Wilderness

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

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)

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.

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)

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)

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

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?

Natur erleben wir als etwas Gegebenes – und doch ist sie eine Projektion kultureller Ideen und gesellschaftlicher Ideale. So ist sie nicht nur ökologisches System, sondern auch vieldeutiges Symbol: ›locus amoenus‹ und ›locus terribilis‹, einerseits Wildnis und andererseits grandiose, heimatliche, heroische, idyllische Landschaft. Facettenreich und inspirierend stellen die Analysen zu verschiedenen Epochen und Kulturen (Deutschland, England, Frankreich, Holland, Italien, Ungarn, USA, China) die »Natur«-Zugänge unterschiedlicher Disziplinen vor.

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.

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)

The concept of wildness not only plays a role in philosophical debates, but also in popular culture. Wild nature is often seen as a place outside the cultural sphere where one can still encounter instances of transcendence. Some writers and moviemakers contest the dominant romanticized view of wild nature by telling stories that somehow show a different harsher face of nature. In encounters with the wild and unruly, humans can sometimes experience the misfit between their well-ordered, human-centered, self-created world view (...) and the otherness of nature, and in doing so face, what Plumwood calls, “the view from the outside.” Three films—Gerry, Into the Wild, and Grizzly Man—deal with contemporary encounters with wildness. What these works have in common is the central theme of modern humans who are fascinated by wild nature and seek experiences unknown to those limited to the overly cultivated life of modern society. Another connecting theme, however, is that any idealization of wildness is in itself deeply problematic. All three films have fatal endings, which in turn fascinates the contemporary viewers. These films show, first, that wildness is conceived as a moral counterforce against the overly civilized world; and, second, that fascination with this wildness has itself become thoroughly reflexive, and. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a systematic inquiry into the significance of Nietzsche’s philosophy to environmental ethics. Nietzsche’s philosophy of nature is, I believe, relevant today because it makes explicit a fundamental ambiguity that is also characteristic for our current understanding of nature. I will show how the current debate between traditional environmental ethics and postmodern environmental philosophy can be interpreted as a symptom of this ambiguity. I argue that, in light of Nietzsche’s critique of morality, environmental ethics is a (...) highly paradoxical project. According to Nietzsche, each moral interpretation of nature implies a conceptual seizure of power over nature. On the other hand, Nietzsche argues, the concept of nature is indispensable in ethics because we have to interpret nature in order to have a meaningful relation with reality. I argue that awareness of this paradox opens a way for a form of respect for nature as radical otherness. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a systematic inquiry into the significance of Nietzsche’s philosophy to environmental ethics. Nietzsche’s philosophy of nature is, I believe, relevant today because it makes explicit a fundamental ambiguity that is also characteristic of our current understanding of nature. I show how the current debate between traditional environmental ethics and postmodern environmental philosophycan be interpreted as a symptom of this ambiguity. I argue that, in light of Nietzsche’s critique of morality, environmental ethics is a highly paradoxical (...) project. According to Nietzsche, each moral interpretation of nature implies a conceptual seizure of power over nature. On the other hand, Nietzsche argues, the concept of nature is indispensable in ethics because we have to interpret nature in order to have a meaningful relation with reality. I show that awareness of this paradox opens a way for a form of respect for nature as radical otherness. (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 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 paper explores the Nazi view of nature as violent but orderly, contrasted with what the Nazis took to be the chaos and confusion of human society. In imposing strict authoritarian controls, the Nazis strove to emulate what they viewed as the natural discipline of instinct. They saw this as embodied in wild animals, especially large predators such as wolves, while the opposite were domesticated mongrels whose instincts, like those of overly civilized peoples, had been ruined through careless breeding. Those (...) who anticipated this view included Nietzsche and Kipling. The author finds the Nazi perspective best articulated by Nobel-laureate Konrad Lorenz, a member of the Nazi party and its Office for Race Policy, who believed that traits indicating genetic decline crossed species lines. He advocated correcting the alleged damage done to animals and people by civilization through eugenic controls. (shrink)

The received wilderness idea of nature as untrammelled by human beings has been accused of assuming an untenable human/nature dualism which denies the Darwinian fact that humans are a part of nature. But the meaning of terms like 'nature' and 'natural' depends on the context of use and the contrast class implied in that context. When philosophers such as J. Baird Callicott and Steven Vogel insist that the only correct view is that humans are a part of nature, they ignore (...) the perfectly ordinary context in which 'nature' is used to mean 'other than human'. What is at issue here are a priori grammatical rules which stand in no need of empirical justification. There is no incompatibility between the view that humans are a part of nature and the idea that nature is valuable because of its non-human origin. The essentialism about the word 'nature' endemic to this debate distracts from the real issue, which is the value of nature's wildness. (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.

