Wilderness

Animals who live in cities must coexist with us. They are, as a result, entitled to the conditions of their flourishing. This article argues that, as the boundaries of cities and urban areas expand, the boundaries of our conception of captivity should expand too. Urbanization can undermine animals’ freedoms, hence their ability to live good lives. I draw the implications of an account of “pervasive captivity” against the background of the Capabilities Approach. I construe captivity, including that of urban animals, (...) as affecting a range of animal capabilities, understood as freedoms, and I address some tensions within Nussbaum’s treatment of human-animal conflicts. Using the Capabilities Approach as a guide, I will attempt to motivate a convergence between habitat preservation in urbanized environments, urban design guided by justice, and the individual freedoms of animals. (shrink)

Consequentialism is thought to be in significant conflict with animal rights theory because it does not regard activities such as confinement, killing, and exploitation as in principle morally wrong. Proponents of the “Logic of the Larder” argue that consequentialism results in an implausibly pro-exploitation stance, permitting us to eat farmed animals with positive well- being to ensure future such animals exist. Proponents of the “Logic of the Logger” argue that consequentialism results in an implausibly anti-conservationist stance, permitting us to exterminate (...) wild animals with negative well-being to ensure future such animals do not exist. We argue that this conflict is overstated. Once we have properly accounted for indirect effects, such as the role that our policies play in shaping moral attitudes and behavior and the importance of accepting policies that are robust against deviation, we can see that consequentialism may converge with animal rights theory significantly, even if not entirely. (shrink)

Urban animals can benefit from living in cities, but this also makes them vulnerable as they increasingly depend on the advantages of urban life. This article has two aims. First, I provide a detailed analysis of the concept of captivity and explain why it matters to nonhuman animals—because and insofar as many of them have a (non-substitutable) interest in freedom. Second, I defend a surprising implication of the account—pushing the boundaries of the concept while the boundaries of cities and human (...) activities expand. I argue for the existence of the neglected problem of pervasive captivity, of which urban wildlife is an illustration. Many urban animals are confined, controlled and dependent, therefore often captive of expanding urban areas. While I argue that captivity per se is value-neutral, I draw the ethical and policy implications of harmful pervasive captivity. (shrink)

Two prevalent assumptions in the philosophy of sport literature are that all sports are games and that all games are contests, meant to determine who is the better at the skills definitive of the sport. If these are correct, it would follow that all sports are contests and that a range of sporting activities, including nature sports, are not in fact sports at all. This paper first confronts the notion that sport and games must seek to resolve skill superiority through (...) consideration of sport activities that have no such aim. The reduction of sport to game is also shown to be untenable and due to misunderstanding the point of sport activities, specifically, why people engage in them. This leads to reconsideration of the dominance of an instrumental conception of sport and the pursuit of excellence as anthropomaximising efficiency. The Norwegian tradition of frilutsliv is explored as a counterpoint to both conventional and nature sport. (shrink)

We now have good reason to worry that many coastal cities will be flooded by the end of the century. How should we confront this possibility (or inevitability)? What attitudes should we adopt to impending inundation of such magnitude? In the case of place-loss due to anthropogenic climate change, I argue that there may ultimately be something fitting about letting go, both thinking prospectively, when the likelihood of preservation is bleak, and retrospectively, when we reflect on our inability to prevent (...) destruction. I then explore some of the ethical complications of this response. (shrink)

Review of the book Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea, and Human Life by George Monbiot, Penguin Books, London 2014.

Most people believe that suffering is intrinsically bad. In conjunction with facts about our world and plausible moral principles, this yields a pro tanto obligation to reduce suffering. This is the intuitive starting point for the moral argument in favor of interventions to prevent wild animal suffering. If we accept the moral principle that we ought, pro tanto, to reduce the suffering of all sentient creatures, and we recognize the prevalence of suffering in the wild, then we seem committed to (...) the existence of such a pro tanto obligation. Of course, competing values such as the aesthetic, scientific or moral values of species, biodiversity, naturalness or wildness, might be relevant to the all-things-considered case for or against intervention. Still, many argue that, even if we were to give some weight to such values, no plausible theory could resist the conclusion that WAS is overridingly important. This article is concerned with large-scale interventions to prevent WAS and their tractability and the deep epistemic problem they raise. We concede that suffering gives us a reason to prevent it where it occurs, but we argue that the nature of ecosystems leaves us with no reason to predict that interventions would reduce, rather than exacerbate, suffering. We consider two interventions, based on gene editing technology, proposed as holding promise to prevent WAS; raise epistemic concerns about them; discuss their potential moral costs; and conclude by proposing a way forward: to justify interventions to prevent WAS, we need to develop models that predict the effects of interventions on biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and animals’ well-being. (shrink)

