in turn, does this challenging body of work offer a means by which to re-think both the horror and ethical significance of the Holocaust itself.  During the course of my argument I shall additionally refer to the writings of Primo Levi, Jacques Derrida and Martin Heidegger through whom I hope also to establish the central role guilt and confession play in Levinas's own thinking.  

Good Infinity/Bad Infinity: Il y a, Apeiron, and the Environmental Ethics in the Philosophy of Levinas
Danne Polk

Abstract: Although Levinas does not specifically articulate an environmental ethic, he certainly has a concept of nature working within his philosophy, a portrait of which can be drawn from the various texts that describe in detail what he believes to be the human, primordial relationship to the elemental.  The following essay is an attempt to articulate how Levinas comes to define that relationship, and to imagine what kind of environmental ethic is implied by it.  We will see that an important, dichotomous distinction is made between two types of infinity, the "bad infinity" of the sacred and the "good infinity" of the holy.  This distinction corresponds to the separated subject's world.  For Levinas, this distinction addresses not only the rationalist vs. empiricist question concerning the relationship between consciousness and the body, a guiding question for modern philosophy from Descartes through Husserl, but also the question concerning technology, especially as it is posed by Heidegger and other twentieth century continental philosophers.  These two related questions can help guide us to an understanding of how Levinas imagines environmental imperatives toward both the body's exclusive relationship to nature, and to the interpersonal relationships between the self and other human beings.  We will begin this analysis with Husserl's answer to the question of consciousness.  

Emmanuel Levinas on God and Philosophy: Practical Implications for Christian Theology
Robyn Horner

Abstract: This paper concerns the possibility of "thinking" God, and uses the work of Emmanuel Levinas to frame a contemporary approach to some of the problems involved.  The difficult relationship between philosophy and Christian theology is noted, before Levinas's thought is examined as it relates to that which both marks consciousness and exceeds it.  Levinas's adoption of the "idea of the Infinite" and his exploration of two ways in which the Infinite might signify (have meaning) open up a useful trajectory for a thought of God which is not reductive.  At the same time, however, this aporetic approach raises difficulties in the context of specific religious traditions.  Three problems as they occur for Christian theology are examined in light of Levinas's work: the problem of not being able to identify an experience of God as such; the problem of the infinite interpretability of revelation; and the problem of understanding the divinity of Jesus Christ.  

Talmud, Totality, and Jewish Pluralism: A Comment Inspired by Reading Emmanuel Levinas
Laura Duhan Kaplan

Abstract: Levinas's conception of listening for the "trace" of the infinite implies that the human spirit grows when it comes into contact with something greater than it had previously known.  When Levinas reads the Talmud, sourcebook of Jewish Law, he tries to enter into conversation with it, allowing the meaning of the text to expand to touch his own contemporary concerns.  At the flip side of his expansion, however, lies my worry that the text functions as a " totality," assimilating all contemporary concerns to its discussions.  At this time of rebuilding in Jewish history, Jews cannot afford narrow conceptions of Jewish practice.  This essay does not attempt to elucidate Levinas's thought, but to use some insights gained from reading his work to think about contemporary Judaism.  

Levinas, Theistic Language, and Psychology: A Cautionary Note
David R. Harrington

Abstract: Emmanuel Levinas has provided the philosophical basis for psychologies commensurate with the ethical basis of human existence; however, introducing psychologists to his work is frustrated by a number of factors.  One of these factors is his use of theistic language in his philosophical writings.  Two problems are discussed regarding this language.  First, contemporary psychology, including the area of psychology of religion, rejects any theistic language as incompatible with an empirical science.  Second, it is suggested that many persons, including psychologists, are not in the cognitive developmental stage at which they can understand Levinas's writings about God.  Further, it is also suggested that psychology's history warns against creating a psychological school or division based in Levinas's thought.  The article concludes with a general discussion regarding how psychology can apply Levinas's thought while leaving God and Levinas behind.  