Wilderness preservation is an important issue within the field of environmental ethics. In recent years wilderness has come under attack from people in a variety of different fields. These attacks would lead us to believe that wilderness as a concept is fatally flawed and that the practice of wilderness preservation is misguided. I examine some of the more important criticisms of wilderness coming from environmental philosophy, ecology, and environmental history. The legal-political practice of wilderness preservation reveals paradoxes about how wilderness (...) is preserved. Recent work in ecology leads us to question whether wilderness can be preserved. Philosophical and historical critiques cast doubt on whether there is any such thing as wilderness to be preserved. We are forced to re-examine the metaphysical and scientific underpinnings and moral values of wilderness, but the arguments advanced against it are all found to be wanting. Three questions steer the discussion: What is wilderness? Why does wilderness have value? How should wilderness be protected? The concept of wilderness denotes an important distinction between the more-than-human world and ourselves. Wilderness can have value because it is a significant location of the value-adding properties of naturalness and wildness. Respecting naturalness and wildness can help steer scientific goals and wilderness policies. (shrink)

This study of the writings of Henry Thoreau, John Muir, and Mary Austin focuses on the various paradigms they explored as they developed theories about humankind's relationship to wilderness. Thoreau evolved over the course of his three trips to Maine in 1846, 1853, and 1857 from a destructive pioneer understanding of wilderness towards a biocentric and Native American understanding of wilderness as home, though he never completely understood a Native American mindset and never found a paradigm that enabled him to (...) understand his disturbing epiphany on Mount Katahdin during his first trip. ;The esteemed preservationist John Muir moved beyond Thoreau in his wilderness philosophy as he studied a wide variety of paradigms from many disciplines. Over the course of forty years of reading and writing, he developed a philosophy that incorporated both creationism and evolution to explain the creative process but shunned the Calvinism of his father and purely mechanistic science, opting instead for a science that allowed for spiritual and intuitive insights. Though his vision of nature surpassed the most popular artistic, athletic, and scientific understandings of his time, he used tropes from these popular genres as he wrote to his Eastern audience. He rejected a Native American understanding of nature but was able to understand and appreciate the extremes of nature better than anyone writing before him. ;Mary Austin's wilderness writing diverged from that of Thoreau and Muir in her emphasis on human relationships to the desert. She studied a variety of people and their relationships to the land, including white men, who often lose their souls in the desert; white women, who usually bind themselves in society and never develop a relationship to the land; Native Americans, who live in harmony with the land but who also lead harsh lives; and Latin Americans, who, for Austin, combine the best of both white and Native American worlds so that they live in harmony with the land without facing the harsher exigencies. Her emphasis on the communal relationship to the land points the way towards "bioregional" ecophilosophies of our time. (shrink)

Captured in narrative textual form through open-ended and tape-recorded interview conversations, visitor experience was interpreted to construct a description of visitors' relationships to place while at the same time providing insights for those who manage the national park. Humans are conceived of as meaning-makers, and outdoor recreation is viewed as emergent experience that can enrich peoples' lives rather than a predictable outcome of processing information encountered in the setting. This process-oriented approach positions subjective well-being and positive experience in the ongoing (...) processes and activities that comprise our life pursuits rather than in particular end states toward which behaviors might be directed as in the case of end state frameworks. ;Several themes emerged in the interpretation across narratives including a relationship of stewardship/sense of respectful mitigation, socially constructed dimensions of the wilderness concept, which both converged with and deviated from definitions in The Wilderness Act of 1964, humans positioned as both part of wilderness and separate from it, description of a process whereby people form a relationship to protected places, and an awareness among visitors of the overarching management dilemma of how to balance human visitation with protection. Management insights and general implications that emerged from the overall interpretation such as using narrative illustration to enhance visitor education were summarized. ;It is suggested that the particularities of the setting , in conjunction with the process-oriented creation of meaning via varying levels of physical and social interaction with the setting each play important roles, perhaps at different times, for visitors' relationships to places within the Park. The process of forming long-term relationships to places is highlighted as the common thread running through the interpretation. The value of the national park is seen to lie in these relationships, which are time and context dependent, not necessarily in the attributes of the park, many of which are generic to other protected areas in North America. ;The dissertation concluded with an evaluation of this interpretation based on these implications and insights and provided direction for further research to learn about the processes involved with forming relationships to protected places. (shrink)

Wilderness valuation is the process of assigning qualitative or quantitative value or importance to wilderness lands. While many wild landscapes are designated as wilderness areas, as much as 125 million acres of wildlands remain mired in legislative inertia. Wilderness decisions could be accelerated with an adequate wilderness valuation system. A wilderness valuation theory is developed to provide for valuation system evaluations. Three meta-criteria from the theory correspond with the three dimensions of value theory suggested in the literature. The meta-criteria--philosophical foundations, (...) benefit assessments, and valuing methods, correspond respectively with the dimensions of value--value ideals, value-benefits, and value-worth. A taxonomy of wilderness value-benefits, which can be grouped into personal, social, and intrinsic benefit categories, plays an important role in understanding benefit assessments. Current and proposed wilderness valuation systems from politics, economics, social science, natural science, and ethics are described and evaluated across the meta-criteria with the strengths and weaknesses of each system outlined. A summary of the areas of congruence and divergence across the various valuation systems for each meta-criteria is also presented. This dissertation concludes that no definitive wilderness valuation system exists. Those valuation systems found to be most complete are legislative systems, public trust systems, and energy budget procedures. A public trust wilderness valuation system that utilizes a variety of other valuation systems as input is recommended as the best system currently available. Needs for further research include additional valuation evaluations, the development of ethical valuing methodologies to measure social and intrinsic benefits, and the development of a new quantitative metric that measures value by accounting for the time, effort, and sacrifice invested. (shrink)

