Servant-Leaders as Co-Laborers: A Field Philosophy Model

Abstract

In 2013, Professor R. Edward Freeman joked about his father’s sarcastic witticism in response to his choice of career. The joke is not that philosophy is a feckless art, but rather that its modern practice has been relegated to the realm of theory, with incredibly salient subject matter but a practice that is seemingly ineffectual in the everyday world. Justice is one such area of interest for philosophers; however, abstract theoretical or philosophical justice, especially in relation to environmental resources and in consideration of environmental relationships, is increasingly meaningless for contemporary society. Environmental injustice is lived and experienced, it is realized by marginal populations every day (Shiva, 2006). Philosophers working on environmental justice must both understand and enter into this reality to do effective work. In other words, work done on environmental justice must be first and foremost practice-oriented. The overarching title that has been ascribed to this new branch is “field philosophy,” but the conversation is only nascent concerning how and what philosophy in the field looks like for traditional philosophers (Frodeman, 2010). To that end I have constructed a model that aims to fold together justice as praxis, with the deep and historical roots of philosophy as community-life. This model is built upon the tenets of servant-leadership practice, as promulgated by Robert Greenleaf (2002), and addresses both the practical and theoretical elements of environmental justice in an effort to enhance philosopher’s utility as servant-leaders. Here I argue for two reasons why servant-leadership serves as the basis for this field philosophy model. The first is because of the overlap in the pursuits of environmental justice philosophers and those of servant-leaders while the second is because the actions of those doing the work of environmental justice philosophy most often display servant-leadership qualities. Servant-leaders who work with the aim of improving the lives of the least privileged and most disadvantaged in society, working to make others more free, autonomous, wise, and healthy (Greenleaf, 2002). For field philosophers in environmental justice I call this the practice of co-laboring with the marginalized and oppressed. In this paper, I present two such co-laborers who have engaged in the work of field philosophy for environmental justice as servant-leaders: Marisol de la Cadena and Adam Briggle. Their efforts support and explain the model offered here, which others could emulate and adopt in pursuit of environmental justice reforms as servant-leaders.