Difficulty and Mortality: Two Notes on Reading Levinas
Richard A. Cohen

Abstract: I argue against the work of simplifying and applying Levinas's thought.  Simplifying Levinas misses the point of the greatness of his thought, which is addressed to the most sophisticated philosophical thinkers of his day, and calls upon them to re-ground philosophy in the ethical.  Applying Levinas misses the point that Levinas's conception of alterity is perfectly concrete, because it is linked to morality through the mortality of the other.  

Volume 7, Numbers 2-3, Summer-Fall 2000  

Symbolic Meaning and the Confederate Battle Flag
Torin Alter

Abstract: The Confederate Battle Flag (CBF) is in the news again.  On January 16^th, 2000, 46,000 people came to Columbia, South Carolina, to protest its display over the state's capital dome.  On July 1^st, the CBF was removed.  But on the same day, it was raised in front of the Statehouse steps.  The controversy has received a great deal of media coverage and was a factor in the 2000 presidential primaries.  CBF displays raise a philosophical question I wish to address: What determines whether a symbol or symbol-display is racist?  I will focus on the CBF because its contemporary relevance.  But the discussion will shed light on the general issue of when a symbol or symbol-display has a particular meaning and when it does not.  

Minorities and Racist Symbols: A Response to Torin Alter
George Schedler

No Abstract

Kant and the Problem of Ethical Metaphysics
Anthony F. Beavers

Abstract: The ethical philosophies of Kant and Levinas would seem, on the surface, to be incompatible.  In this essay I attempt to reconcile them by situating Levinas's philosophy "beneath" Kant's as its existential condition thereby addressing two shortcomings in each of their works, for Kant, the apparent difficulty of making ethics apply to real concrete cases, and, for Levinas, the apparent difficulty of establishing a normative ethics that can offer prescriptions for moral behavior.  My general thesis is that the existential ethical terrain unearthed by Levinas turns Kantian when transposed into the rational order.  

Buridan's Ass and Other Dilemmas: A Decision-Value Approach
Wesley Cooper and Guillermo Barron

Abstract: The dilemma confronted by Buridan's Ass leads into a problem about nil-preference situations, to which there is a solution in the literature that is inspired by Alan Turing: we have evolved with a computational module in our brains that comes into play in such situations by picking a random action among the alternatives that determines the subject's choice.  We relate these Buridan's Ass situations to a larger, theoretically interesting category in which there is no alternative that is decisively superior to others with respect to expected utility, and we try to show how our emotional makeup figures in a rational response, particularly as informed by symbolic utility that we draw down from our culture's shared understandings.  The category is theoretically interesting because it contains moral dilemmas, as well as hard cases in which an important choice must be made without an option that has clearly superior expected utility.  We argue that our Emotional Response Model is preferable to Turing's Randomizer for this category, as well as more illuminating about nil-preference situations or close approximation thereto.  

Towards an Ethics of Time: Eschatology and its Discontents
Andrew Fiala

Abstract: This essay does not argue for any specific conception of time as ethically superior or significant, but argues that the conception of time we choose from among possible such conceptions has ethical consequences.  

Hairstyles and Attitudes: Hacking, Human Kinds, and the Development of Punk Rock
Andrew Latus

Abstract: Much of Ian Hacking's recent work has concerned the notion of 'human kinds', that is, ways of classifying people as objects of study in the human and social sciences.  In this paper, I use a study of the development of a particular kind of person--the punk rocker-- to clarify and extend the idea of a human kind.  With regard to clarification, this case provides an excellent opportunity to consider examples of what Hacking calls 'looping effects', i.e. particular kinds of interactions between ways of classifying people and those who are classified.  As for extending Hacking's ideas, in punk we see a sort of kind creation largely absent from the examples he has considered.  While the human kinds Hacking has focussed on typically emerge from investigations by experts and then filter out into popular consciousness, in punk we see the opposite process take place.  

