Description
Book SynopsisThis volume explores questions which emerge from considering the relationship between nature and ethics through philosophical, theological, ethical and environmental lenses. It will examine the nature (understood as essence or character) of ethics itself and whether nature (understood as natural world) has embedded in it a moral code, as well as examining how particular ethical/theological worldviews influence our treatment of nature. Is there an abstract, objective moral code in nature? If so, how do we gain access to this code of ethics? Is it only accessible through revelation, as in some religious traditions, or is this code of ethics more generally accessible to humanity? Indeed, does such an objective notion of ethics exist; could it be that ethics are a natural and subjective development? Is ethics a feature of nature, or have we invented it? There is, this volume might suggest, no consensus on these questions, as they at times divide and at times unite both the contributors to
Trade ReviewThis book is not just one more volume on the ethics of nature and the environment but is a profound philosophical and theological mining of selected classical and contemporary thinkers’ relevance for a truly transdisciplinary discourse about the entanglement of our images of nature and morality. Aristotle, Luther, Hegel, Nietzsche, Darwin, Freud and Murdoch meet each other and the reader in a demanding, rich, and thought-provoking dialogue on naturalism, artificiality, virtue, evolution and the painfully gripping question of how to cope with the “atmosfear” in times of anthropogenic climate and weather change. -- Sigurd Bergmann, , Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION: The Cross-Pollinating Discourses of Nature and Ethics Gary Keogh SECTION ONE: THE NATURE OF ETHICS 1.Aristotelian Virtue and the Freudian Challenge to Second Nature Isabel Kaeslin 2.The Moral Tragedy of the Biological Imperative: What Nietzsche can and cannot Teach us about the Evolution of Morality Scott M. James and Matthew C. Eshleman 3.On the Relevance of Evolutionary Biology to Ethical Naturalism Parisa Moosavi 4.A Gift or a Given? On the Role of Life in Løgstrup’s Ethics Robert Stern 5.Varieties of Naturalism: From Foot’s ‘Natural Goodness’ to Murdoch’s Non-Dogmatic Naturalism Maria Silvia Vaccarezza SECTION TWO: THE ETHICS OF NATURE 6.Un/natural Creation(s): Posthumanism, Biotechnology, and Exploring the (Place in) Nature of Humans and Artificial Life Scott Midson 7.An Ethics of Fidelity: Luther, Hauerwas and Environmental Activism Benjamin J. Wood 8.The Ethics of Atmosfear: Communicating the Effects of Climate Change on Extreme Weather Vladimir Jankovic & David M. Schultz 9.Hegel, Nature, and Ethics Alison Stone
