Nature in Common?

Environmental Ethics and the Contested Foundations of Environmental Policy

Ben Minteer

• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781592137046, 9781592137039
• eBook ISBN: 9781592137053
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

This important book brings together leading environmental thinkers to debate a central conflict within environmental philosophy: Should we appreciate nature mainly for its ability to advance our interests or should we respect it as having a good of its own, apart from any contribution to human well being? Specifically, the fourteen essays collected here discuss the "convergence hypothesis" put forth by Bryan Norton—a controversial thesis in environmental ethics about the policy implications of moral arguments for environmental protection. Historically influential essays are joined with newly commissioned essays to provide the first sustained attempt to reconcile two long-opposed positions. Norton himself offers the book's closing essay.

This seminal volume contains contributions from some of the most respected scholars in the field, including Donald Brown, J. Baird Callicott, Andrew Light, Holmes Rolston III, Laura Westra, and many others. Although Nature in Common? will be especially useful for students and professionals studying environmental ethics and philosophy, it will engage any reader who is concerned about the philosophies underlying contemporary environmental policies.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• PART I Introduction
• 1 Unity among Environmentalists? Debating the Values- Policy Link in Environmental Ethics
• PART II The Convergence Hypothesis Debate in Environmental Ethics: The First Wave
• 2 Contextualism and Norton’s Convergence Hypothesis
• 3 Convergence and Contextualism: Some Clarifications and a Reply to Steverson
• 4 Why Norton’s Approach Is Insufficient for Environmental Ethics
• 5 Convergence in Environmental Values: An Empirical and Conceptual Defense
• 6 The Relevance of Environmental Ethical Theories for Policy Making
• PART III Expanding the Discussion: The Convergence Hypothesis Debate Today
• 7 Converging versus Reconstituting Environmental Ethics
• 8 Environmental Ethics and Future Generations
• 9 The Convergence Hypothesis Falsified: Implicit Intrinsic Value, Operational Rights, and De Facto Standing in the Endangered Species Act
• 10 Convergence in an Agrarian Key
• 11 Convergence and Ecological Restoration: A Counterexample
• 12 Does a Public Environmental Philosophy Need a Convergence Hypothesis?
• 13 The Importance of Creating an Applied Environmental Ethics: Lessons Learned from Climate Change
• 14 Who Is Converging with Whom? An Open Letter to Professor Bryan Norton from a Policy Wonk
• PART IV Reply by Bryan G. Norton
• 15 Convergence and Divergence: The Convergence Hypothesis Twenty Years Later
• Contributors
• Notes
• Index