Emplotting Virtue: 

A Narrative Approach to Environmental Virtue Ethics

Summary

A rich hermeneutic account of the way virtue is understood and developed. Despite its ancient roots, virtue ethics has only recently been fully appreciated as a resource for environmental philosophy. Other approaches dominated by utilitarian and duty-based appeals for sacrifice and restraint have had little success in changing behavior, even to the extent that ecological concerns have been embraced. Our actions often do not align with our beliefs. Fundamental to virtue ethics is an acknowledgment that neither good ethical rules nor good intentions are effective absent the character required to bring them to fulfillment. Brian Treanor builds on recent work on virtue ethics in environmental philosophy, finding an important grounding in the narrative theory of philosophers like Paul Ricoeur and Richard Kearney. Character and ethical formation, Treanor argues, are intimately tied to our relationship with the narratives through which we view the human place in the natural world. By reframing environmental questions in terms of individual, social, and environmental narratives about flourishing, Emplotting Virtue offers a powerful vision of how we might remake our character so as to live more happily, more sustainably, and more virtuously in a diverse, beautiful, wondrous, and fragile world.

New Book: Interpreting Nature: The Emerging Field of Environmental Hermeneutics, Fordham University Press 2013

Recently published:

Interpreting Nature: The Emerging Field of Environmental Hermeneutics  

Edited by Forrest Clingerman, Brian Treanor, Martin Drenthen, and David Utsler.   

Fordham University Press, 2013

Modern environmentalism has come to realize that many of its key concerns "wilderness" and "nature" among them are contested territory, viewed differently by different people. Understanding nature requires science and ecology, to be sure, but it also requires a sensitivity tom, history, culture, and narrative. Thus, understanding nature is a fundamentally hermeneutic task.

 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
   Introduction: Environmental Hermeneutics
       David Utsler, Forrest Clingerman, Martin Drenthen, and Brian Treanor

Part I: Interpretation and the Task of Thinking Environmentally
   1. Hermeneutics Deep in the Woods
       John van Buren
    2. Morrow's Ants: E. O. Wilson and Gadamer's Critique of (Natural) Historicism

       Mick Smith
    3. Layering: Body, Building, Biography
        Robert Mugerauer 
   4. Might Nature Be Interpreted as a "Saturated Phenomenon"?
        Christina M. Gschwandtner
    5. Must Environmental Philosophy Relinquish the Concept of Nature? A Hermeneutic Reply to Steven Vogel
        W. S. K. Cameron

Part II: Situating the Self 
   6. Environmental Hermeneutics and Environmental/Eco-Psychology: Explorations in Environmental Identity
        David Utsler 
   7. Environmental Hermeneutics With and For Others: Ricoeur's Ethics and the Ecological Self 
       Nathan Bell 
   8. Bodily Moods and Unhomely Environments: The Hermeneutics of Agoraphobia and the Spirit of Place
        Dylan Trigg

Part III: Narrativity and Image 
   9. Narrative and Nature: Appreciating and Understanding the Nonhuman World
        Brian Treanor 
  10. The Question Concerning Nature 
       Sean McGrath
   11. New Nature Narratives: Landscape Hermeneutics and Environmental Ethics
        Martin Drenthen

Part IV: Environments, Place, and the Experience of Time
 12. Memory, Imagination, and the Hermeneutics of Place
        Forrest Clingerman
 13. The Betweenness of Monuments 
       Janet Donohoe
 14. My Place in the Sun 
       David Wood
 15. How Hermeneutics Might Save the Life of (Environmental) Ethics
        Paul Van Tongeren and Paulien Snellen

Notes
A Bibliographic Overview of Research in Environmental Hermeneutics
List of Contributors
Index

 ================================================

Reviews:

"Interpreting Nature is an excellent collection of essays. This collection is a very welcome addition to the literature and helps to move forward philosophical reflection on the idea of 'nature' and charts new and important ways to think about the task of an environmental ethics." - Charles Brown, Emporia State University
 
