Syllabus
13/02 Introduction: organisation and methodology20/02 Aldo Leopold: the role of learning, education and perception in environmental thinking27/02 Aldo Leopold: the land ethic06/03 Rachel Carson: ecological thinking and epistemic responsibility13/03 Rachel Carson: Silent Spring and the role of the auditory in environmental thinking20/03 Environmental thinking and religion27/03 Environmental thinking and misanthropy03/04 “Should Trees Have Standing?” 10/04 Easter Monday: no class17/04 Thinking the nonhuman world without human: “The Last Man” argument24/04 Care for the nonhuman and future generations01/05 Labour day: no class08/05 Liberation day: no class
Annotation
This introductory course will cover influential texts that established environmental ethics as a distinct field of philosophy. It will include reading and discussing seminal books and articles in the field of eco-philosophy, introduced in chronological order with reference to contemporary discussions of the climate crisis.
The course will concentrate on the early period from 1940s to 70s, and the main texts will belong to the Western (predominantly American and British) tradition of thinking about nature and environment. To show the relevance of those initial reflections, the “classic” texts will be accompanied by more recent interpretations of the matters in question.