introduction to the theme issue of Environmental Values on Rewilding in cultural layered landscapes. Rewilding projects, especially in culturally saturated landscapes, are often being opposed by those who deeply care about the old cultural landscapes (for cultural or ecological reasons). Indeed, some proponents of rewilding today fall back on the language that was developed by the early proponents of wilderness preservation, starting off from an opposition between wild nature and culture, and claiming that nature needs to be protected against human (...) domination, while also claiming the importance of wild nature as an antidote to the historical dominance that humans have had over the natural world. However, seeing cultural landscapes merely as ‘disturbed’ by humans fails to do justice to the way that human history and these landscapes are intimately intertwined. Therefore, other rewilding advocates feel that rewilding in cultural landscapes requires a fundamentally different approach. Rather than seeking to restore a situation of the past, for them, rewilding is fundamentally oriented towards the future and seeks to introduce wildness back into society. Despite these attempts to reconcile rewilding with concerns over landscape history, cultural identity and cultural heritage, clear tensions remain. The papers in this theme issue attempt to find connections between different perspectives on landscape and nature protection and contribute to the ongoing debate about the meaning and value of wildness and history in layered cultural landscapes. (shrink)

Rewilding is an increasingly popular strategy in landscape management, yet it is also controversial, especially when applied in culturally 'layered' landscapes. In this paper I examine what is morally at stake in debates between proponents of rewilding and those that see traditional cultural landscapes as worthy of protection. I will argue that rewilding should not only be understood as a conservation practice, but that we also need to understand its hermeneutic aspect. Rewilding implies a radical non-anthropocentric normative reinterpretation of landscape (...) and human history that calls for a critical re-examination of the cultural identities that are based on that history. (shrink)

У статті проаналізовано категорію дикості в поезії Олега Лишеги. Екокритична категорія дикості – як протилежність до цивілізованого, обжитого, людського – дає змогу окреслити основні ознаки лісу у поезії Лишеги як дикого, непередбачуваного, тваринного, магічного простору. Близька взаємодія суб’єкта лірики із лісовим ландшафтом створює глибшу ідентичність дикого лісу, який, отримавши голос, промовляє у тексті. Надзвичайно важливим для поета є збереження неприрученості, гармонійне співіснування світу природи і світу людей.

Should we help wild animals suffering negative impacts from anthropogenic climate change? It follows from diverse ethical positions that we should, although this idea troubles defenders of wildness value. One already existing climate threat to wild animals, especially in the Arctic, is the disruption of food chains. I take polar bears as my example here: Should we help starving polar bears? If so, how? A recent scientific paper suggests that as bears’ food access worsens due to a changing climate, we (...) should consider supplementary feeding. Feeding starving bears could meet ethical obligations to help wild animals suffering from climate change. But supplementary feeding may also cause harms, and lead to park-like management of some bear populations – a concern for those who care about the value of wildness. While this situation is in many ways intractable, I’ll make a tentative suggestion of a possible way forward for wildlife managers. (shrink)

Cheryl Hall has argued that framing of climate change must acknowledge the sacrifices needed to reach a sustainable future. This paper builds on that argument. Although it is important to acknowledge the value of what must be sacrificed, this paper argues that current frames about the environment falsely portray humans and the environment as in a zero-sum game, and in doing so ask people to give up the wrong things. This could undermine the public’s trust in environmentalism, and might even (...) create a backlash against action on climate change. I propose we need alternative framing that portrays humans as a keystone species, and highlights positive human activity. (shrink)

This chapter surveys and critically evaluates all the main arguments both for and against de-extinction. It presents a qualified defence of the claim that conservationists should embrace de-extinction. It ends with a list of do’s and don’ts for conservationist de-extinction projects.

Was ist Natur oder was könnte sie sein? Diese und weitere Fragen sind grundlegend für Naturdenken und -handeln. Das Lehr- und Studienbuch bietet eine historisch-systematische und zugleich praxisbezogene Einführung in die Naturphilosophie mit ihren wichtigsten Begriffen. Es nimmt den pluralen Charakter der Wahrnehmung von Natur in den philosophischen Blick und ist auch zum Selbststudium bestens geeignet.