"This is a superb book, written with clarity, precision, and deep feeling for a better understanding of differing approaches to interpreting the wider natural world." - Mark Wallace, Swarthmore College


http://fordhampress.com/index.php/series-imprints/series/groundworks-ecological-issues-in-philosophy-and-theology/interpreting-nature-paperback.html

Announcement: Natura Vocare: Lived Experience and the Ecological Ethic

Announcement: Natura Vocare: Lived Experience and the Ecological Ethic

Readings in Zoosemiotics

From the International Society for Environmental Ethics Newsletter, Volume 22, No. 1 Spring 2011:

—Maran, Timo, Dario Martinelli, and Aleksei Turovski. Readings in Zoosemiotics. Boston, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, Inc., 2011.
This book is the first annotated reader to focus specifically on the discipline of zoosemiotics. Zoosemiotics can be defined today as the study of signification, communication and representation within and across animal species. The volume includes a wide selection of original texts accompanied by editorial introductions. An extensive opening introduction discusses the place of zoosemiotics among other sciences as well as its inner dimensions; the understanding of the concept of communication in zoosemiotics, the heritage of biologist Jakob v. Uexküll; contemporary developments in zoosemiotics and other issues. Chapter introductions discuss the background of the authors and selected texts, as well as other relevant texts. The selected texts cover a wide range of topics, such as semiotic constitution of nature, cognitive capabilities of animals, typology of animal expression and many other issues. The roots of zoosemiotics can be traced back to the works of David Hume and John Locke. Great emphasis is placed on the heritage of Thomas A. Sebeok, and a total of four of his essays are included. The Reader also includes influential studies in animal communication (honey bee dance language, vervet monkey alarm calls) as well as theory elaborations by Gregory Bateson and others. The reader concludes with a section dedicated to contemporary research. Readings in Zoosemiotics is intended as a primary source of information about zoosemiotics, and also provides additional readings for students of cognitive ethology and animal communication studies.

New book on Ecological hermeneutics

From the International Society for Environmental Ethics Newsletter, Volume 22, No. 1 Spring 2011:

Horrell, David G., Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Cherryl Hunt, and Christopher Southgate. Ecological Hermeneutics: Biblical, Historical and Theological Perspectives. London: T & T Clark, 2010.
Leading scholars reflect critically on the kinds of appeal to the Bible that have been made in environmental ethics and ecotheology. ―Ecological Hermeneutics‖ reflects critically on the kinds of appeal to the Bible that have been made in environmental ethics and ecotheoloogy; engages with biblical texts with a view towards exploring their contribution to an ecological ethics; and, explores the kind of hermeneutic necessary for such engagement to be fruitful for contemporary theology and ethics. Crucial to such broad reflection is the bringing together of a range of perspectives: biblical studies, historical theology, hermeneutics, and theological ethics. The thematic coherence of the book is provided by the running focus on the ways in which biblical texts have been, or might be, read. This is not a volume on ecotheology; but rather on ecological hermeneutics. Indeed, some essays may show where biblical texts, or particular approaches in the history of interpretation, represent anthropocentric or even anti-ecological moves. One of the overall aims of the book will be to suggest how, and why, an ecological hermeneutic might be developed, and the kinds of intepretive choices that are required in such a development.

