The Virtues of Sustainability

The Virtues of Sustainability PDF Author: Jason Kawall
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190919841
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
From climate change to species extinction, and habitat loss to soil degradation, a stark awareness of the often devastating impacts of human actions is growing. People around the world are urgently seeking sustainable ways of life for themselves and their communities. But what do these calls for a sustainable future mean for our current values and ways of life, and what kind of people will we need to become? Though sustainability is a ubiquitous concept with a range of meaning and applications, this volume shows that it can be significantly understood and sought through the notion of virtue, in the tradition of virtue ethics. Approaches to ethical living that emphasize good character and virtue are resurgent, and especially well-suited to addressing our present challenges. From rethinking excessive consumption, to appropriately respecting nature, to finding resilience in the face of environmental injustice, our characters will be frequently tested. The virtues of sustainability--character traits enabling us to lead sustainable, flourishing lives--will be critical to our success. This volume, divided into three sections, brings together newly-commissioned essays by leading scholars from multiple disciplines--from philosophy and political science, to religious studies and psychology. The essays in the first section focus on key factors and structures that support the cultivation of the virtues of sustainability, while those in the second focus in particular on virtues embraced by non-Western communities and cultures, and the worldviews that underlie them. Finally, the essays in the third section each address further particular virtues of sustainability, including cooperativeness, patience, conscientiousness, creativity, and open-mindedness. Together, these essays provide readers with a rich understanding of the importance and diversity of the virtues of sustainability, and practical guidance towards their cultivation.

The Virtues of Sustainability

The Virtues of Sustainability PDF Author: Jason Kawall
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190919841
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
From climate change to species extinction, and habitat loss to soil degradation, a stark awareness of the often devastating impacts of human actions is growing. People around the world are urgently seeking sustainable ways of life for themselves and their communities. But what do these calls for a sustainable future mean for our current values and ways of life, and what kind of people will we need to become? Though sustainability is a ubiquitous concept with a range of meaning and applications, this volume shows that it can be significantly understood and sought through the notion of virtue, in the tradition of virtue ethics. Approaches to ethical living that emphasize good character and virtue are resurgent, and especially well-suited to addressing our present challenges. From rethinking excessive consumption, to appropriately respecting nature, to finding resilience in the face of environmental injustice, our characters will be frequently tested. The virtues of sustainability--character traits enabling us to lead sustainable, flourishing lives--will be critical to our success. This volume, divided into three sections, brings together newly-commissioned essays by leading scholars from multiple disciplines--from philosophy and political science, to religious studies and psychology. The essays in the first section focus on key factors and structures that support the cultivation of the virtues of sustainability, while those in the second focus in particular on virtues embraced by non-Western communities and cultures, and the worldviews that underlie them. Finally, the essays in the third section each address further particular virtues of sustainability, including cooperativeness, patience, conscientiousness, creativity, and open-mindedness. Together, these essays provide readers with a rich understanding of the importance and diversity of the virtues of sustainability, and practical guidance towards their cultivation.

The Virtues of Sustainability

The Virtues of Sustainability PDF Author: Jason Kawall
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190919817
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
"With a growing recognition of the potentially catastrophic impacts of human actions on current and future generations, people around the world are urgently seeking new, sustainable ways of life for themselves and their communities. What do these calls for a sustainable future mean for our current values and ways of life, and what kind of people will we need to become? Approaches to ethical living that emphasize good character and virtue are recently resurgent, and especially well-suited to addressing the challenges we face in pursuing sustainability. From rethinking excessive consumption, to appropriately respecting nature, to being resilient in the face of environmental injustice, our characters will be frequently tested. The virtues of sustainability - character traits enabling us to lead sustainable, flourishing lives - will be critical to our success. This volume, divided into three sections, brings together newly-commissioned essays by leading scholars from multiple disciplines - from philosophy and political science, to religious studies and psychology. The essays in the first section focus on key factors and structures that support the cultivation of the virtues of sustainability, while those in the second focus in particular on virtues embraced by various non-Western communities and cultures, and the worldviews that underlie them. Finally, the essays in the third section each address further particular virtues of sustainability, including cooperativeness, patience, conscientiousness, and creativity and open-mindedness. Together, these essays provide readers with a rich understanding of the importance and diversity of the virtues of sustainability, and practical guidance towards their cultivation and effective application"--

