Environmental Virtue Ethics

There is one certainty regarding the human relationship with nature-there is no getting away from it. But while a relationship with nature is a given, the nature of that relationship is not. Environmental ethics is the attempt to determine how we ought and ought not relate to the natural environment. A complete environmental ethic requires both an ethic of action and an ethic of character. Environmental virtue ethics is the area of environmental ethics concerned with character. It has been an underappreciated and underdeveloped aspect of environmental ethics-until now. The selections in this collection, consisting of ten original and four reprinted essays by leading scholars in the field, discuss the role that virtue and character have traditional played in environmental discourse, and reflect upon the role that it should play in the future. The selections also discuss the substantive content of the environmental virtues and vices, and apply them to concrete environmental issues and problems. This collection establishes the indispensability of environmental virtue ethics to environmental ethics. It also enhances the breadth and quality of the ongoing discussion of environmental virtue and vice and the role they should play in an adequate environmental ethic.