Contents
Pt. I. Biblical perspectives
1. ―The creation stories: their ecological potential and problems‖ by John W. Rogerson
2. ―Sacrifice in Leviticus: eco-friendly ritual or unholy waste?‖ by Jonathan Morgan
3. ―Reading the prophets from an environmental perspective‖ by John Barton
4. ―The significance of the Wisdom tradition in the ecological debate‖ by Katharine J. Dell
5. ―Reading the synoptic gospels ecologically‖ by Richard Bauckham
6. ―An ecological reading of Rom. 8.19-22: possibilities and hesitations‖ by Brendan Byrne
7. ―Hellenistic cosmology and the letter to the Colossians: towards an ecological hermeneutic ― by Vicky S. Balabanski
8. ―Retrieving the earth from the conflagration: 2 Peter 3.5-13 and the environment‖ by Edward Adams
Pt. II. Insights from the history of interpretation.
9. ―In the beginning: Irenaeus, creation and the environment‖ by Francis Watson
10. ―Power and dominion: patristic interpretations of Genesis I‖ by Morwenna Ludlow
11. ―Thomas Aquinas: reading the idea of dominion in the light of the doctrine of creation‖ by
Mark Wynn
12. ―Martin Luther, the word of God and nature: Reformation hermeneutics in context‖ by H. Paul Santmire
13. ―'Remaining loyal to the earth': humanity, God‘s other creatures and the Bible‖ by Karl Barth and Geoff Thompson
14. ―Hans Urs von Balthasar: beginning with beauty‖ by David Moss
15. ―Between creation and transfiguration: the environment in the Eastern Orthodox tradition‖ by Andrew Louth
16. ―Jürgen Moltmann‘s ecological hermeneutics‖ by Jeremy Law
Pt. III. Contemporary hermeneutical possibilities.
17. ―Green millennialism: American evangelicals, environmentalism, and the book of Revelation‖ by Harry O. Maier
18. ―New Testament eschatology and the ecological crisis in theological and ecclesial perspective‖ by Stephen C. Barton
19. ―Keeping the commandments: the meaning of sustainable countryside‖ by Tim Gorringe
20. ―What on earth is an ecological hermeneutics?: some broad parameters‖ by Ernst M. Conradie.

Environmental Philosophy journal

The latest issue of Environmental Philosophy (Spring 2011, Vol. 8, no. 1), the official journal of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy, was just released. Among the essays, two are written by participants in the electronic seminar referred to in the description of this blog. Forrest Clingermann (who also founded and writes for this blog) wrote "From Artwork to Place: Finding the voices of Moreelse, Bacon, and Beuys at the Hermeneutical Intersection of Culture and Nature." Janet Donohoe is the author of the second essay entitled "The Place of Home."

Clingerman looks at theological investigations concerning culture and nature asking the question of how theological reflection on art informs our "consideration of nature." Clingerman's inquiry into three specific works leads him to conclude a possible "hermeneutical mediation between art, place, and the spiritual."

Donohoe addresses what she calls the "normative power of place, specifically the place of home, on our embodied constitution." Investigating the concepts of "homeworld" and "alienworld" from a Husserlian perspective, Donohoe asks "why place would have a normative power and to what extent that normativity can be drawn into question through encounters with the alienworld." She concludes with a brief examination on the implications of the normative priority of homeworld for those who are displaced and "whether alien place can ever take on the normative and identity power of home place."

While Clingerman's essay is more explicitly hermeneutical in focus and Donohoe's is phenomenological, the latter is certainly implicitly, if not overtly, hermeneutical in its approach and style. Both essays can rightly be considered as contributions to the growing literature of environmental hermeneutics.

AESS-CFP Deadline Extended

The Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences has extended the deadline for abstracts to March 22 for its annual conference to be held in Burlington, Vermont, June 23 - 26. "Confronting Complexity" is the theme of the conference. For more details see www.aess.info.

PHILOSOPHY'S OTHER: THEORY ON THE WEB: Cfp: Kögler, Hans-Herbert, and Paul Healy, eds. S...

PHILOSOPHY'S OTHER: THEORY ON THE WEB: Cfp: Kögler, Hans-Herbert, and Paul Healy, eds. S...: "Twentieth century hermeneutics, including the work of Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur, effected a revolution regarding the concepts of unders..."

Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment 9th Biennial Conference

The Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE) will host its ninth biennial conference at Indiana University in Bloomington June 22 – 26 (with pre-conference activities on June 21). I was recently notified, along with 3 colleagues from the University of North Texas (Nathan Bell, Ivana Corsales, and Dr. Robert M. Figueroa), that our panel proposal was accepted. The theme of the panel is “Heritage and Horizons of Environmental Justice.” The purpose of the panel is to explore the roots of the environmental justice movement (EJM) and environmental justice studies (EJS) while looking to the important contributions that philosophical hermeneutics can offer its future. Hermeneutics has much to offer in terms of heritage and history, place and dwelling, identity, discourse, and future planning. We hope to make this case on the panel.

The conference is yet several months away. But stay tuned to this blog for any updates, especially following the conference itself.

Environmental Thought Bibliography

The International Society for Environmental Ethics has recently launched a dynamic bibliography for environmental thought (found at www.isee-obet.org).

While still in its beginning stages, this bibliography promises to be of great benefit to environmental philosophers, including those studying the relationship between environmental philosophy and hermeneutics. Readers of this blog are encouraged to check this new resource out. Already some works related to environmental hermeneutics are easily found through keywords (e.g. "hermeneutics"), and more will undoubtedly follow.

Not every work on environmental hermeneutics is listed on this bibliography, however, and so consider joining the bibliography's contributors to add these works.

CFP: Religion and Ecology Group, American Academy of Religion

The following comes from the Religion and Ecology group of the American Academy of Religion. The AAR Annual Meeting will be in San Francisco, 18-21 November 2011. To submit a proposal, go to www.aarweb.org.


Call for Proposals

This Group seeks papers on the following topics:

* Religious environmental imaginations, histories, and movements relating to San Francisco and California such as radical environmentalism in the West (e.g., Edward Abbey and Earth First!), bioregionalism, eco-utopias, revisiting John Muir’s religiosity, queer ecologies, and ecology and disaster

* The ecological in-between — exploring our relationships with everyday technology, exploring the ambiguous ethical stance of living toward a different ecological future from within consumer worlds, exploring the concept of “saving nature” while recognizing that nature is always in transformation, and exploring pets, working animals, gardens, and other nonhuman identities “in between” domestic/cultivated and wild

* Ecological hermeneutics, ecosemiotics, and ecocriticism (for a possible cosponsored session with the SBL Ecological Hermeneutics Section) — multireligious, critical reflection on the ecohermeneutics of religious texts (such as the ecobible series); race, gender, and the hermeneutics of “nature”; and the “environmental movement”

Mission

This Group critically and constructively explores how human–Earth relations are shaped by religions, cultures, and understandings of nature and the environment. We are self-consciously inter- and multidisciplinary and include methods such as those found in the work of theologians, philosophers, religionists, ethicists, scientists, and anthropologists, among others.
Anonymity of Review Process

Proposals are anonymous to Chairs and Steering Committee Members during review, but visible to Chairs prior to final acceptance or rejection.
Questions?

Whitney Bauman
Florida International University
whitneyabauman@mac.com
A. Whitney Sanford
University of Florida
wsanford@ufl.edu

CFP: International Association for Environmental Philosophy

Fifteenth Annual Meeting of
The International Association for Environmental Philosophy
Philadelphia, Pa.
October 23-24, 2011

CALL FOR PAPERS

The International Association for Environmental Philosophy (IAEP)invites paper proposals for its annual meeting to be held in Philadelphia at the Sheraton Society Hill on October 23-24, 2011, immediately following the 50th Annual Meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP).

Please send 1-2 page (single-spaced) proposals in Word format to IAEP Secretary Steven Vogel, vogel@denison.edu. Since individual and panel proposals are chosen through a process of blind review, each submission should contain two attachments: (1) A cover letter that provides detailed contact information (including physical and electronic addresses and academic affiliation) of the author(s). In addition, if you anticipate the need for audio/visual equipment should your submission be accepted please indicate exactly what will be required in this letter. (2) The proposal itself, without any identifying information as to the author(s). In the case of panel proposals, a description of the theme of the panel should be included as well as proposals for each of the papers in the panel.

The deadline for receipt of proposals is March 15th, 2011. Notice of decision will arrive by mid-May.