Buddhism, Virtue and Environment

Buddhism, Virtue and Environment PDF Author: David E. Cooper
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351954318
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
Buddhism, one increasingly hears, is an 'eco-friendly' religion. It is often said that this is because it promotes an 'ecological' view of things, one stressing the essential unity of human beings and the natural world. Buddhism, Virtue and Environment presents a different view. While agreeing that Buddhism is, in many important respects, in tune with environmental concerns, Cooper and James argue that what makes it 'green' is its view of human life. The true connection between the religion and environmental thought is to be found in Buddhist accounts of the virtues - those traits, such as compassion, equanimity and humility, that characterise the life of a spiritually enlightened individual. Central chapters of this book examine these virtues and their implications for environmental attitudes and practice. Buddhism, Virtue and Environment will be of interest not only to students and teachers of Buddhism and environmental ethics, but to those more generally engaged with moral philosophy. Written in a clear and accessible style, this book presents an original conception of Buddhist environmental thought. The authors also contribute to the wider debate on the place of ethics in Buddhist teachings and practices, and to debates within 'virtue ethics' on the relations between human well-being and environmental concern.

Eco-Republic

Eco-Republic PDF Author: Melissa Lane
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400838355
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Ancient lessons for sustainable citizenship An ecologically sustainable society cannot be achieved without citizens who possess the virtues and values that will foster it, and who believe that individual actions can indeed make a difference. Eco-Republic draws on ancient Greek thought—and Plato's Republic in particular—to put forward a new vision of citizenship that can make such a society a reality. Melissa Lane develops a model of a society whose health and sustainability depend on all its citizens recognizing a shared standard of value and shaping their personal goals and habits accordingly. Bringing together the moral and political ideas of the ancients with the latest social and psychological theory, Lane illuminates the individual's vital role in social change, and articulates new ways of understanding what is harmful and what is valuable, what is a benefit and what is a cost, and what the relationship between public and private well-being ought to be. Eco-Republic reveals why we must rethink our political imagination if we are to meet the challenges of climate change and other urgent environmental concerns. Offering a unique reflection on the ethics and politics of sustainability, the book goes beyond standard approaches to virtue ethics in philosophy and current debates about happiness in economics and psychology. Eco-Republic explains why health is a better standard than happiness for capturing the important links between individual action and social good, and diagnoses the reasons why the ancient concept of virtue has been sorely neglected yet is more relevant today than ever.

Environmental Virtue Ethics

Environmental Virtue Ethics PDF Author: Ronald D. Sandler
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742533905
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
There is one certainty regarding the human relationship with nature-there is no getting away from it. But while a relationship with nature is a given, the nature of that relationship is not. Environmental ethics is the attempt to determine how we ought and ought not relate to the natural environment. A complete environmental ethic requires both an ethic of action and an ethic of character. Environmental virtue ethics is the area of environmental ethics concerned with character. It has been an underappreciated and underdeveloped aspect of environmental ethics-until now. The selections in this collection, consisting of ten original and four reprinted essays by leading scholars in the field, discuss the role that virtue and character have traditional played in environmental discourse, and reflect upon the role that it should play in the future. The selections also discuss the substantive content of the environmental virtues and vices, and apply them to concrete environmental issues and problems. This collection establishes the indispensability of environmental virtue ethics to environmental ethics. It also enhances the breadth and quality of the ongoing discussion of environmental virtue and vice and the role they should play in an adequate environmental ethic.

The Virtues of Ignorance

The Virtues of Ignorance PDF Author: Bill Vitek
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813138760
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Human dependence on technology has increased exponentially over the past several centuries, and so too has the notion that we can fix environmental problems with scientific applications. The Virtues of Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of Knowledge proposes an alternative to this hubristic, shortsighted, and dangerous worldview. The contributors argue that uncritical faith in scientific knowledge has created many of the problems now threatening the planet and that our wholesale reliance on scientific progress is both untenable and myopic. Bill Vitek, Wes Jackson, and a diverse group of thinkers, including Wendell Berry, Anna Peterson, and Robert Root-Bernstein, offer profound arguments for the advantages of an ignorance-based worldview. Their essays explore this philosophy from numerous perspectives, including its origins, its essence, and how its implementation can preserve vital natural resources for posterity. All conclude that we must simply accept the proposition that our ignorance far exceeds our knowledge and always will. Rejecting the belief that science and technology are benignly at the service of society, the authors argue that recognizing ignorance might be the only path to reliable knowledge. They also uncover an interesting paradox: knowledge and insight accumulate fastest in the minds of those who hold an ignorance-based worldview, for by examining the alternatives to a technology-based culture, they expand their imaginations. Demonstrating that knowledge-based worldviews are more dangerous than useful, The Virtues of Ignorance looks closely at the relationship between the land and the future generations who will depend on it. The authors argue that we can never improve upon nature but that we can, by putting this new perspective to work in our professional and personal lives, live sustainably on Earth.