Utopian Liberalism: A Response to my Colleagues
Roger Paden

No Abstract

Logic in a Pincers
Herman E. Stark

Abstract:  The essay challenges the de facto dichotomy between the discipline of logic and the activity of social criticism, i.e., it provides an illustrated reminder to philosophers that the gulf between these two areas of philosophy is not quite as wide as our curriculum and specialization designations tends to suggest.  Social criticism plays some necessary roles in certain branches of logic, and the second-order accounting of the contents of these branches leads back to social criticism.  These points suggest an adjusted conception of logic that would, among other things, render phrases such as "applying logic to social criticism" as misleading since certain branches of logic would not even coherently exist apart from social criticism.  The lead illustrations are the identification of basic, pervasive, and thought-impeding logical errors that have been missed by numerous logic texts, and the assessment of contemporary academic logic as properly a quest for communal sanity that lies caught between communal insanity and communal mendacity.  

Hestian Thinking in Antiquity and Modernity: Pythagorean Women Philosophers and 19th Century Domestic Scientists
Patricia J. Thompson

Abstract: Thompson (1994) proposed a re-visioning of the oikos/polis dichotomy in classical philosophy.  She offers a dual systems paradigm, based on two ancient Greek mythemes-Hestia, goddess of the oikos, or domestic "homeplace," and Hermes, god of the polis, or public "marketplace" as an alternative to gender as the primary analytic lens to advance feminist theory.  This paper applies hestian/hermean lenses of analysis, described in two propadeutic papers (SPCW 1996; 1997), to the writings of 6th-5th century BCE Pythagorean women philosophers and 19th century domestic scientists to claim them as moral philosophers of the hestian domain.  

Volume 7, Number 4, Winter 2000  

Socrates, the Marketplace, and Money
Trevor Curnow

Abstract: It is often supposed that the example of Socrates makes the taking of payment for philosophical services problematic.  This supposition is examined on the basis of the evidence available in Plato's Apology and Xenophon's Memorabilia.  These texts suggest that Socrates certainly had reservations about the desirability of receiving payment in return for philosophical services.  However, these reservations do not amount to an outright and unconditional condemnation.  Furthermore, some of the reservations derive from the particular values of the culture in which Socrates lived and should not be seen as binding to all.  Similarly, whatever specific objections Socrates may have had to the activities of the Sophists should not be seen as applicable to all philosophers who accept payment in return for their services.  

Plato on Philosophy and Money
Paul W. Gooch

Abstract: For Plato, one mark of the difference between sophistry and philosophy is that the sophist takes fees for service.  His Socrates does not.  However, this paper  points out that Socrates' attitude to money reflects his unique indifference to things bodily, and a more satisfactory understanding of Plato on money needs to turn to his discussion of the love of money or avarice, especially in the Republic.  Plato locates money-loving in appetitive soul along with physical cravings like hunger and lust; why he should do so is explained if avarice is seen as a primary instance of a more pervasive possessiveness that is ultimately somatic in nature.  I argue that though his remedies are too severe, Plato is right to warn against avarice and its possible effects upon the practice of philosophy.  And following Plato I conclude that philosophy is best understood as an enquiry unconstrained by the interests of the market and carried out in the context of academic freedom.  

Philosophy and Money-Making
Marco Iorio

Abstract: This essay argues that there is no obvious reason not to make money doing philosophy.  Whether philosophical counseling is justified, however, depends on the practitioners of the service defining the benefit of that service.  

Absolutism and Relativism: Practical Implications for Philosophical Counseling
Andrew M. Koch

Abstract: This article raises the question of whether or not a "neutral" stance can be found from which to engage in philosophical counseling.  By drawing on the debate between absolutism and relativism, it is argued that no such neutral ground exists.  The foundational premises of the transcendentalist tradition involve different assumptions than those of the materialist and relativist traditions.  Such a distinction goes back to the earliest days of philosophy and today the new profession of philosophical counseling must address the multiplicity of assumptions upon which philosophic discourse can be built.  The paper concludes with a call for philosophical counseling to move beyond the focus on Socrates, and to embrace a wide variety of different positions within it domain.  