This article offers two arguments for the conclusion that we should refuse on moral grounds to establish a human presence on the surface of Mars. The first argument appeals to a principle constraining the use of invasive or destructive techniques of scientific investigation. The second appeals to a principle governing appropriate human behavior in wilderness. These arguments are prefaced by two preliminary sections. The first preliminary section argues that authors working in space ethics have good reason to shift their focus (...) away from theory-based arguments in favor of arguments that develop in terms of pretheoretic beliefs. The second argues that of the popular justifications for sending humans to Mars only appeals to scientific curiosity can survive reflective scrutiny. (shrink)

The concept and values of wilderness, along with the practice of wilderness preservation, have been under attack for the past several decades. In _Rethinking Wilderness_, Mark Woods responds to seven prominent anti-wilderness arguments. Woods offers a rethinking of the received concept of wilderness, developing a positive account of wilderness as a significant location for the other-than-human value-adding properties of naturalness, wildness, and freedom. Interdisciplinary in approach, the book combines environmental philosophy, environmental history, environmental social sciences, the science of ecology, and (...) the science of conservation biology. (shrink)

Sehnsucht nach Natur ist in unserer Gesellschaft weit verbreitet. Wandern und Wildniscamps sind aktuelle Beispiele dafür. Die zahlreichen Naturfilme und Inszenierungen von Natur in der Werbung sind klare Indizien ihrer gesellschaftlichen Wertschätzung. Wie ist diese Wertschätzung von und Sehnsucht nach Natur zu erklären?

When considering the possibility of intervening in nature to aid suffering nonhuman animals, we can ask about moral philosophy, which concerns the actions of individuals, or about political philosophy, which concerns the apparatus of the state. My focus in this paper is on the latter, and, in particular, the proposal from Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka that nonhuman animals should be offered sovereignty rights over their territories. Such rights, among other things, seriously limit the occasions on which we might intervene (...) in the affairs of the sovereign “community” in question, even if such intervention is in the interests of some of its members. In this paper, I first outline Donaldson and Kymlicka’s proposal as well as (what I call) the failed state objection – the suggestion that, if nonhuman animals are to be considered sovereign, then their “communities” are failed states. I then critically examine Donaldson and Kymlicka’s responses to the failed state objection, arguing that they fail. However, I claim that the failed state objection, even if successful, is not fatal for Donaldson and Kymlicka’s account of nonhuman sovereignty, and that the objection could be read as an internal critique of their project. There are at least two ways that this could be so: First, we could retain a sovereignty account but nonetheless argue for day-to-day intervention to alleviate suffering in nature, or, second, we could argue that though nonhuman animals live in failed states, there are other good reasons to oppose day-to-day intervention. In closing, I compare Donaldson and Kymlicka’s claims about sovereignty to another recent proposal, namely, John Hadley’s account of nonhuman animals as property holders. I suggest that the two proposals are not so far apart, but suggest that neither is appropriate for immediate implementation. Instead, the focus of activists keen to deploy political tools to aid those nonhuman animals suffering in nature should be on changing the ways that nonhuman animals are perceived and treated more generally. On the simplest level, this means adopting veganism and encouraging those around us to do the same. (shrink)

This paper argues for retaining the concept of “wilderness” as a significant ethical category and considers arguments by J. Baird Callicott and William Cronon for abandoning it. Counters by Paul M. Keeling and Scott Friskics are evaluated and defended. Lastly, the paper recommends thinking of the term “wilderness” as belonging to a certain range of meanings on a spectrum of naturalness.

Wilderness experiences were celebrated by the Great Romantics, and figures such as Wordsworth and Thoreau emphasized the need to seek direct contact with the non-human world. Later deep ecologists accentuated the way in which wilderness experiences can spark moral epiphanies and lead to action on behalf of the natural environment. In recent years, psychological studies have manifested how the observations made by the Romantics, nature authors and deep ecologists apply to laypeople: contact with the wilderness does tend to lead to (...) epistemological, ontological and normative ‘epiphanies.’ This paper analyses four different umbrella terms with which to make sense of the content of wilderness experiences. First, mystical experience, peak experience and elevation are explored. Although all three offer promising models for explicating the nature of wilderness experiences, they also run the risk of reducing those experiences to sheer experiential hedonism.... (shrink)

The wilderness debate that has raged in American environmentalism since the 1990s has led to the valuation of less spectacular forms of nature than wilderness. This increasing interest in ordinary nature brings American environmental thought to an environmental ground more familiar to French ecologists. Although the wilderness idea that has focused on untrammeled places was difficult to integrate into the French philosophical landscape, reaching common ground could foster exchanges between American environmental ethics and French political ecology. More precisely, the renewal (...) of naturalism that emerged from the wilderness debate could inform French political ecology, which sometimes tends to reduce environmental problems to social issues. (shrink)

