Abstract
Much of the literature addressing environmental virtue tends to focus on what might be called “personal virtue”—individual actions, characteristics, or dispositions that benefit the individual actor. There has, in contrast, been relatively little interest in either “virtue politics”—collective actions, characteristics, or dispositions—or in what might be called “public virtues,” actions, characteristics, or dispositions that benefit the community rather than the individual. This focus, however, is problematic, especially in a society that valorizes individuality. This paper examines public virtue and its role in environmental virtue ethics. First, I outline different types of virtue in order to frame the discussion of public virtues and, in particular, a subclass of virtues I will refer to as political virtue. Second, I focus on practical problems and address the inadequacy of personal virtue for effecting social change and, therefore, for addressing most environmental crises. Finally, I argue that public and political virtues are necessary, if under emphasized, conditions for the flourishing of the individual, and that they are important complements to more traditional environmental virtues.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
My thanks to Dr. Gitty Amini and Ms. Whitney Chelgren, as well as Phil Cafaro, Ronald Sandler, and the anonymous reviewers for The Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
“Political virtues” are distinct from “virtue politics,” as will become clear in what follows. In brief, political virtues are virtues possessed by an individual that express themselves in the political arena, broadly defined. Virtue politics, in contrast, would be the attempt to think of public policy and group action in terms of virtue and vice. Sofia Vaz—of the Center for Environmental and Sustainability Research at the New University of Lisbon, Portugal—offered an intriguing analysis of the possibility of a virtue politics in her “Conditions of Possibility of a Virtue Politics Applied to Responsible Consumption,” a paper presented at the 2008 meeting of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy (IAEP).
While it is true that Hardin made this comment in 1977 and that there has been increased interest in environmental public policy since that time, it remains the case that public conduct and public virtue is under-analyzed in environmental virtue ethics.
Thoreau himself only “imagines such societies fleetingly and poetically” (Cafaro 2004, p. 196).
Among thinkers who do address public virtues we might mention Aristotle (The Nicomachean Ethics, Politics), Sandler (Character and Environment), Dagger (Civic Virtues), and others. In addition, one of the reviewers for the JAEE brought to my attention James Connelly’s forthcoming Sustainability and the Virtues of Environmental Citizenship (Routledge 2009), which appears to address the matter at issue here. However, while these and other works do address public and political virtue, I’m still struck by the emphasis on personal virtues exhibited in both academic and, especially, popular discourse, as Sandler himself points out in the next citation.
Sandler treats the social context of flourishing and/or the role of activism in several passages (e.g., Sandler 2007 , pp. 45–46 and 49–50). His “pluralistic teleological account” of the virtues makes particular mention of both the good functioning of the social group and of noneudaimonistic ends (Ibid., 28, 63–83).
This is an observation rather than a criticism, as my own approach to virtue ethics tends to be eudaimonistic in character.
Dick Cheney made this claim in a speech in Toronto, Canada on April 30, 2001.
Facebook, including the “green leaves,” is in most cases not really a conversation between two genuine friends, in either the rarified Aristotelian sense of true friendship or even the contemporary, quotidian sense of friendship. Many facebook users have hundreds, even thousands, of “friends.” Surely enumerating one’s virtues in such a context has an element of braggadocio. Aristotle points out that real friendships are very rare (Aristotle 1925, pp. 197 and 243).
Political engagement serves as a virtue in at least two senses. First, with “engage” taken as a transitive verb, it the virtue of active concern for the political issues and well being of one’s community. It indicates a mean between apathy (a lack of concern with those issues) and fanaticism (an intense and often irrational devotion to a particular perspective on those issues). Second, with “engage” taken as an intransitive verb, it is the virtue of active involvement with civic and political life. Here it indicates a mean between passivity (an unwillingness to act) and zealotry (a willingness to act precipitously or rashly). Although there is often an overlap of these virtues and vices, they are conceptually distinct. For example, it is possible to be a fanatic who is irrationally committed to an idea without being a zealot who acts in support of that idea. Likewise, it is possible to be engaged in the first sense but not in the second (e.g., an intellectually engaged professor who has thoughtful and educated positions on issues, but who does not act in support of her intellectual commitments).
