The Incompleat Eco-Philosopher
Essays from the Edges of Environmental Ethics
Alternative formats available from:
Collected essays present Weston’s pragmatic environmental philosophy, calling for reconstruction and imagination rather than deconstruction and analysis.
Description
This collection of germinal work in the field by Anthony Weston presents his pragmatic environmental philosophy, calling for reconstruction and imagination rather than deconstruction and analysis. It is a philosopher's invitation to environmental ethics in an unexpectedly inviting and down-to-earth key. On the pragmatic view advanced here, environmental values are thoroughly natural—what else could they be?—and are open-ended and in flux. Rather than passing judgment on the world as it is, we are called to rediscover and remake the world as it might be. We require an environmental etiquette more than a formal ethic; an etiquette whose development must be an ongoing process; and a process in turn that is genuinely multicentric, challenging us to negotiate our place among the exuberant variety of living and other forms.
Anthony Weston is Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies at Elon University. His many books include A Rulebook for Arguments, Fourth Edition; A Twenty-first Century Ethical Toolbox, Second Edition; and How to Re-imagine the World: A Pocket Guide for Practical Visionaries.
Reviews
"Over the last two decades Anthony Weston's work has made a singular contribution to environmental philosophy. He has inspired a new generation of self-styled 'environmental pragmatists,' including myself, and encouraged others more still to awake from their dogmatic slumbers and tackle the harder problems of forming a more responsible relationship with the nonhuman world than had previously been addressed. Environmental philosophy would be a far poorer field without Weston's influence." — Andrew Light, George Mason University and Center for American Progress