The notion of a spontaneous order has a long history in the philosophy of economics, where it has been used to advance a view of markets as complex networks of information that no single mind can apprehend. Traditionally, the impossibility of grasping all of the information present in the spontaneous order of the market has been invoked as grounds for not subjecting markets to central planning. A less noted feature of the spontaneous order concept is that when it is applied (...) to ecosystems it yields a reasonably strong environmental ethic. Thinking of ecosystems as spontaneous orders generates a presumption against interfering with their natural functioning in a manner that results in anthropogenic species loss. Such a presumption will permit some interventions in nature while precluding others. Environmental ethics could potentially make valuable use of the spontaneous order idea, without necessarily endorsing its traditional application to markets. (shrink)

Book review of "Marion Hourdequin. Environmental Ethics: From Theory to Practice. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. 256 pp.".

This is the first collection of essays in which European and American philosophers explicitly think out their respective contributions and identities as environmental thinkers in the analytic and continental traditions. The American/European, as well as Analytic/Continental collaboration here bears fruit helpful for further theorizing and research. The essays group around three well-defined areas of questioning all focusing on the amelioration/management of environmentally, historically and traditionally diminished landscapes. The first part deals with differences between New World and the Old World perspectives (...) on nature and landscape restoration in general, the second focuses on the meaning of ecological restoration of cultural landscapes, and the third on the meaning of the wolf and of wildness. It does so in a way that the strengths of each philosophical school—continental and analytic—comes to the fore in order to supplement the other’s approach. This text is open to educated readers across all disciplines, particularly those interested in restoration/adaptation ecology, the cultural construction of place and landscape, the ongoing conversation about wilderness, the challenges posed to global environmental change. The text may also be a gold mine for doctoral students looking for dissertation projects in environmental philosophy that are inclusive of continental and analytic traditions. This text is rich in innovative approaches to the questions they raise that are reasonably well thought out. The fact that the essays in each section really do resonate with one another directly is also intellectually exciting and very helpful in working out the full dimensions of each question raised in the volume. (shrink)

The following considers the role of historical fidelity in habitat reconstruction efforts. To what extent should habitat reconstruction be guided by the goal of recreating some past state of a damaged ecosystem? I consider Sarkar’s “replacement argument,” which holds that, in most habitat reconstruction efforts, there is little justification for appealing to historical fidelity. I argue that Sarkar does not provide adequate grounds for deprecating historical fidelity relative to other natural values such as biodiversity or wild nature.

American Wilderness Philosophy Wilderness has been defined in diverse ways, but most famously in the Wilderness Act of 1964, which describes it “in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape … as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is […].

This paper develops a historical and systematic typology of perceptions of wilderness that exist in contemporary western European cultures. After describing notions of wilderness associated with worldviews that emerged during the Enlightenment period and as a critical response to it, we outline four recent transformations of these traditional notions of wilderness: wilderness as an ecological object, as a place of nature's self-reassertion, as a place of thrill and as a sphere of amorality and meaninglessness. In our conclusion, we suggest what (...) practical relevance arises from such a nuanced understanding of the inherently ambiguous concept of wilderness. (shrink)

Even though artists and philosophers sometimes succeed in finding words for the meaning that places can have for us, we can never fully identify the meaning that places have for us. Nicole Note is right in arguing (using the work of Arnold Burms) that the ineffable plays a key role in the meaningful relations we have with the world, and that the experience of meaning can only emerge if there is a real risk that it fails to appear. Therefore, meaning (...) cannot be ‘produced’. I have argued, however, that we can be confronted with a far more radical loss of meaning when most at first meaningful interpretations of place turn out to be consciously produced by marketeers and lobbyists. Yet, even this very feeling of estrangement can lead us to a sensitivity for the otherness of nature as a transcendental source of meaning. (shrink)

This study examines some of the implications of guided wilderness trips against the theoretical framework of the sublime as Kant sets out in the Critique of Judgment. In particular, it focuses on the role of professional guides as providers of distancing protection from wild and dangerous nature—at the same time as they attempt to facilitate a possible aweinspiring encounter with nature in its wild otherness. This exercise of power by capital makes the guide an odd locus of power dynamics—at once (...) the site of complicity and resistance. Guides help generate revenue for industry, but they also may use their position to critique industry’s fable of human domination over nature. (shrink)

