Value Pluralism and Consistency Maximisation in the Writings of Aldo Leopold: Moving beyond Callicott's Interpretations of the Land Ethic

Abstract

The seventieth anniversary of Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac (1949) approaches. For philosophers – environmental ethicists in particular – this text has been highly influential, especially the ‘Land Ethic’ essay contained therein. Given philosophers’ acumen for identifying and critiquing arguments, one might reasonably expect a firm grasp of Leopold's ideas to have emerged from such attention. I argue that this is not the case. Specifically, Leopold's main interpreter and systematiser, philosopher J. Baird Callicott, has shoehorned Aldo Leopold's ideas into differing monistic moral theories that ill serve a proper understanding. Against Callicott, my paper argues that Aldo Leopold embraces a robust moral pluralism, one that goes beyond mere pragmatics, and he does so while seeking a consistency maximisation of values. A new, improved understanding of Leopold's ideas thus emerges.