Environmental Ethics

PHIL 323 / INDS 323

The University of Arizona

  David Schmidtz & Elizabeth Willott  

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Meets requirements for Tier 2,

Individuals & Society

Environmental problems can be incredibly complicated, in moral as well as in economic, political, and biological terms. It is easy to oversimplify the problems, and the solutions. When it comes to environmental issues, what are we responsible and accountable for as individuals? How are our responsibilites affected by the fact that we act in, create, and support institutions? What do we owe to ourselves, to each other, and perhaps to the biosphere itself?

The basic concepts we will discuss in this course include (but are not limited to) the following.

What Really Matters:
Animal rights, the Land Ethic; value pluralism; environmental holism; deep ecology; ecofeminism; rethinking the good life

What Really Works:
Wildlife conversation; poverty as an environmental problem; the ecology of property rights; cost-benefit analysis and environmental policy; environmental activism.

About this Course ...

Philosophy Department
The University of Arizona
Last Update:  April 3, 2000
All contents copyrighted 1998-99. All rights reserved.
schmidtz@u.arizona.edu

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