Wild thoughts: A Deconstructive environmental ethics?

Environmental Ethics

Volumn 23, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 115-134

  Briggs, Robert ^a  

^a MURDOCH UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0141431851     PISSN: 01634275     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics200123223     Document Type: Review

References (63)

1. Not everything, though: see, for instance, George Sessions' "critique" of postmodernism in "Postmodernism and Environmental Justice: The Demise of the Ecology Movement?" Trumpeter 12(1995): 150-54.
2. The most debated of these is Jim Cheney, "Postmodern Environmental Ethics: Ethics as Bioregional Narrative," Environmental Ethics 11 (1989): 117-34. Other examples include J. Baird Callicott and Fernando J. R. da Rocha, eds., Earth Summit Ethics: Toward a Reconstructive Postmodern Philosophy of Environmental Education (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996); Robert Hood, "Rorty and Postmodern Environmental Ethics," Environmental Ethics 20 (1998): 183-93; Patrick Hayden, "Gilles Deleuze and Naturalism: A Convergence with Ecological Theory and Politics," Environmental Ethics 19 (1997): 185-204; and Thomas H. Birch's use of Foucault and Baudrillard, in "The Incarceration of Wilderness: Wilderness Areas as Prisons," Environmental Ethics 12 (1990): 3-26.
3. The most debated of these is Jim Cheney, "Postmodern Environmental Ethics: Ethics as Bioregional Narrative," Environmental Ethics 11 (1989): 117-34. Other examples include J. Baird Callicott and Fernando J. R. da Rocha, eds., Earth Summit Ethics: Toward a Reconstructive Postmodern Philosophy of Environmental Education (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996); Robert Hood, "Rorty and Postmodern Environmental Ethics," Environmental Ethics 20 (1998): 183-93; Patrick Hayden, "Gilles Deleuze and Naturalism: A Convergence with Ecological Theory and Politics," Environmental Ethics 19 (1997): 185-204; and Thomas H. Birch's use of Foucault and Baudrillard, in "The Incarceration of Wilderness: Wilderness Areas as Prisons," Environmental Ethics 12 (1990): 3-26.
4. The most debated of these is Jim Cheney, "Postmodern Environmental Ethics: Ethics as Bioregional Narrative," Environmental Ethics 11 (1989): 117-34. Other examples include J. Baird Callicott and Fernando J. R. da Rocha, eds., Earth Summit Ethics: Toward a Reconstructive Postmodern Philosophy of Environmental Education (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996); Robert Hood, "Rorty and Postmodern Environmental Ethics," Environmental Ethics 20 (1998): 183-93; Patrick Hayden, "Gilles Deleuze and Naturalism: A Convergence with Ecological Theory and Politics," Environmental Ethics 19 (1997): 185-204; and Thomas H. Birch's use of Foucault and Baudrillard, in "The Incarceration of Wilderness: Wilderness Areas as Prisons," Environmental Ethics 12 (1990): 3-26.
5. The most debated of these is Jim Cheney, "Postmodern Environmental Ethics: Ethics as Bioregional Narrative," Environmental Ethics 11 (1989): 117-34. Other examples include J. Baird Callicott and Fernando J. R. da Rocha, eds., Earth Summit Ethics: Toward a Reconstructive Postmodern Philosophy of Environmental Education (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996); Robert Hood, "Rorty and Postmodern Environmental Ethics," Environmental Ethics 20 (1998): 183-93; Patrick Hayden, "Gilles Deleuze and Naturalism: A Convergence with Ecological Theory and Politics," Environmental Ethics 19 (1997): 185-204; and Thomas H. Birch's use of Foucault and Baudrillard, in "The Incarceration of Wilderness: Wilderness Areas as Prisons," Environmental Ethics 12 (1990): 3-26.
6. The most debated of these is Jim Cheney, "Postmodern Environmental Ethics: Ethics as Bioregional Narrative," Environmental Ethics 11 (1989): 117-34. Other examples include J. Baird Callicott and Fernando J. R. da Rocha, eds., Earth Summit Ethics: Toward a Reconstructive Postmodern Philosophy of Environmental Education (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996); Robert Hood, "Rorty and Postmodern Environmental Ethics," Environmental Ethics 20 (1998): 183-93; Patrick Hayden, "Gilles Deleuze and Naturalism: A Convergence with Ecological Theory and Politics," Environmental Ethics 19 (1997): 185-204; and Thomas H. Birch's use of Foucault and Baudrillard, in "The Incarceration of Wilderness: Wilderness Areas as Prisons," Environmental Ethics 12 (1990): 3-26.
7. See Arran E. Gare, Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis (London and New York: Routledge, 1995).
8. See Don Sherman Grant II, "Religion and the Left: The Prospects of a Green Coalition," Environmental Ethics 19 (1997): 115-34. Inflected forms of all these putative actions can be found in a one-paragraph "definition" of the "deconstructive postmodern left" (pp. 116-17). Grant names Derrida as a "deconstructive postmodern leftist," but never once discusses or cites any passages from Derrida's work. Michael Zimmerman discusses Derrida in a little more detail in his Contesting Earth's Future: Radical Ecology and Postmodernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), but still depicts deconstruction in similar terms to those of Grant, the only difference being that Zimmerman underscores its critical and antitotalitarian functions.
