Environmental Philosophy Research Articles

Environmental philosophy in Asia: Between eco-orientalism and ecological nationalisms

Environmental philosophy – broadly conceived as using philosophical tools to develop ideas related to environmental issues – is conducted and practised in highly diverse ways in different contexts and traditions in Asia. ‘Asian environmental philosophy’ can be understood to include Asian traditions of thought as well as grassroots perspectives on environmental issues in Asia. Environmental issues have sensitive political facets tied to who has the legitimacy to decide about how natural resources are used. Because of this, the works, practices, and researchers in Asian environmental philosophy are exposed to being (mis)used by diverse stakeholders and actors to support political ends not related to environmental sustainability. Two processes are at play at the nexus of the construction of identities in relation to conceptualisations of nature: eco-orientalism and ecological nationalisms. This paper analyzes and exemplifies these dynamics through a conceptual framework that distinguishes ideological and socio-technical explanations of environmental degradation. Finally, to minimise the risks of political misuse, five pathways are presented to carefully help curate environmental, philosophical statements: contextualise, quantify uncertainty and ‘uniqueness’, downscale, confront claims with local realities and literature, and collaborate with researchers from other disciplines. Conjointly, these pathways aim at favouring intercultural collaboration while valuing diversity, thus supporting the development and exchanges in environmental philosophy in Asia and beyond.

Intercultural Philosophy: A Reconstruction and Reimagining

Eric S. Nelson is an expert on Chinese Philosophy and Continental Philosophy. In this interview, Eric S. Nelson answers questions about the meaning of philosophy, its Eurocentric interpretations and his work on both traditions. His work presents an intercultural approach to different figures and traditions of philosophy. In the interview, Nelson also explains his recent book on Daoism and Environmental Philosophy: Nourishing Life and Heidegger and Dao.

Hazardous Hope

This special section seeks to reconsider our troubled times and their histories of irreversible toxic pollution through the lens of hopeful yet critical ways of engaging with this unprecedented condition of life. Thinking with “hazardous hope” as a tool of analysis, the five contributions—combining perspectives from ecocriticism, environmental philosophy, film studies, visual arts, and history—showcase alternative presents and futures of living responsibly with a permanently polluted planet. Writing from the perspective of hazardous hope, the section’s editors argue, includes a plethora of conceptual and methodological repositionings to embrace the ambiguity that comes with living responsibly on a permanently polluted planet. Among them is a shift in focus on the acts and modes of hazardous hope as a relational practice that is focused on reorganizing established processes in radically different ways rather than wishing to achieve a predefined outcome, while at the same time remaining mindful of the polluted status quo. Contributions in this special section are situated across the entire troubled planet, from Chernobyl’s exclusion zone to Brazilian oil fields and from Canada’s tar sands to British asbestos-loaded homes.

Teaching Philosophy of Teachers and Classroom Learning Environment of Public Elementary Schools in Panabo City Division

Teaching Philosophy of Teachers and Classroom Learning Environment of Public Elementary Schools in Panabo City Division

Moral underpinnings of accounting for nature in the global North

PurposeEnvironmental philosophies have guided cultures throughout history and continue to do so. This paper uses a framework of environmental philosophies drawn from history and the present, to analyse contemporary corporate environmental reporting. The purpose of this paper is to interrogate the philosophical underpinnings of corporate reporting allows for a nuanced understanding of the relationship between corporate activities and nature, and in so doing demonstrates the moral practices of accounting for nature.Design/methodology/approachThree themes are extracted from a historical review of western environmental philosophy: dualism, transcendence and interconnectivity. These themes are applied to a sample of corporate environmental reports through discourse analysis, enabling the illustration of otherwise obscured moral characteristics of the corporate relationship with the natural environment.FindingsThis paper uses environmental philosophies to better understand some of the implicit messaging of corporate environmental reporting. Evidence of each of the three themes is found in a sample of environmental reports, predominantly dualism and interconnectivity.Research limitations/implicationsUnderstanding that accounting is not just a technical, but also a social and moral practice expands the way the authors can interpret the outcomes of accounting. By presenting an exemplar of how accounting practice such as the corporate sustainability report can be analysed through a moral lens, this paper offers new insights intentioned to inform a more meaningful approach to environmental reporting.Originality/valueA novel framework to explore the corporate sector’s relationship with the natural environment is presented. In light of current and predicted environmental changes, much of which has been attributed to the impact of corporate activities, the importance of a detailed explication of this relationship – such as the one proposed here – becomes imperative.