Are Counselors and Therapists Prostitutes ? A Dialogue
Rupert Read and Emma Willmer

No Abstract

Abstract: Philosophical counseling recommends to its clients the activity of philosophical dialogue.  The process of thought in dialogue differs from private thought in the greater physical constraints placed upon dialogue.  We as yet do not have an understanding of the embodied activity of philosophy sufficient to make viable the marketing of philosophical counseling as a service.  The paper is a contribution to such an understanding.  The paper considers the notion of a philosophical life and criticizes the possibility of a profession of philosophical counseling.  It ends with a tentative defense of philosophical counseling as a marketable service.  

Inculcating Virtue in Philosophical Practice
Lou Marinoff

Abstract: This paper claims that the edifice of philosophical practice bears prima facie resemblance to other counseling-dispensing professions--e.g. medicine, law, psychology, accountancy.  It defends virtues of professionalism in philosophical practice against accusations of sophism, and also rejects social constructivism as a politically extreme form of sophistry.  It concludes that, notwithstanding prima facie resemblance to other counseling professions, philosophical practice is foundationally distinct from them.  When elaborated, this distinction complicates the notion of inculcating virtue in philosophical practice.  

Philosophy at the Core of Economic Markets
Karl Reinhard Kolmsee

Abstract: The market seems to have substituted politics as a coordination model in modern societies.  While philosophy's complementarity to politics is well-acknowledged, its importance for economic markets can be questioned.  Economics deals with optimization, but as markets are constituted by real person with individual beliefs and normative values the economic tool box is not sufficient to describe market behavior.  This especially true whenever technological innovations challenge established market rules.  Philosophy supplies analytical instruments for a better, more complete description of markets including their normative aspects.  For this complementary function philosophy should be placed at the core of any theory of markets.  

Volume 8, Number 1, Spring 2001  

Compassion:An Aristotelian Approach
Trudy C. Conway
Department of Philosophy
Mount St. Mary’s College
Emmitsburg, MD
Conway@msmary.edu

Abstract:The following three papers focus on compassion, an issue well worth our consideration in our contemporary age, and most especially during our recent national tragedy.  It is hoped that these philosophical discussions of compassion may help us as we, on personal and societal levels, come to grips with immense human suffering.  The topic of compassion brings us to an exploration of a cluster of related philosophical issues and is thus a good stepping off point for inquiry.  The role of the first paper is that of stage setting, to simply lay out an approach to compassion presented by Aristotle and developed by Martha Nussbaum.  This approach served as the introductory consideration in a course on compassion taught by the first two commentators.  Initially, we wondered if we could sustain discussion on this narrow topic over fourteen weeks, but found the course left students with numerous questions worth their further consideration.  So too in these papers, a number of issues will remain untouched, such as the relation of compassion and public policy and specific approaches to the cultivating of compassion, both of which are explored at length by Martha Nussbaum.  This first paper frames our discussion, by presenting in outline form key points addressed in Martha Nussbaum’s Aristotelian discussion of the emotion of compassion, and touches upon issues developed in the next two papers.  

A Buddhist Critique of Nussbaum’s Account of Compassion
Jeremiah Conway
Department of Philosophy
University of Southern Maine
Portland, ME 04104-9300
jconway@maine.rr.com

Abstract:This paper examines Martha Nussbaum’s account of compassion from the perspective of Mahayana Buddhism.  It focuses on the three criteria of compassion set forth by Nussbaum in a number of her works, and shows why Buddhism would reject each of them.  The paper concludes that Nussbaum’s analysis of compassion is more accurately described as an account of pity.  