It has been argued by philosophers and cultural historians that the notion of wilderness as it has been developed in the West problematically separates—conceptually and practically—humans from wild nature. The human/wilderness dichotomy, it is said, potentially leads even well-intentioned, environmentally minded people to work for wilderness preservation at the expense of paying attention to our local, lived environment. Although Henry David Thoreau and John Muir are often taken to be key architects of the inherited notion of wilderness, I draw from (...) their differing descriptions of spending time in wild areas in orderto argue that Thoreau provides a view of the human-nature relationship that is not susceptible to this particular worry. Thoreau, much more than Muir, provides us with reasons to not ignore our local lived space in favor of protecting only more wild (i.e., less humanized) places. The contrast between the two does not diminish the value of Muir’s work, but it does remind us that key figures—Thoreau in this case—in the development of the dominant wilderness paradigm should not be set aside as unhelpful in our own efforts to better understand our relationship with local place. (shrink)

There is a complexity of entities and happenings embodied within the pillars that frame the doorways in our homes and support the broad flat spaces that form supermarkets and department stores. Each pillar speaks to the mythology encircling the origins of Gothic architecture; the ideas surrounding the shift from the trunks and boughs of the sacred grove toward the columns, arches, and vaults of church and cathedral. Each pillar embodies the evolution of life and the history of the Earth. Awakening (...) toward the relational agency at play within the “humanly derived” allows us to recognize this agency as akin to wildness and as William Cronon asserts, this kinship draws us closer to recognizing and responding to the wild in all that surrounds us. It also produces a shift in how we understand the concept of wilderness. It is not, as Cronon contends, a cultural construct, but a fluxing and complex gestalt that includes both human and more-than-human agency. (shrink)

There is a complexity of entities and happenings embodied within the pillars that frame the doorways in our homes and support the broad flat spaces that form supermarkets and department stores. Each pillar speaks to the mythology encircling the origins of Gothic architecture; the ideas surrounding the shift from the trunks and boughs of the sacred grove toward the columns, arches, and vaults of church and cathedral. Each pillar embodies the evolution of life and the history of the Earth. Awakening (...) toward the relational agency at play within the “humanly derived” allows us to recognize this agency as akin to wildness and as William Cronon asserts, this kinship draws us closer to recognizing and responding to the wild in all that surrounds us. It also produces a shift in how we understand the concept of wilderness. It is not, as Cronon contends, a cultural construct, but a fluxing and complex gestalt that includes both human and more-than-human agency. (shrink)

Nature is treated as a reality that is constituted by intersubjective cultural patterns of interpretation. Views of nature are interpreted as reflexions of cultural objectivity. By the example of nature as landscape and nature as wilderness, it is shown that even concrete nature appearing to be directly present has been culturally constituted. By the example of ecology, it becomes clear that cultural ideas direct not only aesthetic and moral but also theoretical judgements of nature. -/- Natur wird thematisiert als Realität, (...) die intersubjektiv durch kulturelle Deutungsmuster konstituiert wird. Naturauffassungen werden als Spiegel kultureller Objektivität interpretiert. Am Beispiel von Natur als Landschaft und Natur als Wildnis wird gezeigt, daß auch die konkrete Natur, die uns unmittelbar gegebenen erscheint, kulturell konstituiert ist. Am Beispiel der Ökologie wird deutlich gemacht, daß kulturelle Ideen nicht nur ästhetische und moralische, sondern auch theoretische Urteile über Natur leiten. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the important role played by landscape in the Christian religious imagination. It argues for the ambiguity of “landscape” in the sense that locales like forests, fields, and mountains are both geographic realities and imaginary realities. Many locales are considered powerful symbols of fear or desire. According to Simon Schama’s Landscape and Memory, “Landscapes are culture before they are nature; constructs of the imagination projected onto wood and water and rock.” This means that landscape is irreducibly historical (...) since it portrays the material world mediated through human experience. It is also inevitably linked with issues of power because it provides the physical features upon which human beings draw and shape unique identities and distinct worldviews. (shrink)

This astonishing book features over 150 unprecedented color photographs taken by Christian Ziegler himself as he trekked through wilderness on five continents to capture the diversity and magnificence of orchids in their natural habitats.

This essay addresses how the idea of wilderness is a point of conversation between environmental philosophy and environmental theology. This topic is approached through a conversation with the environmental philosophy of Martin Drenthen. First, I discuss the respective aims of environmental philosophy and environmental theology. Second, I summarise the work of Drenthen on wilderness and otherness. Third, I compare this vision of environmental philosophy and a theological concept of Divine Otherness. Finally I sketch how this exploration is part of a (...) theological account of wilderness. Taking seriously Drenthen's view that wilderness is the otherness at the intersection of nature and culture, wilderness can be understood as indicative of Divine Otherness. Thus wilderness is a unique place where theological and philosophical thinking traverse and challenge each other. (shrink)