PRIZE FOR BEST GRADUATE STUDENT ESSAY:

An award of $100 will be awarded for the best essay submitted by a graduate student. If you wish to be considered for this award, please indicate this fact in your cover letter. Graduate students whose proposals are accepted for the conference will be asked to submit complete papers (of no more than 3000 words) by September 15th for award consideration. As before, papers must be submitted as attachments without identifying information. The winner will be announced during the
conference.

The International Association for Environmental Philosophy offers a forum for the philosophical discussion of our relation to the natural environment. Embracing a broad understanding of environmental philosophy, IAEP encourages papers in the areas of not only environmental ethics, but also environmental aesthetics, ontology,
theology, the philosophy of science, political philosophy, ecofeminism, the philosophy of technology, and the like. IAEP welcomes a diversity of approaches to issues in these areas, including those inspired by Continental philosophy, the history of philosophy, and the tradition of American philosophy.

For more information, please visit our website:
www.environmentalphilosophy.org

CFP: Temporal Environments

Temporal Environments: Rethinking Time and Ecology

Special Issue of the Journal of Environmental Philosophy

Editors: Jacob Metcalf (UC Santa Cruz) and Thom van Dooren (University of Technology, Sydney)

Place and space have received substantial attention in environmental philosophy in recent decades. Theorists from a variety of fields have proposed that reorienting our relationship to the non-human world requires reconsideration of ways of understanding and inhabiting spaces and places. Ecophenomenologists have argued that replacing meaningful places with abstract space was a critical moment in histories of environmental destruction, and environmental ethics will require re-imagining place as meaningful again. Bioregionalism has emphasized the need to rethink our places as ecological relationships, and inspired not only changes in academia, but also in environmental movements such as food localism. In a related vein, Val Plumwood has cautioned against too simplistic a notion of “one’s place”, critiquing the fracturing of place in which cherished homeplaces are able to be preserved only as a result of the destruction of less visible ‘shadow places’. In short, there is a broad assertion that reassessing our obligations to more-than-human worlds requires understanding place as more meaningful than an empty space to be filled by human concerns.

This special issue of the Journal of Environmental Philosophy will present a collection of articles that direct similar attention to the time and temporality of environments, a topic that has been relatively neglected by environmental philosophy and ethics. Although environmental ethicists have long discussed temporal issues, such as intergenerational justice, time has often been treated as an essentially linear and static container for human action. But if we conceive of time as produced, constructed, maintained, lived, multiple, and a more-than-human concern, the possibilities for environmental philosophy look dramatically different. This collection will offer such a framework for thinking through time and environment by exploring the multiple lived times present in global climate change, species extinction, the practices of ecological sciences, and the temporal fidelities of conservation and restoration.

Among the questions we hope this collection might explore are: What philosophical reconsiderations of time might be available and useful for other ecological disciplines? How does the pace of human life—markets, science, desires, consumption—impact our ability to imagine and produce livable futures? How might we remember different, and sometimes lost, ways of valuing human and nonhuman worlds in a way that does not fetishize the past but still holds it open as a resource for constructing better futures? How does an attentiveness to the scope of evolutionary time alter our sense of obligation in a time of massive biodiversity loss? How does the high-speed pace of much human life actually make it harder to change the conditions of those lives? How do humans and other animals learn to justly co-inhabit our sometimes very different temporalities? What ways of life are enabled or disabled by different temporal metaphors? What post-colonial temporalities are necessary for recuperation of cultural ecologies damaged by genocides and ecocides? Will sustainable ecologies require new models of temporality to reformulate growth, degrowth, and regrowth?

We invite submissions from environmental philosophers and other ecological scholars, including reflective pieces from natural and social scientists. Pieces that are grounded in specific cases of temporal environments are especially encouraged. We welcome pieces from international and native communities, and others not often represented in philosophy journals.

