Environmental Ethics: Humans, Culture & Sustainability

The general aim of this course is to explore the ethical challenges involved in the creation and maintenance of sustainable societies. In particular, we will ask what exactly it is that we should seek to sustain, why, how, and who or what should do so. We will consider the sustainability of current political, business, and cultural practices, as well as individual lifestyles. A study of the phenomenon of climate change and of the notion of "the Anthropocene" - this new epoch in which no earthly place, entity, form, process, or system escapes the reach and influence of human activity - will be a particularly weighty element in this course.

You will explore the philosophical foundations of a plausible environmental ethic that may reconcile human responsibilities towards non-human nature and the future to our ongoing quest for meaning in a globalized, highly interconnected, unprecedentedly populated, rapidly urbanizing, ecologically deteriorating world. You will examine the challenges that understanding and living up to these responsibilities pose to our psychology and our ethical and political systems.

*This course is cross listed with PHL320