9. See Don Sherman Grant II, "Religion and the Left: The Prospects of a Green Coalition," Environmental Ethics 19 (1997): 115-34. Inflected forms of all these putative actions can be found in a one-paragraph "definition" of the "deconstructive postmodern left" (pp. 116-17). Grant names Derrida as a "deconstructive postmodern leftist," but never once discusses or cites any passages from Derrida's work. Michael Zimmerman discusses Derrida in a little more detail in his Contesting Earth's Future: Radical Ecology and Postmodernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), but still depicts deconstruction in similar terms to those of Grant, the only difference being that Zimmerman underscores its critical and antitotalitarian functions.
10. J. Baird Callicott and Fernando J. R. da Rocha, "Introduction: Ethics, University, and Environment," in Earth Summit Ethics, p. 6.
11. The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary lists among the definitions of context the notion of "ambient conditions," while environment is likewise defined as "surrounding objects, region, or conditions." Both terms, then, point at what is "outside" or "peripheral."
12. Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988), p. 136 (emphases added). For an excellent discussion of this text and of Derrida's work in general, see Niall Lucy, Debating Derrida (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1995).
13. Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988), p. 136 (emphases added). For an excellent discussion of this text and of Derrida's work in general, see Niall Lucy, Debating Derrida (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1995).
14. Derrida, Limited Inc, p. 137.
15. See Julia Meaton and David Morrice, "The Ethics and Politics of Private Automobile Use," Environmental Ethics 18 (1996): 39-54, in which the problem of private automobile use is engaged in terms of philosophical concepts (Mill's theory of freedom), principled positions (generally, the authority of universal reason, and, more specifically, the unjustifiability of "other-regarding harmful activity"), and determinate and justifiable goals (a total ban on private automobile use).
16. The difference between these contexts cannot be explained (away) simply by saying that one is ecocentric, whilst the other is anthropocentric. The difference derives, rather, from the fact that, in the sphere of government, response to environmental problems is not so much principled as pragmatic: it is a question not of moral absolutes but of how to manage the problem most effectively. The emphasis here is on procedure, negotiation, improvization by way of policy formation and decision making, and achievable outcomes. For an excellent examination of administrative possibilities in relation to the environment, see Robert Paehlke and Douglas Torgerson, eds., Managing Leviathan: Environmental Politics and the Administrative State (London: Belhaven: 1990).
17. To suggest that something is not identical to itself is to rethink the basic principles of logic: the principle of identity (A = A); the principle of noncontradiction (A -A); and the principle of the excluded middle (either A or -A). On the basis of those principles, for instance, one might try to formalize an opposition between inside and outside: inside is inside; inside is not not-inside (not outside); either inside or not-inside (outside). The rethinking (or "deconstruction") of such principles would not deny their effectivity, but just add the complication that (n)either A = A (n)or A = -A. For all that in this formalization such a "logic" looks to be pure nonsense, it is perhaps the imperative to formalize that is nonsensical: A may well equal A, for instance, but a redwood tree is never simply a redwood tree - it's always part of a complex ecosystem, an object of conflicting considerations, and much more besides.
18. Derrida, Limited Inc, p. 151.
19. David E. Cooper, "The Idea of Environment," in David E. Cooper and Joy A. Palmer, eds., The Environment in Question: Ethics and Global Issues (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 167.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., p. 168.
22. Cooper, "Idea of Environment," p. 169.
23. Ibid., pp. 169-70.
24. Ibid., p. 170.
25. Derrida, Limited Inc, p. 134.
26. Cooper, "Idea of Environment," p. 166.
27. Derrida, Limited Inc, p. 137.
28. Anthony Western, "Before Environmental Ethics," Environmental Ethics 14 (1992): 321. In a note, Weston writes, "I distinguish anthropocentrism as a philosophical position, issuing in an ethic, from the practices and institutions in which that ethic is embodied, which I call 'anthropocentrized.'"
29. Ibid., p. 322. Accordingly, I often place the pronouns we and us in quotation marks.
30. Ibid., p. 325.
31. John D. Caputo, Against Ethics: Contributions to a Poetics of Obligation with Constant Reference to Deconstruction (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993), p. 8.
32. Ibid., p. 5.
33. Ibid., p. 4.
34. Ibid., p. 5.
35. Ibid., p. 8.