The Journal of Environmental Philosophy (http://ephilosophy.uoregon.edu/) is a peer-reviewed professional philosophy journal, and is the official journal of the International Association of Environmental Philosophy (IAEP). The Journal of Environmental Philosophy publishes innovative research relevant to all areas of environmental philosophy, including ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, theology, politics, ecofeminism, environmental justice, philosophy of technology, and ecophenomenology.

Target publication date: Spring 2012
Abstracts of 300-400 words, due by April 1, 2011
Papers due for review by August 1, 2011

There are no word count restrictions, but submissions are encouraged to aim for 6-8,000 words.

For further information or to submit abstracts, please contact Jacob Metcalf (jake.metcalf@gmail.com) or Thom van Dooren (thom.van.dooren@gmail.com).

Zygon publishes biosemiotics essays

The latest issue of the journal Zygon, which publishes research on the religion and science dialogue, includes the second selection of essays of a two part series on biosemiotics and the religion and science debate. A number of essays in both parts discuss interpretation from a semiotic perspective, with a particular emphasis on C.S. Peirce.

From Zygon 45, no. 2 (June 2010)

INTRODUCTION: TOWARD A METAPHYSIC OF MEANING
Andrew Robinson, Christopher Southgate

INTERPRETATION AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
Christopher Southgate, Andrew Robinson

SELECTION, INTERPRETATION, AND THE EMERGENCE OF LIVING SYSTEMS
Bruce H. Weber

A BIOSEMIOTIC APPROACH TO THE QUESTION OF MEANING
Jesper Hoffmeyer

PROCESS ECOLOGY: STEPPING STONES TO BIOSEMIOSIS
Robert E. Ulanowicz

DISCUSSION OF THE CONCEPTUAL BASIS OF BIOSEMIOTICS
Andrew Robinson, Christopher Southgate, Terrence Deacon

From Zygon 45, no. 3 (September 2010)
GOD AND THE WORLD OF SIGNS: INTRODUCTION TO PART 2
Andrew Robinson, Christopher Southgate

SEMIOTICS AS A METAPHYSICAL FRAMEWORK FOR CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY
Andrew Robinson, Christopher Southgate

TRANSFORMING THEOLOGICAL SYMBOLS
F. LeRon Shults

BROKEN SYMBOLS? RESPONSE TO F. LERON SHULTS
Andrew Robinson, Christopher Southgate

TOWARD A THEOLOGY OF BOUNDARY
Jeremy T. Law

CRITICAL AFTERWORD
Philip Clayton

Hermeneutics, Eco-Justice, and Indigenous Knowledge

An article just published advocates the use of eco-hermeneutics as a way of bringing place back into the development of curriculum. The authors argue that eco-hermeneutics finds deeper ways of understanding places beyond the walls of academia. The citation of the article is: Andrejs Kulnieks, Dan Roronhiakewen Longboat, and Kelly Young, "Re-Indigenizing Curriculum: An Eco-Hermeneutic Approach to Learning," AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Scholarship 6, no. 1 (2010): pp. 15-24. (go to journal website).

The way that the authors define "eco-hermeneutics" is spelled out in the first part of the essay. For them, one quality of eco-hermeneutics is that it acts as a corrective to the over-emphasis on written texts. Certainly, the aim of interpretation is to seek meaning, and the desire to seek meaning is found in language. But, the authors argue, meaning is also temporal--and this temporality moves us to recognize the importance of place in our quest for meaning. The academic tradition has neglected place and other forms of physically instantiated meaning by concentrating their hermeneutical investigations on written, disembodied language. In other words, unlike traditional hermeneutics, eco-hermeneutics places a priority on oral tradition, opening the door to see how indigenous knowledge can inform our understanding of place.

This critique of the written text is provocative, but also perhaps mistakes what can constitute "text" for philosophical hermeneutics. On the one hand, the authors make an important point in seeking to include local knowledge in the reading of place. This knowledge is not exclusively from contemporary science and technology. In that sense, the description that the authors provide of indigenous knowledge shows how we might approach place in more tentative, open ways--that is, in ways that allow for other perspectives and more environmentally friendly relationships.

