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Moral Habitat , livre ebook

State University of New York Press - Nancie Erhard

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156 pages

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Moral Habitat explores how our moral imaginations and moral norms have been shaped by and even cocreated with Earth in diverse biotic communities. Weaving together science and religion with indigenous and womanist traditions, Nancie Erhard uses examples from a variety of sources, including post-Cartesian science, the Old Testament, and the Mi´kmaq tribe of Eastern Canada. She demonstrates how each portrays the agency—including the moral agency—of the natural world. From this cross-cultural approach, she recasts the question of how we conceive of humans as moral agents. While written for "the sake of Earth," this thought-provoking book goes well beyond the issue of ecology to show the contribution that such an approach can make to pluralist ethics on a range of timely social issues.

Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Ethos as Moral Habitat

2. “The Great Community of Persons”

3. Agents of and Respondents to God

4. The Continuum

5. Reconsidering Human Moral Agency

6. Doing Ethics in a Moral Habitat

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

Sciences de la nature

Sciences de l'environnement

Vladimir Vernadsky

Ethics in religion

Informations

Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	01 février 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780791479858
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1598€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Moral Habitat

SUNY series on Religion and the Environment

Harold Coward, editor

Moral Habitat

Ethos and Agency for the Sake of Earth

Nancie Erhard

State University of New York Press

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu

Production by Ryan Morris Marketing by Michael Campochiaro

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Erhard, Nancie, 1957– Moral habitat : ethos and agency for the sake of earth / Nancie Erhard. p. cm. — (SUNY series on religion and the environment) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN13: 9780791471418 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Human ecology—Moral and ethical aspects. 2. Environmental ethics. I. Title.

GF80.E74 2007 179'.1—dc22

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2006027536

The Continuum

Ethos as Moral Habitat

Chapter Five: Reconsidering Human Moral Agency Chapter Six: Doing Ethics in a Moral Habitat Notes Bibliography Index

“The Great Community of Persons”

Agents of and Respondents to God

vii 1 11 35 45 57 71 93 111 135 143

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter One:

Chapter Two:

Chapter Three:

Chapter Four:

Contents

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Acknowledgments

I could not have wished for better mentors and companions on this jour ney. My special thanks go to Larry Rasmussen, for his gentle guidance and inspiration, and to my life partner Mauritz, for his love, generosity, and steadfast belief in me and this work. I would also like to thank William P. Brown, Daniel T. Spencer, and emillie m. townes, as well Nancy Berlinger, Cynthia MoeLobeda, and David Wellman. I owe more than I can repay to Isabelle Knockwood for her hospitality and honesty. Joyce RillettWood and Alan Cooper helped me fall in love with the Hebrew Bible. Marilyn Legge sparked my questions about moral agency and gave helpful advice. Paul Bowlby, AnneMarie Dalton, Joe Foy, and Fred Krieger were always there to keep me going when things got tough, as they did several times. I’d like to extend a special thanks to my mother, brother, and sisters, especially Susan, for their understanding when I couldn’t be there for them. Finally, to all the living beings at Red Brook Farm—particularly Pangur Ban, Tucker, Chaia, and Max—this is for you.

vii

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Introduction

n the early part of the twentieth century, George Santayana reported a I conversation he had with “a Californian” who told him that if the philosophers had lived among the California mountains, “their systems would have been different from what they are. Certainly very different from what those systems are which the European genteel tradition has 1 handed down since Socrates.” For anyone who has stood in the deep green twilight of a grove of giant redwood trees, his argument is not hard 2 to imagine. In Plato’s dialoguePhaedrus, Socrates declares that the trees and fields beyond the city walls of Athens have nothing to say to him. His teachers are men (and he means, indeed, men); his place is in the city streets. This was a philosophic endeavor bent on the discovery of univer sal truths and on transcendence of the vagaries of the physical world. In the presence of the redwoods, where a human being at full height stands nestled in the protruding roots of such a massive living creature, could a philosophy so singlemindedly concentrate itself on human thought and stature? Could anyone take seriously the idea that plants and animals were made for the sake of human beings? This is exactly the difference the mountains and trees would have made, according to this anonymous Californian, who characterizes the systems of “the philosophers” as “egotistical; directly or indirectly they are anthropocentric, and inspired by the conceited notion that man (sic), or human reason, or the human distinction between good and evil, is the center and pivot of the uni 3 verse.” The mountains and woods themselves, he said, “should make you at last ashamed to assert” such notions. That a geographic location, with its topography and forms of life, could make a difference to ethics is one idea I will explore in this work. It intertwines with another: that such things as mountains and woods can, do, and should exert a morally formative influence (shame in the reported

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Vladimir Vernadsky

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