Barriers to Feeling and Actualizing Compassion
Lani Roberts
Department of Philosophy
Oregon State University
Corvalis, OR 97331-4503
LRoberts@orst.edu

Abstract:Hume and Rousseau argue that “feeling with and/or for others” is natural and basic to us as human persons, but Royce claims that merely feeling the fleeting impulse of sympathy is not the moral insight itself.  Compassion must be both felt and acted upon for it to play the role in morality ascribed by Hume and Rousseau.  Why is it so often the case that we fail to feel compassion for others and, even when we do, why do we often fail to act on this basis?  There are multiple socially constructed barriers to feeling and acting on compassion, three of which are discussed:null curriculum, stereotyping, and privileges.  Finally, the Dalai Lama maintains that it is in every person’s own self-interest to develop compassion for others because it is the source of both inner and external peace.  

Is Coerced Fertility Reduction to Preserve Nature Justifiable?
Frank W. Derringh
Department of Social Science (Philosophy)
New York City Technical College
300 Jay Street, N611
City University of New York
Brooklyn, New York 11201

Abstract:Human population growth must end, and the sooner the better, for both nature and a humanity that pursues boundlessly increasing affluence.  Poisoning of organisms and massive extinctions result, exacerbated by population momentum.  Infliction of pain and death largely for trivial reasons constitutes the ignoble dénouement of our history.  Reducing human numbers would be only one fitting response to recognition of this situation.  Reliance on voluntary socio-economic reforms, including even the empowerment of women, appears unlikely to lead to below-replacement-level fertility, since families on average still elect to have more than two children.  Discussed are three reasons for thinking that coercive measures could help us to engender a decreasing human population without negating preferable voluntary efforts to the same end.  Hence some coercion to reduce fertility is justifiable.  

Virtuality and Morality:On (not) Being Disturbed by the Other
Lucas D. Introna
Centre for the Study of Technology and Organisation
University of Lancaster Management School
Lancaster, United Kingdom
L.Introna@lancaster.ac.uk

Abstract:This paper critically describes the mediation of social relations by information technology, drawing on the work of Emmanuel Levinas.  In the first of three movements, I discuss ethical relations as primordial sociality based in proximity.  In the second movement I discuss how the self encounters the Other, the ethical contact.  How can the self make contact with the Other without turning the Other into a theme, a concept, or a category?  In the third movement, I discuss the electronic mediation of the social as simulation.  I argue that simulation shatters proximity, since it transforms expression, the trace, into presentation, an image.  I argue that the distance produced by the mediation increases the potential for the Other to become appropriated by the self-certain ego as a theme, according to its categories.  In simulation, proximity is shattered and the ego can no longer be disturbed—no longer become a hostage.  In a final section, I explore alternative arguments for the possibility of electronic mediation that preserves the trace, that possibility of being disturbed.  

The Case Against Reparations
Stephen Kershnar
Department of Philosophy
Fenton Hall
SUNY—Fredonia
Fredonia, NY 14063
Stephen.kershnar@fredonia.edu

Abstract:George Schedler raises interesting issues with regard to the amount of reparations owed for slavery, the parties who are owed reparations, and the standard for these reparations.  His arguments, however, do not hold up upon analysis.  His analysis of the case for the descendants of slaves being owed compensation seriously overestimates the case for such reparations.  He does not identify the grounds for such compensation, i.e., either stolen inheritance or the descendents’ trustee-like control over the slave’s estate, and this results in his not identifying the metaphysical and epistemic problems that accompany the descendant’s claim to reparations.  In analyzing whether the U.S. government owes compensation, Schedler provides arguments on its small role in bringing about slavery and the break in national identity that followed the Civil War.  Such arguments fail but his conclusion can be supported by other arguments, specifically the nature of the federal government’s relation to slavery and the limited nature of its powers.  Thus, the case against reparations is overwhelming but nor for the reasons Schedler thinks.  