Written with the Forest

In June 2021, as research for a novel about humans and forests, I undertook a commitment to walk in the forests of Gebhurr (Mount Macedon) every day for one year, and to document the thoughts arising from each day’s encounter as an in-situ drafting exercise; in essence, to attempt to write the forest–or my experience of it. Out of this structured entanglement with the poetic possibilities of place, a novel arose. Poststructuralists have long queried the idea of the author as a text’s single originating point, just as ecologists and environmental philosophers have questioned the unique status of human subjectivity in relation to wider notions of ecological thoughtfulness. In this article, I will briefly consider what is meant by the term ‘forest’ and its history as a metaphoric terrain, before describing my own year-long in situ forest writing project. In interpreting this, I draw on existing frameworks that explore the blurred boundaries between environment and human thinking, including Freya Matthew’s ontopoetics, Vicki Kirby’s grammared biologies, and Australian Indigenous notions of narratively-patterned environments, as well as thinkers of European forests such as Bachelard and Heidegger. I draw widely from the existing research into the relationship between forests and human creativity, in order to argue that the forest may hold a legitimate claim to authorial acknowledgement of works developed within its realm.

NATURAL REFLECTIONS: UNVEILING THE ECOCRITICAL LAYERS IN EAST OF EDEN BY JOHN STEINBECK

John Steinbeck’s East of Eden goes beyond just being a great tale because of the complex ecological topics it explores. The purpose of this research paper is to deconstruct the novel’s ecocritical layers by analysing Steinbeck’s use of landscape and environmental components to communicate moral and philosophical thoughts. The article places East of Eden in the context of Steinbeck’s larger environmental philosophy, drawing attention to his profound affinity with nature and ecological concerns. After that, it examines the novel’s lush geography, looking at how the many natural locations shown in the story affect people and what happens. Moreover, the article delves into the themes of memory and the natural environment in the East of Eden, shedding light on how ecological experiences and memories of specific places impact the growth of characters and resonate themes. This study analyses Steinbeck’s use of nature to reflect human nature, morality, and the complexity of life through an analysis of important passages and characters. This article uses ecocritical theory and literary analysis to provide a detailed study of how the East of Eden is an ecological allegory that encourages readers to think about our place in the natural world and the moral consequences of being good stewards of it. In the end, it contends that Steinbeck’s work goes beyond just telling a story and provides deep ecological lessons, making readers question where they fit into the greater biological web of life.

Las poetas afrocolombianas del Pacífico y la reconstrucción del territorio: una mirada desde la filosofía africana, la teoría ecocrítica africana y el <i>ecowomanism</i>

Afro-Colombian women poets, by their poetry, reveal the relationship of human beings with their environment They present the interconnection and interdependence of all living and non-living beings, and show how the protection and care of the environment are key aspects for humanity. In this paper, I analyze the poetry works of Sonia Nadhezda Truque and María Elcina Valencia Córdoba whose poems reflect their experiences and views on the environment affected by violence, displacement, and the conditions of race, gender, and class. I contend that both poets demonstrate an ethic and interconnection with their territories, evidencing their cosmovision of the self and their connection with the earth and nature, as reflected in the African environmental philosophy. I argue that within their poetry, there are aspects of African-ecocriticism and ecowomanism theories due to their experience as environmental activists, women, and members of the African Diaspora.

An elemental ethics for artificial intelligence: water as resistance within AI’s value chain

AbstractResearch and activism have increasingly denounced the problematic environmental record of the infrastructure and value chain underpinning artificial intelligence (AI). Water-intensive data centres, polluting mineral extraction and e-waste dumping are incontrovertibly part of AI’s footprint. In this article, I turn to areas affected by AI-fuelled environmental harm and identify an ethics of resistance emerging from local activists, which I term ‘elemental ethics’. Elemental ethics interrogates the AI value chain’s problematic relationship with the elements that make up the world, critiques the undermining of local and ancestral approaches to nature and reveals the vital and quotidian harms engendered by so-called intelligent systems. While this ethics is emerging from grassroots and Indigenous groups, it echoes recent calls from environmental philosophy to reconnect with the environment via the elements. In empirical terms, this article looks at groups in Chile resisting a Google data centre project in Santiago and lithium extraction (used for rechargeable batteries) in Lickan Antay Indigenous territory, Atacama Desert. As I show, elemental ethics can complement top-down, utilitarian and quantitative approaches to AI ethics and sustainable AI as well as interrogate whose lived experience and well-being counts in debates on AI extinction.

Gagarin Sixty Years Later: Earth and Place after Heidegger and Levinas

Abstract In this article I re-examine the well-known distinction between rootedness and uprootedness that Emmanuel Levinas draws in his short text “Heidegger, Gagarin and Us” (1961). This distinction addresses the relation between men and place either as an attachment to place (paganism, Heidegger) or as a freedom with regard to place (Judaism, Gagarin). I question this opposition from a contemporary perspective in environmental philosophy, namely from the growing awareness of the interconnectedness between place and Earth. I contend that this new perspective changes the understanding of dwelling today because of Earth’s exteriority with regard to place. I argue that this exteriority is neither infinite nor a totality.