This is true whether the emphasis is on the benefit for the agent in question (e.g., cultivating a “virtue” solely for the benefits one derives from it) or on the benefit for individuals, generally speaking, rather than the community. In both cases, we tend to focus on the relationship between the individual and the environment, to the relative neglect of the relationship between the individual and the community and the relationship between the community and the environment. This is not usually an issue of omitting attention to (or cultivation of) a certain class of virtues in either the popular or the academic sphere. Rather, the issue has to do with what sorts of virtues are emphasized. Eudaimonism, to which I subscribe, tends to focus on individual flourishing and the relationship of the individual to the environment. However, our current social, economic, and environmental contexts should, if anything, cause us to emphasize the public and political virtues that are at issue here.
I am not making the obvious point that, from the perspective of virtue ethics, flourishing and the virtues that constitute it are, to some extent, socially constructed. Rather, the point is that there are virtues that are directed at the well functioning of the community or social group rather than the flourishing of the individual (although the individual may well flourish as a result of practicing those virtues).
Indeed, I myself am interested in the uses of virtue ethics for environmentalism, and I support this belief in the power of virtuous examples. See Treanor 2008.
“Conscience [particularly in the case of the population problem] is self-eliminating” (Hardin 1968, p. 1246).
Of course, in some contexts, it may be the case that political virtue is closer to the vice of zealotry than to the vice of apathy. As renowned environmentalist and political activist David Brower once quipped, “I was not always unreasonable, and I am sorry for that.” On the distinction between fanaticism and zealotry, see note 11 above.
Thoreau goes on to exhort us to “cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence” (Ibid., 76).
There are thinkers who have suggested the possibility of pursuing environmental rights on the model of civil rights (which, presumably, therefore would be codified like civil rights). See, for example, Bullard 2008.
I must admit that it pains me to write these words. I confess that I remain enamored by “frontier” virtues. Perhaps more than most of my environmental friends and colleagues, am seduced by the idea of an “escape” to some form of independent self-sufficiency in the wild. My own life and my own environmentalism has, to a large degree, been shaped by this romantic notion. Though I admire Brower—who was himself inspired to environmentalism by a youth spent backpacking and climbing in the Sierra Nevada—my own heart and imagination are with Thoreau and Muir. Moreover, I do not repudiate this idea or the virtues that go with it, at least not completely. My argument here is that we must not remain captive of these notions of virtue and flourishing in a context that has radically changed. Bill McKibben illustrates, in the Introduction to the new edition of his groundbreaking The End of Nature, the necessity of getting beyond the idea of individual answers to the environmental crisis. “[Writing The End of Nature] in 1989, with the solipsism of someone in his mid-twenties, I focused on individual human efforts—smaller families, reduced consumption, and so on. I still think these are important, but I’ve come to think that equally important changes lie elsewhere: in the direction of stronger, tighter communities” (McKibben 2006, p. xxiii). McKibben’s recent work, political and academic, bears the mark of this new orientation (see 350.org and McKibben 2007).
A play on David Brower’s clever remark, regarding business ethics, that “there is no business to be done on a dead planet.”
Aristotle goes so far as to suggest a “unity of the virtues” under the rubric of phronesis in The Nicomachean Ethics (Book VI, 13). Although Sandler points out the importance of “virtues of environmental activism,” including “character traits such as commitment, astuteness, discipline, attentiveness, discernment, fortitude, creativity, courage, self-control, cooperativeness, patience, solidarity, perseverance, and optimism” (Sandler 2007, p. 49).
See, for example, Schellenberger and Nordhaus 2008.
Not all political engagement encourages or exhibits benevolence. It seems clear that our current political climate—dominated as it is by spin culminating in outright lies, AM talk radio that doesn’t even rise to the level of sophistry, “swift boat” attacks that target irrelevant aspects of candidates’ records (including the vices of their extended families), and similar tactics—is more characterized by churlishness or contentiousness. However, although people from both ends of the political spectrum contribute to this phenomenon, complaints about the state of politics indicate that many people realize that this type of politicking is vicious.
While this is no longer strictly true due to the size of the polis—the United States having recently passed the 300,000,000 mark—the underlying insight, that friendliness and friendship are the basis for communitas, remains true. Think of the difference between communities where neighbors are friendly with each other and “communities” where neighbors are indifferent or hostile to each other. The former groups exhibit a cohesiveness that makes them real communities; the latter concatenations of people hardly deserve the name community.
