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A three-part environmental ethics workshop.
Don Beith will discuss how environmental ethics is about more than simply applying human values to environmental problems, but also learning to make our ethical thinking itself more ecological. Our environmental decision-making frameworks are oriented by our deeper values, our moral character. Virtues—like courage and temperance, for example—are healthy, exemplary developments of moral character, but we often think about them in anthropo-centric terms and contexts disconnected from environmental issues. The second part of the workshop will feature breakout groups to brainstorm ideas about collaboratively developing new eco-centric virtues, perhaps like solidarity, equity, eco-dependence and sustainability. Groups will be encouraged to discuss how to ecologically reshape our moral development and education, including questions about how ecological virtues might impact our environmental citizenship and decision-making. We should also think about how virtues are specific to places, times and cultures, and whether these virtues have corresponding environmental vices. Reconvening as a group in the third part of the workshop, we’ll share insights about environmental virtues and their potential impact for sustainability practices. Please come ready to think about, listen to and share ideas!
Speaker: Don Beith, Assistant Professor of Environmental Philosophy, UMaine
Don Beith is assistant professor of environmental philosophy at the University of Maine, focusing on issues at the intersection of environmental ethics, the philosophy of technology, healthcare justice and existentialism. Don’s recent book The Birth of Sense, a study of the work of French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, is an investigation of the ecological origins of human habit, culture and ethics.
