Environmental Philosophy

Catalog description

What moral obligations do we have to the environment? Are our obligations to the environment just obligations to take care of resources needed by future humans? If you were the last person on earth, would you have moral reasons to care about the animals and plants that would continue after you, or would they be meaningless without human beings to use them? Is the beauty of nature morally valuable? Students will learn and apply central philosophical theories of ethics and aesthetics to propose answers to these questions, and to discuss their implications for social decisions about the environment and governmental environmental policy.