Wilderness, Morality, and Value
- Authors:
- Publisher:
- 2022
Summary
What if wilderness is bad for wildlife? This question motivates the philosophical investigation in Wilderness, Morality, and Value. Environmentalists aim to protect wilderness, and for good reasons, but wilderness entails unremittent, incalculable suffering for its non-human habitants. Given that it will become increasingly possible to augment nature in ways that ameliorates some of this suffering, the morality of wilderness preservation is itself in question. Joshua S. Duclos argues that the technological and ethical reality of the Anthropocene warrants a fundamental reassessment of the value of wilderness. After exposing the moral ambiguity of wilderness preservation, he explores the value of wilderness itself by engaging with anthropocentricism and nonanthropocentrism; sentientism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism; and instrumental value and intrinsic value. Duclos argues that the value of wilderness is a narrow form of anthropocentric intrinsic value, one with a religio-spiritual dimension. By integrating scholarship from bioethics on the norms of engineering human nature with debates in environmental ethics concerning the prospect of engineering non-human nature, Wilderness, Morality, and Value sets the stage for wilderness ethics—or wilderness faith—in the Anthropocene.
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Bibliographic data
- Copyright year
- 2022
- ISBN-Print
- 978-1-6669-0136-8
- ISBN-Online
- 978-1-6669-0137-5
- Publisher
- Lexington, Lanham
- Language
- English
- Pages
- 141
- Product type
- Book Titles
Table of contents
- Contents No access
- Acknowledgments No access
- Introduction No access
- Chapter One: Uncomplicating the Idea of Wilderness No access Pages 1 - 22
- Chapter Two: The Moral Ambiguity of Wilderness Preservation No access Pages 23 - 44
- Chapter Three: Intrinsic Value and Nonanthropocentrism No access Pages 45 - 74
- Chapter Four: Value and Wilderness qua Wilderness No access Pages 75 - 96
- Chapter Five: To Be or Not to Be Prometheus No access Pages 97 - 126
- Bibliography No access Pages 127 - 134
- Index No access Pages 135 - 140
- About the Author No access Pages 141 - 141





