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36 PartTwo The view I am proposing is one version of the sportsman thesis: that field sports when practiced properly will lead to the development of certain environmental virtues. These virtues, while seemingly lower in the pantheon than Platonic courage or Aristotelian sagacity, and even Roosevelt’s manliness, have great importance in environmental ethics. Environmental ethics is a field devoted to the applications of philosophical and moral theories to issues of environmental concern. The kinds of views one finds expressed in this field vary widely and there is as yet no consensus as to which approach is best suited to solve the environmental problems at hand. One emerging view is that virtue ethics will provide the guidance necessary to do so.1 This is the approach I shall follow. Virtue ethics in general and environmental virtue ethics in particular must successfully answer three questions to be adequate. These questions will motivate the discussion in Part Two. First, what is the good aimed at? While virtues are thought of as goods in themselves, they are also a part of greater things, perhaps the good life or the good society. This, at least, is what Aristotle argues, and I think he is right. He says that the goal or good of human life is happiness, which he characterizes as human flourishing. And he also argues that in order for this to occur we must seek to develop virtue and also live in certain kinds of societies. An evaluation of the vast literature and controversy devoted to these topics will be left to others. Here, the first question becomes what good guides the choice for environmental virtues. In Chapter Four, I will track the way the goal aimed at by the sportsman thesis has been modified since the days of Teddy Roosevelt. This history will allow us to recognize a new goal: the biotic good. I will argue that the good of the biotic community—in particular its integrity, stability, and beauty, to use Leopold’s terms—is what must guide our choice of virtues in this realm. Then, in Chapter Five, I will detail what this goal entails as a way of narrowing our search for the proper list of environmental virtues. The second question, then, faced by environmental virtue ethics, is what specific list of virtues is required to meet the goal or bring EnvironmentalVirtuesandFieldSports Environmental Virtues and Field Sports 37 about the good identified in response to the first question. This is also a matter of significant disagreement among philosophers.2 In Chapter Six, I will argue that there are three virtues required for the good of biotic diversity: an ecological conscience, environmental awareness, and aesthetic competence. These three virtues are integral to Leopold’s land ethic. The third question faced by environmental virtue ethics is how the virtues chosen to bring about the good required are actually generated. That is, which activities will encourage people to develop the virtues of an ecological conscience, environmental awareness, and aesthetic competence? My answer is obvious at this point: we teach them field sports in the right way.3 I will begin to answer this question more thoroughly in Chapter Six, but the complete view will require that we attend to certain problems in Part Three. ...

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