Ecological Crisis and the Problem of How to Inhabit a Norm

The Anthropocene is distinguished by the knowledge that collective human action is damaging the earth's biophysical systems in a manner that has serious implications for human life and nature. In a recent work, Dale Jamieson has argued that despite this knowledge moral philosophy is limited in its capacity to provide the wholesale re-orientation of human practices that are required if humanity is to respond successfully to the array of ecological crises that have emerged in the Anthropocene. This paper will argue that the role second nature plays in ethical formation provides a better prospect for understanding normative change than moral philosophy, because it allows for an appreciation of the ways in which norms are embodied and for the objective conditions that make such change possible.