Eco-spatial rethinking of two Malayalam movies Kumbalangi Nights and Malik: spatial imagination, solastalgia, and environmental in/justice

ABSTRACT The paper undertakes the eco-spatial re-reading of two Malayalam movies, Kumbalangi Nights (2019) and Malik (2021), using the framework of solastalgia. Solastalgia is an environmental philosophy developed by Glenn Albrecht that refers to the feeling of abandonment and isolation in relation to a drastically transformed spatial circumstance. It is the paradoxical sense of homelessness while still being home. The paper argues that solastalgia is a heuristic framework to analyse unjust geographies and reimagine them as forums for creative resilience, collective strength, and political action. The movies explore the ramifications of lived space on the life of people living in it and its coalescing with other social, political, and economic categories of injustice. Kumbalangi tells the story of four brothers living on a stranded island in the neighbourhood of a city and how they creatively resist the solastalgic distress caused by the neoliberal social order. Malik, set in a densely populated coastal village, delineates how solastalgia is instrumental in excessive criminalisation and breakage of the social fabric. The discussion of the movies seeks to show how cultural narratives such as films can be seen as important tools to represent unjust geographies, and resist them through rebellious re-imagination.

The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Environmental Investment: The Mediating Effects of Information Transmission and Resource Acquisition

In recent years, more and more research has focused on the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on business activities. Due to the existence of two different theoretical perspectives, shareholder value theory and managerial opportunism theory, the research on CSR has reached different conclusions. Meanwhile, the motivations for environmental investments in enterprises have received attention from scholars. However, there is a lack of empirical research on the relationship between CSR and environmental investment. Therefore, this study conducts a regression analysis on the external evaluation of CSR and enterprises’ environmental investment using data from Chinese listed companies. The empirical results show a significant positive relationship between the external evaluation of CSR and enterprises’ environmental investment. The mediating tests conducted based on information transmission and resource acquisition mechanisms explain the reasons for this promotion effect, supporting the shareholder value theory. Furthermore, our research finds that this promotion effect is more significant in non-state-owned enterprises, enterprises receiving fewer environmental subsidies, enterprises disclosing environmental philosophies, and enterprises identified as key pollution-monitoring units in reports. The research findings of this study are meaningful for clarifying the economic consequences of CSR and provide practical evidence for Chinese enterprises to understand the importance of environmental investment and the government’s advocacy for enterprises to proactively engage in environmental investment.

Modernity's Antillean ecologies: Dispossession, disasters, justice, and repair across the Caribbean archipelago

The Caribbean region has been (re)shaped by colonial transformations of Amerindian ecologies, enslavement of Africans, and Indenture of Asians on plantations designed for European profit. Yet longstanding practices of resistance to human­–environmental domination and ecocidal violence have enabled Caribbean people to (re)create and sustain affirmative socio-ecologies. This report reflects on four axes characterizing the contestations over Caribbean environmental geographies: resistance to extractivism and dispossession, denaturalization of disaster, theorizing global ecological justice, and pursuit of repair. The article suggests how Caribbean environmental philosophy and ecocriticism offer analytics for mapping relational geographies beyond Western epistemes of progress and spatial imaginaries that peripheralize the region.

CyberGaia: Earth as cyborg

Since the days of the transcendentalists, most environmental philosophers have assumed a dividing line between human-made technology and nature. In the context of our current technological world and the contemporary environmental movement, this way of thinking is perhaps more pervasive than ever. But from a cybernetic perspective, nature and technology together represent an inextricably connected network of signals and feedback, continuously developing as an organic whole. Drawing from cultural histories of the interconnectedness of life and of the cyborg concept, I propose CyberGaia as a metaphor to describe our biosphere in a fashion which acknowledges human technology as an integral part of nature. In this framework, humanity and technology represent an inseparable constituent of a larger interconnected system. Though CyberGaia does not distinguish nature and technology at a fundamental level, it recognizes that the technological world influences nature’s development by acting on the network within which it is embedded. By emphasizing the sublime beauty of nature’s interconnectedness, CyberGaia also preserves the spiritual-emotional connection to Earth which has heavily contributed to driving the environmental movement. CyberGaia merges physics and inspiration, encouraging us to create sustainable closed-loop technological systems that enable a flourishing biosphere. I argue that seeing the world as an interconnected cybernetic network may help us to better understand the biosphere in its totality while motivating us to take actions which help protect and preserve CyberGaia’s diverse menagerie of human and nonhuman life.