Handbook of Virtue Ethics in Business and Management

Handbook of Virtue Ethics in Business and Management PDF Author: Alejo José G. Sison
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9789400765092
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This volume examines the breadth and depth of virtue ethics and aims to counter the virtue ethics amnesia that both afflicts general moral philosophy and affects business and management ethics. Divided into two parts, the handbook starts out with a historical introduction and chronology of the development of virtue ethics, providing a comprehensive assessment of its evolution and identifying the most influential authors and their works. The authors discussed include those who follow a philosophical or conceptual tradition in their treatment of virtue and those who belong to the research tradition of positive science, in particular, empirical, quantitative and applied psychology. The second part of the book discusses systematic approaches and major themes developed in virtue ethics. These contributions are conceptual, empirical/applied or case studies. They offer insight into the different topics to which virtue ethics has been applied, and show how virtue ethics has influenced the various operational areas of firms. Finally, they examine the virtue ethics responses to some of the most important issues that businesses and organizations face in the 21st century.​

Character and Environment

Character and Environment PDF Author: Ronald L. Sandler
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231141076
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
In Character and Environment, Ronald L. Sandler brings together contemporary work on virtue ethics with contemporary work on environmental ethics. He demonstrates the many ways that any ethic of character can and should be informed by environmental considerations. He also develops a pluralistic, virtue-oriented environmental ethic that accommodates the richness and complexity of our relationship with the natural environment and provides effective and nuanced guidance on environmental issues.

The Oxford Handbook of Virtue

The Oxford Handbook of Virtue PDF Author: Nancy E. Snow
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019938519X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 905

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Book Description
The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have seen a renaissance in the study of virtue -- a topic that has prevailed in philosophical work since the time of Aristotle. Several major developments have conspired to mark this new age. Foremost among them, some argue, is the birth of virtue ethics, an approach to ethics that focuses on virtue in place of consequentialism (the view that normative properties depend only on consequences) or deontology (the study of what we have a moral duty to do). The emergence of new virtue theories also marks this new wave of work on virtue. Put simply, these are theories about what virtue is, and they include Kantian and utilitarian virtue theories. Concurrently, virtue ethics is being applied to other fields where it hasn't been used before, including bioethics and education. In addition to these developments, the study of virtue in epistemological theories has become increasingly widespread to the point that it has spawned a subfield known as 'virtue epistemology.' This volume therefore provides a representative overview of philosophical work on virtue. It is divided into seven parts: conceptualizations of virtue, historical and religious accounts, contemporary virtue ethics and theories of virtue, central concepts and issues, critical examinations, applied virtue ethics, and virtue epistemology. Forty-two chapters by distinguished scholars offer insights and directions for further research. In addition to philosophy, authors also deal with virtues in non-western philosophical traditions, religion, and psychological perspectives on virtue.

Living Well Now and in the Future

Living Well Now and in the Future PDF Author: Randall Curren
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262339110
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
A philosopher and a scientist propose that sustainability can be understood as living well together without diminishing opportunity to live well in the future. Most people acknowledge the profound importance of sustainability, but few can define it. We are ethically bound to live sustainably for the sake of future generations, but what does that mean? In this book Randall Curren, a philosopher, and Ellen Metzger, a scientist, clarify normative aspects of sustainability. Combining their perspectives, they propose that sustainability can be understood as the art of living well together without diminishing opportunity to live well in the future. Curren and Metzger lay out the nature and value of sustainability, survey the problems, catalog the obstacles, and identify the kind of efforts needed to overcome them. They formulate an ethic of sustainability with lessons for government, organizations, and individuals, and illustrate key ideas with three case studies. Curren and Metzger put intergenerational justice at the heart of sustainability; discuss the need for fair (as opposed to coercive) terms of cooperation to create norms, institutions, and practices conducive to sustainability; formulate a framework for a fundamental ethic of sustainability derived from core components of common morality; and emphasize the importance of sustainability education. The three illustrative case studies focus on the management of energy, water, and food systems, examining the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Australia's National Water Management System, and patterns of food production in the Mekong region of Southeast Asia.