36. Ibid. "If an obligation is 'mine,' it is not because it belongs to me but because I belong to it. Obligation is not one more thing that I comprehend and want to do, but something that intervenes upon and disrupts the sphere of what the I wants."
37. Ibid., p. 38.
38. Such campaigns occur not just at the theoretical level, moreover. In 1992, for instance, a significant number of eminent philosophers led a campaign against Cambridge University's proposal to award Derrida an honorary doctorate for services to philosophy. More recently, Princeton's appointment of Peter Singer as Professor of Bioethics provoked controversy and an on-campus protest on his first day of teaching. In both cases, the protests and highly personal attacks made against them were based on nothing more substantial than rumour and written fragments isolated both from their textual and from their disciplinary context.
39. John D. Caputo, "Infestations: The Religion of the Death of God and Scott's Ascetic Ideal," Research in Phenomenology 25 (1995): 265.
40. This equation is enabled both by Weston insofar as he discusses ethics in and as social context (anthropocentrized culture) and by Caputo insofar as his stance against ethics is therefore a stance against subjectivism (transcendental or otherwise), which is a humanism, which is anthropocentrism.
41. Caputo, Against Ethics, p. 5.
42. Thomas H. Birch, "Moral Considerability and Universal Consideration," Environmental Ethics 15 (1993): 313.
43. Ibid., pp. 313-34.
44. Ibid., p. 321.
45. Ibid., p. 322.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid., pp. 321-22.
48. For some other reconsiderations of universal consideration, see Tim Hayward, "Universal Consideration as a Deontological Principle: A Critique of Birch," Environmental Ethics 18 (1996): 55-63; Jim Cheney, "Universal Consideration: An Epistemological Map of the Terrain," Environmental Ethics 20 (1998): 265-77; and Anthony Weston, "Universal Consideration as an Originary Practice," Environmental Ethics 20 (1998): 279-89.
49. For some other reconsiderations of universal consideration, see Tim Hayward, "Universal Consideration as a Deontological Principle: A Critique of Birch," Environmental Ethics 18 (1996): 55-63; Jim Cheney, "Universal Consideration: An Epistemological Map of the Terrain," Environmental Ethics 20 (1998): 265-77; and Anthony Weston, "Universal Consideration as an Originary Practice," Environmental Ethics 20 (1998): 279-89.
50. For some other reconsiderations of universal consideration, see Tim Hayward, "Universal Consideration as a Deontological Principle: A Critique of Birch," Environmental Ethics 18 (1996): 55-63; Jim Cheney, "Universal Consideration: An Epistemological Map of the Terrain," Environmental Ethics 20 (1998): 265-77; and Anthony Weston, "Universal Consideration as an Originary Practice," Environmental Ethics 20 (1998): 279-89.
51. The phrase is Birch's, in "Moral Considerability," p. 314. But my point is not to criticize his argument.Rather, it is to affirm it, and thus to reconsider it. The point is that it is in the very nature of this concept of universal consideration (and of concepts in general) to reach this limit, to call itself into question, to deconstruct. Who knows whether Birch intended or was aware of this possibility? Who cares? It is not a bad thing, moreover, that deconstruction happens; on the contrary, when properly considered, the deconstruction of such principles helps us to recognize their limits and therefore helps to prevent the suffering caused by blindly accepting them.
52. The dilemma (or, more strictly, the aporia) cannot be bypassed, moreover, by arguing that, while one might value universal consideration "in principle," in practice one knows that one can't take everything into account, and that it would be ludicrous to suggest that one could. For if it is always the case that one cannot take everything into account, that decisions have to be made, and that the demands of others are urgent, then the principle of such practice, according to all dictates of reason, ought to take that universal condition into account. If it doesn't, it remains less than the authoritative and effective principle that it could and should be.
53. Caputo, Against Ethics, p. 82.
54. Jim Cheney and Anthony Weston, "Environmental Ethics as Environmental Etiquette: Toward an Ethics-Based Epistemology," Environmental Ethics 21 (1999): 115.
55. Ibid., pp. 116-17 (emphases in the original).
56. Ibid., pp. 117-19 (emphases in the original).
57. Ibid., p. 126.
58. Ibid.
59. Jacques Derrida, "Force of Law: The 'Mystical Foundations of Authority,'" trans. Mary Quaintance, in Drucilla Cornell, Michel Rosenfield and David Gray Carlson, eds., Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice (New York and London: Routledge, 1992), p. 19. "Carnophallogocentrism" refers to the ontological, epistemological and axiological priority accorded to speaking/thinking, reproductive, flesh-eating (human) males.
60. Cheney and Weston, "Environmental Etiquette," p. 119.
61. Weston, "Before Environmental Ethics," p. 327.
62. Cheney and Weston, "Environmental Etiquette," p. 119.
63. Ibid., p. 120 (emphasis added).