On the other hand, the oral narratives (and indigenous knowledge more generally) that the authors point to are also "texts." Therefore it is perhaps extreme to assume that hermeneutics approaches written and oral texts differently. At the root of the authors' argument, then, is the recognition that we form a number of competing narratives of place and nature. Each of these is text, broadly construed. Even if it isn't "discourse fixed in writing" (Ricoeur), oral narratives do exhibit other forms of textuality. Hermeneutics is about more than printed texts: it is about the inevitable interpretion of life. The authors state, "Rather than depending solely upon its reconstruction through print-centred learning, eco-hermeneutics seeks to include interpretive experiential learning in this process of inquiry [into place]. These investigations include properly learning to tell and interpret stories that are indigenous to the places they live" (p. 17). I think we can say that philosophical hermeneutics itself must always be an "eco-hermeneutics" under this definition.

For the authors,eco-hermeneutics (based on indigenous traditions, the use of storytelling and environmental autobiography, and a new hermeneutic that asks the reader 'to develop an understanding of the physical, ecological, and bio-cultural aspects of the story..." {p. 18]) is needed to reform academic curriculum. They write, "Our concern here is for the importance of truth-telling and the revival of practices that seek to establish a relationship between language and place. As academics, educators and teachers, our responsibility is to revitalize the notion that stories and the understandings that they represent are for the benefit of everybody and everything that is of place" (p. 19). I would be interested to see how this informs not only environmental studies classes, but other endeavors in the academy.

Finally, for the authors this goal toward a better understanding of place is tied to the language of eco-justice. Eco-justice language offers the linguistic framework for this new hermeneutical account. I don't know of other attempts to explicitly tie the eco-justice movement to philosophical hermeneutics, but this seems to be a worthwhile conversation to begin.

New Article on Ideology and Utopia

In the new issue of Environmental Philosophy (the journal of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy), an excellent article by Brian Treanor appears. Entitled "Turn Around and Step Forward: Ideology and Utopia in the Environmental Movement," (Environmental Philosophy 7 [2010]): 27-46) Treanor's argument explicates how Paul Ricoeur's work on the social imaginary--including the dialectic between ideology and utopia--can be fruitfully applied to environmental thought. These terms allow us to make a much stronger case for the need to move away from simply seeking technical fixes, and toward a shift in understanding.

Through his argument, Treanor shows the need for re-envisioning our social thinking about environments, rather than always relying on pragmatic compromise. Imagination is key here. In fact, I think imagination has been not been sufficiently dealt with in environmental philosophy, especially as a social--not simply individual--phenomenon. As a result, this essay is an important addition to environmental hermeneutics (and environmental philosophy more generally). It is also an excellent summation of this aspect of Ricoeur's thought; the portions related to Ricoeur would be profitable for philosophers, even if uninterested in the ecological dimensions Treanor is focused on.

Another reason this is a particularly useful and informative article is that Treanor applies his argument to two case studies. One case study is Shellenberger and Nordhoaus' thesis on "the death of environmentalism." The other is the work of David Brower.

Treanor is seeking to better analyze environmental thought, and thus push it forward. Here and elsewhere, he advocates a narrative approach. He tells us that a one sentence guideline would be: "Environmentalists should hold fast to a utopian vision of a sustainable future, articulated in compelling narratives, while remaining on alert for unconventional allies and unexpected opportunities for forwarding our agenda" (p. 40). I would recommend reading this article, to see exactly what he means.

AESS in Portland

The Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS) conference in Portland, Oregon has gone exceptionally well. The conference brought together scholars representing a number of different disciplines. I was fortunate to present papers on two panels yesterday (Saturday, June 20) that were quite diverse. The theme of the first panel was concerned with "new directions" in environmental studies and sciences. My paper served to introduce the idea of environmental hermeneutics and was well received.