The Logical Mistake of Racism
Joseph W. Long
Philosophy Department
Purdue University
1360 Liberal Arts and Education Building
West Lafayette, IN 47907-1360
jlong@purdue.edu

Abstract:In this paper, I will explore and attempt to define one very important type of egregious discrimination of persons, racism.  I will argue that racism involves a kind of logical mistake; specifically, I hope to show that racists commit the naturalistic fallacy.  Finally, I will defend my account of racism against two challenges, the most important of which argues that of racism is merely a logical error, then racists are not morally culpable.  

Concessions to Moral Particularism
Susan M. Purviance
Philosophy Department
The University of Toledo
Toledo, OH 43606-3390
spurvia@utnet.utoledo.edu

Abstract:In this paper, I examine the particularist attack on deductive use of moral principles, reviewing the critiques of the uniformity of moral reasons and impartiality in ethics, looking principally at arguments from Larry Blum, Jonathan Dancy, and Margaret Walker.  I defend the action-guiding-ness of moral principles themselves, but consider various ways to accommodate the objections coming from particularism.  I conclude that one objection to the impartialist theory of value must be conceded without qualification: generalism is unable to account for the unique and irreplaceable value of individual persons.  I present an example which supports my view and shows that, in the context of lived experience, replaceability is contradicted.  Indeed there may be few constants of value in the narrative of one’s life, as experiences overlay supposed constants with continual new shading, and create even deeper sorts of transformation in valuing.  In the end, both particularized moral judgment and the articulation of fact with principle contribute to moral discernment.  

Curing Iranian Occidentosis: Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s Poly-Methodic Prescription
Karen G. Ruffle
Department of Religious Studies
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC

Abstract:In this paper, I shall argue that during the period from the end of World War II until just before the Islamic revolution of 1979, a body of literature emerged critiqueing the petro-colonialism of the United States and select European countries, which infected Iran with a severe case of “occidentosis.”  This set the stage for the revolution, and a presentation of the principle author of occidentosis, Jalal Al-e Ahmad, will facilitate understanding of the Iranian intellectual tradition.  

Values and Science:Dewey and Pragmatist Inquiry
Andrew Ward
School of Public Policy
685 Cherry Street
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332-1345
Andrew.ward@pubpolicy.gatech.edu

Abstract:This essay argues for a pragmatist notion of inquiry which ties together science and morality into a seamless whole, pace David Hume, Gilbert Harman, and others who would separate science and morality as different kinds of inquiry.  

Volume 8, Number 2, Fall-Winter 2001  

What is Environmental Virtue Ethics that We Should Be Mindful of It?
Geoffrey B. Frasz
Philosophical and Regional Studies Department
Community College of Southern Nevada
6375 W. Charleston,
Las Vegas, NV 89146.
frasz@nevada.edu

Abstract:There has been increased interest in developing what I call environmental virtue ethics (EVE). This paper presents some of the central features of this project. The first part is a general description of EVE, showing why there is a need for it. The second part spells out the central features of EVE including an account of the good life as flourishing in an expanded or mixed biotic community, and provides a tentative list of important environmental virtues. The third part examines one virtue: friendship, showing how an understanding of it provides insight into current issues in environmental ethics. The final section addresses a challenge to the project of EVE.  

Environmental Virtue Ethics: An Aristotelian Approach
Eugene Schlossberger
Purdue University Calumet
Hammond, IN 46323
Esschlos@nwi.calumet.purdue.edu

Abstract:This paper articulates a framework, “E,” for developing ethical claims about environmental issues.  E is a general framework for constructing arguments and working out disputes, rather than a particular theory. It may be deployed in various ways by writers with quite different views to generate diverse arguments applying to a broad panoply of issues. E can serve as a common language between those who adopt anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric standpoints. E is anthropocentric in the sense that it begins with ideas about human excellence and human interests. Arguments employing E suggest that we, as human beings, have certain duties regarding the environment. Since it may also be true that various duties attach to being an organism of any stripe, that nature has intrinsic value, and so forth, arguments employing E can be seen as supplementing, rather than replacing, non-anthropocentric moral arguments.  Moreover, E is anthropocentric in its methodology but not necessarily in its results. Some accounts of human excellence yield the sorts of obligations that biocentrists advocate. As a result, arguments employing E can have force with both those who adopt and those who reject non-anthropocentric standpoints.  