The purpose of this study has been to investigate the nature and meaning of the experience of "communing with nature in wilderness." In this study I have used a phenomenological approach in obtaining and analyzing data from interviews with six adults . These men and women have spent extended periods of time in wilderness environments, and have reported having experiences which they could describe as "communing with nature in wilderness." In my analysis of the interview transcriptions I have found common (...) themes described by the interviewees which appear to make up the significant aspects of the experience. The principle themes fall into three chronologically occurring categories viz. heightened sensory awareness, heightened self awareness/emotional catharsis, and heightened spiritual awareness. ;For four of the subjects the experience began with working through fears generated by physical danger. In these cases the perceptual juxtaposition of danger and beauty served to awaken and stimulate the senses. For three of the subjects the experience began within the context of rituals derived from the traditional Native American vision quest, sweat lodge, and repetitive use of rattles with chants and songs. ;For all of the subjects interviewed, a heightened sensory awareness in the wilderness setting led to a personal, emotional catharsis which involved looking at their entire lives. This in turn led to a sense of being part of or connected to something larger than their physical selves. The process of acknowledging and opening up to this last aspect of the experience was considered highly positive and even healing. ;One unanticipated finding was that for three of the subjects, the experience stimulated a desire to be a parent. Two of these subjects were men; and they conceived their first children within one week of returning from the wilderness. Another interesting finding involved differences in how the men and women perceived and described the experience. The men tended to speak in terms of action, and the women in terms of being. ;The findings are discussed and evaluated in light of several important and relevant transpersonal psychological themes. They are also discussed with respect to clinical applications, implications for further research, and cultural changes. (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)

Together, these stories and images convey a sense of reverence for the landscape and the playful joy felt by those who paddle north.

How has the concept of wild nature changed over the millennia? And what have been the environmental consequences? In this broad-ranging book Max Oelschlaeger argues that the idea of wilderness has reflected the evolving character of human existence from Paleolithic times to the present day. An intellectual history, it draws together evidence from philosophy, anthropology, theology, literature, ecology, cultural geography, and archaeology to provide a new scientifically and philosophically informed understanding of humankind’s relationship to nature. Oelschlaeger begins by examining the (...) culture of prehistoric hunter-gatherers, whose totems symbolized the idea of organic unity between humankind and wild nature, and idea that the author believes is essential to any attempt to define human potential. He next traces how the transformation of these hunter-gatherers into farmers led to a new awareness of distinctions between humankind and nature, and how Hellenism and Judeo-Christianity later introduced the unprecedented concept that nature was valueless until humanized. Oelschlaeger discusses the concept of wilderness in relation to the rise of classical science and modernism, and shows that opposition to “modernism” arose almost immediately from scientific, literary, and philosophical communities. He provides new and, in some cases, revisionist studies of the seminal American figures Thoreau, Muir, and Leopold, and he gives fresh readings of America’s two prodigious wilderness poets Robinson Jeffers and Gary Snyder. He concludes with a searching look at the relationship of evolutionary thought to our postmodern effort to reconceptualize ourselves as civilized beings who remain, in some ways, natural animals. (shrink)

The contemporary concept of wilderness, which is central to environmental theory and activism, is both a help and a hindrance to government policy and to popular environmental beliefs. The Judeo-Christian religious tradition and Locke's property theory provides much of the western cultural and historical basis of humans' environmental attitudes that basically engender exploitation. I argue that a more precise interpretation of Genesis and of Locke reveals that both sources actually promote environmental stewardship while decrying ecological abuse. Next I analyze the (...) history and shortcomings of various wilderness concepts. These shortcomings are all forms of an exclusionist mentality and result in some harmful theoretical and practical applications. Some of these applications include the separation of humans from nature, and the propensity of governments and the public to allow ecological degradation in non-wilderness areas. Yet there are beneficial aspects to wilderness that contribute to a deeper understanding of human nature and our place in the world. Wilderness helps us to remember our wild and primal aspects that provide a connection with nature. In light of the perils and power of wilderness I offer a new, radical, inclusive, and expansive notion of wilderness that I name "dwellness." Dwellness is a normative ethical position where all areas upon the earth ought to be viewed by people in the same way as wilderness areas are currently viewed, but with some modifications. Unlike wilderness, dwellness includes humans within nature and also contains the idea of sustainable living practices. To support dwellness I turn to Martin Heidegger. By identifying the world as a place where we dwell and in which we belong, we come to a more profound understanding of Being, or existence, in general and of our own particular modes of being. By learning to look at the world in this new, yet old, way we may then understand how important and central is the world, a mode of Being, to the existence and maintenance of our Being. Finally, I answer some possible objections to dwellness. These objections revolve around problems of industrial pollution, which, under dwellness, would have to be considered natural. (shrink)