In the afternoon I was on a panel that, once again, was concerned with "new directions," only this time the theme was specific to environmental justice. I spoke to the question of the narrative environmental identities of communities on the receiving end of environmental injustices and how narrative is a crucial tool for environmental justice activists who advocate on the behalf of these communities. The paper was the only philosophy paper on the panel and appeared to go by without much fanfare. In the Q&A, however, all the questions and discussion, regardless of which panelist these were directed to, kept coming back to the issue of narrative. In the end, communal narrative identities seemed to be one cohering element to the presentations. The session chair humorously concluded the panel with the words. "Paul Ricoeur wins."

Aesthetics and Hermeneutics: Complementary?

I recently gave a paper on how aesthetics might be a useful dialogue partner for environmental hermeneutics. My point was this: the philosophical discipline of aesthetics--broadly conceived as related to perception and sensibility, not simply a philosophy of art or of beauty--offers tools for understanding interpretation of place as text. To explain: environments are unique objects of interpretation, for at least a few reasons. Foremost, we are within environments in a way that we are not within a novel or painting. To interpret environments means to interpret something that includes us on several levels: physical, emotional, intellectual. Yet environments are somehow also different than us. Second, there is an explicitly sensual, embodied side of environments that is missing from our interpretation of a book or work of art. We might read any copy of Crime and Punishment and come to the same interpretation, but we cannot gather the same interpretation from each and every landscape or place as if they all represented the same thing called "environment."

Given these--and other--unique features of environments, it seems that aesthetics might give a needed complement to the work of hermeneutics. Aesthetics presents ways of understanding how we sense and perceive. It identifies values and qualities unique to such aesthetic experience. And finally it begins to reflect on how perception and interpretation are interrelated using a different vantage point than the hermeneutical approach to this question. In other words, I would argue that an area of inquiry that will significantly advance environmental hermeneutics is the interrelationship between hermeneutics and aesthetics as environmentally-focused disciplines.

Is this kind of interconnection between environmental aesthetics and environmental hermeneutics needed? Or does philosophical hermeneutics already offer a persuasive way to engage in our perceptual encounter with built and natural environments?

Environmental Hermeneutics at the NTPA and the AESS

Just this past April the University of North Texas hosted the 43rd annual meeting of the North Texas Philosophical Association. I was pleased along with Nathan Bell to present on a panel devoted to environmental hermeneutics. I presented my paper, "Environmental Hermeneutics: New Horizons for Interpretation" followed by Nathan's, "All Such Understanding of Nature: Gadamer and Environmental Hermeneutics." Both papers were well received as evidenced by an enthusiastic Q&A following. to view the conference program, go to http://ntpa.net/.

Environemental hermeneutics will also make a showing at the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences conference, Many Shades of Green, to be held June 17-20 in Portland, Oregon on the campus of Lewis and Clark College. I will be presenting on two panels. The first will be my EH paper I presented at the NTPA. The second is a paper using the narrative theory of Paul Ricoeur and bringing it into dialogue with environmental justice studies. Nathan Bell will also be presenting two papers in the area of environmental hermeneutics. The papers are posted on the conference website, http://www.aess.info/. and can be viewed by clicking on the conference link to the left, then going to "conference schedule" and clicking on the link for the full program. Nathan Bell's papers are on Friday and mine can be found on Saturday.

Environmental Hermeneutics Panel at the IAEP

At the Annual Meeting of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy in Montreal (6-8 November 2010), there will be a number of presentations related to environmental hermeneutics. In fact, the following panel will be devoted to the topic:

Environmental Hermeneutics Panel
Moderator: Brian Treanor, Loyola Marymount University
“Memory, Imagination, and the Hermeneutics of Place,” Forrest Clingerman, Ohio Northern University
“The Other-than-human as a Self: Ricoeur’s Solicitude in Environmental Hermeneutics,” Nathan Bell,
University of North Texas
“Landscape Hermeneutics and Gadamer’s Notion of Wirkungsgeschichte,” Martin A. Drenthen, Radboud
University Nijmegen

For more information, see www.environmentalphilosophy.org.