Paysages culturels chinois: de l’idéal de l’équilibre entre l’homme et la nature aux formes écologiques de la vie

Abstract: Thus far, human development has been achieved at the cost of the destruction of cultural landscapes. With advent of industrial civilization, people have gained happiness and conveniences, but also confronted various cultural landscape predicaments. Environmental philosophy, a contemporary philosophy that regards the relationship between humans and nature as a fundamental issue, has focused on the protection of cultural landscapes. An analysis of ancient Chinese environmental philosophy demonstrates that ancient thinkers cared about everything in heaven and earth, and explored issues, such as a harmonious development between humans and nature, offering a novel approach to the preservation of Chinese cultural landscapes. Using Taoist environmental philosophy as an exemplar, this article provides a preliminary analysis of the definition of cultural landscapes, development of environmental philosophy and Taoist environmental philosophy. Building upon this foundation, it explores the role of environmental philosophies, such as “unity of heaven and man” in construction of ecological civilization, providing fresh perspectives for cultural landscape conservation.

Environmental Philosophy: Exploring Sustainable Development and Humanity's Ethical Responsibilities to the Environment and Future Generations

Environmental Philosophy: Exploring Sustainable Development and Humanity's Ethical Responsibilities to the Environment and Future Generations

Environmental Ethics Down on the Farm

Eugene Hargrove’s impact on the field of environmental philosophy is hard to adequately convey. His service as an activist, educator, and the founder of the journal Environmental Ethics created the context in which the field thrived. His legacy also provides a strong foundation for environmental ethics and activism of the future. Today, environmental philosophy is expanding to include human-dominated environments, once thought to fall outside of the purview of the discipline. Work in these “blind spots” is imperative if we wish to improve sustainability and stem the ecological bleeding that marks the Anthropocene. Hargrove’s theoretical work on “weak anthropocentric intrinsic value” opens a space for environmental ethics to better understand human-dominated environments. If Paul B. Thompson is right that the way we farm should be of utmost concern for environmentalists, then Hargrove’s insights could help protect large swaths of land beyond parkland borders.

Between Beautiful and Moral Action

In this paper, the author reflects on Immanuel Kant’s distinction between beautiful and moral action, and its influence on Arne Næss’s ecological thought. By referring to Næss’s interpretation of Kant’s moral philosophy, and especially his lesser-known writing An Attempt at Some Reflections on Optimism (German: Versuch einiger Betrachtungen über den Optimismus, 1759), the author presents the thesis that Kant – although it does not seem so at first glance – plays an important role in Næss’s environmental philosophy (i.e., Ecosophy T) and that his moral philosophy represents solid foundations for articulating one’s own ecosophies. This prompted the author to ponder about (I) the depth of Kant’s influence on Næss, (II) Kantian roots of deep ecology, and (III) Kantian contributions to deep-ecological thinking. In doing so, the author also outlined a Kantian ecosophy – by using some of the most important concepts of Kant’s moral philosophy (e.g., duty, intrinsic value, categorical imperative, moral law, moral autonomy, moral development, and humanity as an end in itself). Finally, as a result of this discussion, the author concluded that Kant’s and Næss’s philosophical theories and worldviews – regardless of their differences – agree at least on one point: human beings could and should make a difference by acting morally and/or beautifully.

Preserving Harmony in Bali: An Environmental Philosophy Approach to Tackling Over-tourism

Bali, a beautiful island in the Indonesian archipelago, has been a centre of world tourism for the last few decades. However, the influx of tourists has contributed significantly to the island's economic development; the phenomenon of 'over-tourism' has taken hold and has been in the spotlight in recent years. Over-tourism is characterized by several negative impacts, including environmental degradation, social disruption, and economic instability. This paper attempts to delve deeper into addressing that issue by using ecological epistemology as a foundation for understanding the interconnectedness of the natural and social worlds. It can be used to understand how over-tourism affects the environment, the local community, and the tourism industry. In addition, cybernetic epistemology is a framework for understanding how systems can rethink and adapt to changes. It can be used to understand how the tourism industry can be managed more sustainably. Therefore, in this context, ecological epistemology and cybernetic epistemology can be used to understand and address the issue of over-tourism in Bali. Furthermore, they offer different perspectives and methods that can be used to complement each other. By using both approaches, we can develop more comprehensive and effective solutions to this complex problem, especially in identifying the relevance of Tri Hita Karana's local wisdom in dealing with over-tourism in Bali. Tri Hita Karana is a Balinese philosophy that emphasizes the harmony between humans, nature, and the gods. It could be argued that this local wisdom could be used to help address the challenges of over-tourism in Bali. Another point to consider through cybernetic epistemology is that we can also analyse the obligation of moral beings in protecting the environment, whether Tri Hita Karana is still relevant in over-tourism, how the epistemology of the environment becomes possible in Tri Hita Karana, and how moral action can be done to create harmonisation.

Environmental Aesthetics as a Structural Part of Environmental Philosophy

Environmental Aesthetics as a Structural Part of Environmental Philosophy