Meet new Mitchell Center member Don Beith
Mitchell Center members share a passion for tackling complex sustainability problems that matter to people and communities through collaboration with diverse stakeholders and across many different areas of expertise. They seek to connect knowledge with action to create a brighter social, environmental and economic future in Maine and beyond.
Learn more about who they are and what they do in this ongoing series of profiles.
Don Beith is an assistant professor of philosophy at UMaine with a passion for teaching and for connecting philosophy and ethics to sustainability research and community environmental projects. He approaches philosophy as a search for meaning, particularly through the study of habit formation, cultural and institutional life, and our ecological embeddedness in nature. He explores these themes in “The Birth of Sense,” his 2018 book on the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
Don works at the intersection of ethics, ecological theory and the philosophies of biology and technology. Before coming to Maine, he taught philosophy across Canada: from Algoma University at the hub of the Great Lakes, to Bishop’s University and McGill University in Québec, to the University of British Columbia.
What problem/s are you working to solve?
I am working on using ethical theories, particularly virtue ethics and existentialism, to help us to understand environmentally impactful habits and the wicked problem of environmental vices, or habits that are difficult to change or even notice as bad habits. I’m interested in connecting ethical frameworks to questions about equitable sustainability and policy. I’m working on a few other projects about green technology (biomimicry), reevaluating the human-animal relationship, and formulating the difficult intergenerational moral duties that result from human-driven climate change.
What progress are you making toward solutions?
Some upcoming publications and the new interdisciplinary minor in Environmental Ethics at UMaine have been particularly rewarding steps in engaging new fields of scholars and student groups. Being challenged by Mitchell Center colleagues to retool myself and reorient my research to shared problems has been a tremendous opportunity to grow.
A lot of people ask me, often skeptically, about what exactly it is that philosophers produce. I wonder if this approach reveals part of the problem of a society that always needs to grow, to measure merit, to generate more products and to “progress.” At the end of the day, we take stock of our lives not primarily by what we produced or sustained but also why we did that, how it gave meaning to our lives and let others give meaning to theirs. This most definitive thing about us, our character, is not so easy to list in a CV, grant proposal or research report, but is manifest in the example we set and the values we embody, in the life we build and what we leave for others.
Stopping ourselves to think about these questions of identity, value and justice enables us to put the strongest foot forward in sustainability practices. This process of deep self-interpretation helps too, I think, to generate more intrinsic, conscientious and lasting motivations for sustainable change.
How could your work contribute to a more sustainable future in Maine and beyond?
As a philosopher I can help refine methodological first principles, clarify and define conceptual problems, and ethically frame and contrast approaches and implications of research. Philosophy can help refine concepts in other disciplines, while other disciplines bring to light the deep contemporary relevance of philosophical ideas. I also hope to engage students and collaborators in diverse perspectives, theories and experiences of the natural world. I think that the crisis of climate change is not only about better controlling and sustaining our technologies, resources and environments “out there,” but first about changing ourselves, our policies and our priorities, about attempting to right environmental injustices.
Why did you decide to join the Mitchell Center?
From a chat with David Hart and Linda Silka in the Memorial Union challenging me to make my research relevant to a wider audience and “take philosophy to the street,” to starting to attend mind-expanding sustainability talks, to having a rich philosophical discussion with the Mitchell Center community about environmental virtue ethics—at some point along the way the decision made itself through interdisciplinary improvisation. I’m motivated to bring conceptual and ethical expertise to shared sustainability projects, and to connect philosophy, and specifically ethics, to sustainability research and community environmental projects.
“Ethics does not primarily concern the world as it is here and now, but involves thinking about the world as it should be. I believe there is an inseparable connection between sustainability and ethics as pursuits of a better future.”
What’s the best part about collaborating with other researchers, and with stakeholders?
It is mutually illuminating to participate in projects that include interdisciplinary perspectives, community engagement and student-driven research. Recently I learned a lot from ecologists who consider ethics as integral to every aspect of their sustainability research, instead of compartmentalizing it as an isolated stage in the research process after data collection. I’ve had great chats with community climate action groups and anticipate bright future partnerships. It’s refreshing to find students and community members at the heart of Mitchell Center sustainability projects.
Where’s your favorite place in Maine?
The Penobscot. It is my privilege to live as a guest on this sacred river that is being legally contested by courageous people, and I hope I can give something back during my journey here.
What sustains you?
The future. Watching young people grow up and build a better world. Being inspired by my precocious two-year-old who is learning everyday to talk about the world in richer ways, and the reminder that this relearning is a lifelong challenge for all of us, and that in some sense this makes philosophers of us all. I am driven by a passion to discover how folks make sense of the world, to share questions like this one you’ve asked me right here, and to understand how we form commitments to values and ethics.
Ethics does not primarily concern the world as it is here and now, but involves thinking about the world as it should be. I believe there is an inseparable connection between sustainability and ethics as pursuits of a better future. As an academic, I’m sustained by generous colleagues who improve each other and the world, through long walks in the campus forest (get in touch and come join us sometime!), and, most of all, through teaching philosophy.