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3 The Public and Its Environmental Problems Why Are They Not Taking Environmental Philosophy More Seriously? Although environmental ethics has (as I mention in Chapter 1) achieved significant academic success—at least, if we judge this by the number of courses offered,monographs published,and journals established—its standing within the discipline of philosophy has always been somewhat tenuous. Indeed, J. Baird Callicott once wrote that environmental philosophy was “something of a pariah”in the mainstream philosophical community (1999a,1).Although the reputation of the field in conventional philosophy circles may be slowly changing, I believe Callicott’s observation remains largely accurate. For example , even though interest in environmental ethics is growing within interdisciplinary programs and departments—for example, in environmental studies, public policy,natural resources,and the life sciences—the field’s fortunes have not risen nearly as rapidly within traditional philosophy departments, where environmental ethics still seems to be viewed as a fringe discussion rather than as a serious field occupied with exploring what are considered to be the “big” philosophical questions. In his ruminations on the relatively low status of environmental ethics in the philosophy community, Callicott offers a number of reasons—from the moral to the political—to explain the expulsion of the field to what he describes as the“applied ethics barrio”(1999a).Yet despite this, Callicott (and presumably many other philosophers in the field) remains hopeful that environmental ethics will ultimately triumph over conventional, mainstream moral philosophy and reconstruct the latter along more nonanthropocentric lines. Although I disagree with many of Callicott’s philosophical and political 38 / Chapter 3 aspirations for environmental ethics (as I hope the previous chapters make clear), I do sympathize with his frustration over the status of the field within applied philosophy. I believe, however, that environmental philosophers share some of the blame for this state of affairs. The field’s historically sharp rebuke of the claims and commitments of conventional (i.e., anthropocentric) moral and political thought is, I suggest, the main reason why it has been seen as a discourse that often takes place outside the mainstream philosophical community. Moreover, and as I argue in Chapter 2, given that such received ethical and political concerns motivate citizens, legislators, and decision makers, this rejection of the humanist tradition may also be viewed as one of the primary reasons why environmental philosophy has not made significant and lasting inroads into environmental policy discussions. For such philosophers as Callicott, Holmes Rolston, Eric Katz, and others, this scholarly exclusion is simply the price that has to be paid for advancing what is seen as radical philosophical and cultural reform. I believe, however, that it is too dear. In fact, over the long run, I suggest that the rejection of traditional philosophical and political theories and concepts only impoverishes environmental ethics as a scholarly field and as an effective participant in the formation of environmental policy arguments. I think that many environmental philosophers have been far too hasty in their abandonment of the traditions of mainstream Western thought and that the time is ripe for a reconsideration of the value and utility of this inheritance for current normative and policy discussions in the environmental realm. In the previous chapter, I draw directly from one of the primary traditions in Western philosophical and political thought (American pragmatism) in arguing for a more experimental and democratic style of environmental ethical argument. Here, I want to build on this important linkage between pragmatism, democracy, and environmental ethics by considering what a return to the notion of the“public interest”—a core normative ideal in the history of American public policy and administration—might offer in the search for a more democratically suitable and pragmatic style of environmental ethics. A reclamation of a deliberative, nonaggregationist understanding of the public interest in environmental ethical argument , I suggest later in this chapter, not only will strengthen the connection between public environmental values and the policy process but also will help bring the field of environmental ethics—which is often seen as an “outsider” in debates over the moral and political dimensions of public life—into the mainstream of American political culture and the heart of democratic politics. One of my primary objectives in this chapter, then, is to build a modest, but hopefully useful, bridge between the public affairs and environmental ethics communities . I also attempt to show that nonanthropocentrists and theorists of a more humanist bent can support appeals to the public interest in environmental philosophy and environmental...

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