Inner Diversity: An Alternative Ecological Virtue Ethics
Jason Kawall
Department of Philosophy and Religion
232 Holt Hall
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Chattanooga, TN 37403
Jason-Kawall@utc.edu

Abstract:I propose a modified virtue ethics, grounded in an analogy between ecosystems and human personalities.  I suggest that we understand ourselves as possessing changing systems of inter-related subpersonalities with different virtues, and view our characters as flexible and evolving.  

Neo-Confucian Cosmology, Virtue Ethics, and Environmental Philosophy
Donald N. Blakeley
Department of Philosophy
California State University, Fresno
Fresno, CA 93726
donald_blakeley@csufresno.edu

Abstract:This paper explores the extent to which the Confucian concept of ren (humaneness) has application in ways that are comparable to contemporary versions of environmental virtue ethics.  I argue that the accounts of self-cultivation that are developed in major texts of the Confucian  tradition have important direct implications for environmental thinking that even the Neo-Confucians do not seriously entertain.  

Environmental Virtue Ethics With Martha Stewart
William J. Ehmann
Director, Center for Earth and Environmental Science
Plattsburgh State University-SUNY
101 Broad Street
Plattsburgh, NY 12901
bill.ehmann@plattsburgh.edu

Abstract:Renewed philosophical discourse about virtue ethics motivates the search for examples to  inform and extend our thinking. In the case of environmental virtue ethics, I have decided to consult “America's Lifestyle Expert,” Martha Stewart. Oft dismissed as a pop icon or model of domesticity, Martha's business success is arguably a result of her claimed authority on what the good life entails and how we get it. Reviewing over 60 signed “Letters From Martha” from her monthly magazine Martha Stewart Living, (MSL) I explored her presentations of current environmental topics including biodiversity, obligations to animals, gardening, global warming, and reliance on technology. I find that her work ultimately makes managing a household interesting, and encourages her public to take personal pride in everyday tasks done well. These are trademark Martha Stewart “good things.” Moreover, by connecting with a large audience few philosophers or scientists ever court, she is poised to help us manage our larger planetary household (sensu Gr. “oikos”) and frame a quality of life for future generations.  

Comments on Frasz and Cafaro on Environmental Virtue Ethics
Thomas Hill, Jr.
3158 Chicken Bridge Road
Pittsboro, NC 27312
Thill@email.unc.edu

Abstract:Professor Hill delivered these comments as part of the International Society for Environmental Ethics panels on Environmental Virtue Ethics, held at  the annual meeting of the Pacific Division ofthe American Philosophical Association, April 2000, in Albuquerque, NM. Philip Cafaro’s paper “Thoreau, Leopold and Carson: Toward an Environmental Virtue Ethics” appears in  Environmental Ethics 23 (2001), 3-17. Geoffrey Frasz’s paper “What is Environmental Virtue Ethics That We Should Be Mindful of It?” is published as part of this special issue of Philosophy in the Contemporary World.  

A Morally Defensible Aristotelian Environmental Ethics: Comments on Gerber, O’Neill, Frasz and Cafaro on Environmental Virtue Ethics
James Sterba
Department of Philosophy
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556
James.p.sterba.1@nd.edu

Abstract:Professor Sterba delivered these comments at the International Society for Environmental Ethics panels on Environmental Virtue Ethics, at the annual meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association, April 2000, in Albuquerque, NM. The papers by L. Gerber, J. O’Neill and G. Frasz are published in Philosophy in the Contemporary World 8:3. P. Cafaro’s paper “Thoreau, Leopold and Carson: Toward an Environmental Virtue Ethics” was published in Environmental Ethics 23 (2001): 3-17.  

