Environmental Ethics

Catalog description

This course addresses the morality of respecting the natural world, including plants, animals and all forms of planetary life for their own sake. Is pollution of air and water wrong in itself, and not simply because it damages resources that present and future generations of human beings need? Does the suffering of nonhuman animals impose a moral claim upon human beings? Do all species have a claim to survive in the face of human development? Different philosophical theories as well as a variety of cultural traditions of thought about the environment will be studied and discussed. 001312