Aristotle agrees, at least concerning friendliness. “It implies no passion or affection for one’s associates” (Aristotle 1925, p. 99).
He continues, “…in poverty and in other misfortunes men think friends are the only refuge. It helps the young, too, to keep from error; it aids older people by ministering to their needs and supplementing the activities that are failing from weakness; those in the prime of life it stimulates to noble actions… for with friends men are more able both to think and act” (Ibid.).
Marcel (1995) believes that the possibility of despair is the precondition for hope; if we could not despair there would be no need for hope.
Aristotle claims that the good or bad fortune of our friends and descendents “seem to have some effect on the dead,” but concludes that the effects are “of such a kind and degree as to neither make the happy unhappy nor to produce any other change of the kind” (Aristotle 1925, p. 23). However, it seems more probable that the likely fate of those who will outlive us or come after us will impact our happiness and flourishing while we still live. That is to say, the possibility or likelihood of one’s friends and children suffering as a consequence of one’s actions (or inaction) is likely to have some impact on one’s well-being. It would be difficult to really flourish if you suspected that you were part of the last generation to participate in a certain culture. Imagine, for example, being the last speaker of a dying language.
References
Aristotle (1925). Nicomachean ethics. (trans: David Ross ). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1925.
Aristotle (1946). Politics. (trans: Ernst Barker). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bullard, R. D. (2008). Overcoming racism in environmental decision making. In L. P. Pojman & P. Pojman (Eds.), Environmental ethics: Readings in theory and application. Belmont, CA: Thompson Wadsworth.
Cafaro, P. (2004). Thoreau’s living ethics: Walden and the pursuit of virtue. Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press.
Cafaro, P. (2005). Gluttony, Arrogance, Greed, and Apathy: An Exploration of Environmental Vice. In R. Sandler & P. Cafaro (Eds.), Environmental virtue ethics. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
Dagger, R. (1997). Civic virtues: Rights, citizenship, and republican liberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Donne, J. (2008). “No man is an Island”. In Devotions upon emergent occasions. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publications.
Franz, G. (2005). Benevolence as an environmental virtue. In R. Sandler & P. Cafaro (Eds.), Environmental virtue ethics. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162(3859), 1243–1248.
Hardin, G. (2008). Who cares for posterity? In L. P. Pojman & P. Pojman (Eds.), Environmental ethics: Readings in theory and application. Belmont, CA: Thompson Wadsworth.
Hull, Robert. (2005). All about EVE: A report on environmental virtue ethics today. Ethics and the environment, 10(1), 89–110.
James, W. (1956). The will to believe. New York: Dover.
Marcel, G. (1995). On the ontological mystery. In The philosophy of existentialism. (trans: Manya Harari). New York: Citadel Press.
McKibben, B. (2006). The end of nature. New York: Random House.
McKibben, B. (2007). Deep economy: The wealth of communities and the durable future. New York: Holt.
Ostrom, E. (2001). Reformulating the commons. In J. Burger, E. Ostrom, R. B. Norgaard, D. Policansky, & B. D. Goldstein (Eds.), Protecting the commons: A framework for resource management in the Americas. Washington: Island Press.
Plato (1968). The republic. (trans: Allan Bloom). New York: Basic Books.
Ricoeur, P. (1991). From text to action: Essays in hermeneutics II. (trans: Kathleen Blamey & John B. Thompson). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Sandler, R. (2007). Character and environment: A virtue-oriented approach to environmental ethics. New York: Columbia University Press.
Schellenberger, M., & Nordhaus, T. (2008). Breakthrough: From the death of environmentalism to the politics of possibility. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Thoreau, H. D. (1973). “Resistance to civil government.” In The writings of Henry David Thoreau: The higher law. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Tocqueville, A. (2001). Democracy in America. New York: Signet Classics.
Treanor, B. (2008). Narrative environmental virtue ethics: Phronesis without a phronimos. Environmental Ethics, 30(4), 361–380.
Wensveen, L. Van (2000). Dirty virtues: The emergence of ecological virtue ethics. Humanity Books.
Wensveen, L. Van (2005). The emergence of ecological virtue language. In R. Sandler & P. Cafaro (Eds.), Environmental virtue ethics. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Treanor, B. Environmentalism and Public Virtue. J Agric Environ Ethics 23, 9–28 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-009-9184-3
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-009-9184-3