Attunement: An Ecological Spin on the Virtue of Temperance
Louke van Wensveen
Department of Theological Studies
Loyola Marymount University
Los Angeles, CA
lvanwens@lmu.edu

Abstract:Within an environmental virtue ethic belongs moderation for the sake of ecojustice. Named attunement, this virtue both resembles and differs from Aristotelian and Thomistic articulations of temperance. Principally expressed as frugality and moderation in diet, it includes: sensitivity to limits, acceptance of limits, joyous contentment, creativity, and readiness to sacrifice.

Environmental Virtues and Public Policy
John O’Neill
Centre for Philosophy
Institute for Environment, Philosophy and Public Policy
Lancaster University
Lancaster, LA1 4YG,
United Kingdom
j.oneill@lancaster.ac.uk

Abstract:The Aristotelian view that public institutions should aim at the good life is criticized on the grounds that it makes for an authoritarian politics that is incompatible with the pluralism of modern society. The criticism seems to have particular power against modern environmentalism, that it offers a local vision of the good life which fails to appreciate the variety of possible human relationships to the natural environment, and so, as a guide to public policy, it leads to green authoritarianism. This paper argues to the contrary that an Aristotelian position which defends environmental goods as constitutive of the good life is consistent with recognition of the plurality of ways our relations to the natural world can be lived. It is compatible with the recognition of distinct cultural expressions of such relations and of the special place particular histories of individuals and social groups have in constraining environmental policy.  

The Art of Intimacy
Lisa Gerber
University Honors Program
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87110
gerber@unm.edu

Abstract:This paper is an exploration of intimacy with non-human nature. I show that intimacy is like friendship in that it is a close and familiar relationships that develops over time and is marked by care and concern. Just as we have good reasons to value and promote friendships, we also have good reasons to value and promote intimacy with non-human nature.  

The Virtues of Hunting
Jon Jensen
Green Mountain College
Poultney, VT 05764
jensenj@greenmtn.edu

No Abstract

Abstract:Anti-hunters frequently overlook or underestimate the positive values associated with reflective sport hunting. In this essay I characterize the value of hunting in the context of an Aristotelian virtue ethic.  Sport hunting done for the purpose of recreation contributes heavily to the eudaimonia (flourishing) of hunters. I employ Aristotelian insights about tragedy to defend hunting as an activity especially well- suited for promoting a range of crucial intellectual and emotional virtues. Reflective sport hunters develop a “realistic awareness of death” and experience what may be called “tragic” pleasure, which yields the important intellectual virtue of tragic wisdom.  

Virtue Ethics and the Material Values of Nature
Kari Väyrynen
Academy of Finland
Department of History
University of Oulu
P.O. Box 1000
90014 Oulu, Finland
kari.vayrynen@oulu.fi

Abstract:For Aristotle, man is part of nature, a “political animal” with the faculty of reason. In this sense, Aristotelian virtue ethics can be said to relate virtues to nature. On the one hand, virtues lean on the natural dispositions of man as a social animal. On the other hand, virtues are connected to praxis, that is, with man’s active realization of his inherent biological, social and cultural potential. Recently, the material value ethics of Max Scheler and Nicolai Hartmann developed the Aristotelian tradition in a naturalistic direction, posing the problem of the value of life and connecting this question to the question of virtue. Virtues sensitize us to values and are, therefore, especially important for ethical praxis. I claim that precisely because of its historical and cultural concreteness, virtue ethics can be successfully applied to environmental issues. In critical connection with common mentalities, naturalistic virtue ethics can be a politically effective way of ethical thinking. Furthermore, we can avoid the trap of relativism by suggesting strong environmental values and virtues. An example would be the health of ecosystems and of humans.  

Analogical Extension and Analogical Implication in Environmental Moral Philosophy
Jeremy Bendik-Keymer
Philosophy Department
University of Chicago
1010 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
jbendik@uchicago.edu