Narrative Environmental Virtue Ethics

Some Challenges for Narrative Accounts of Value

“…Oelschlager (1997,88), on the other hand, claims that "talk" (which includes but is not limited to narrative) is what "carries our values." Those to whom I do attribute a narrative account of value include Treanor (2008); Liszka (2003);and O'Neill et al (2008) [with one qualification; see discussion on p. 20 and endnote 34 below] and perhaps Preston (2001). 8 For early discussions of the importance of narrative by ecofeminists, see, for example, Cheney (1989) and Warren (1990).…”

Environmentalism and Public Virtue

“…14 Indeed, I myself am interested in the uses of virtue ethics for environmentalism, and I support this belief in the power of virtuous examples. See Treanor 2008. crises may be local (e.g., urban sprawl, lack of green space, etc. ), regional (e.g., water use in the American West), or global (e.g., anthropogenic climate change, the changing pH of the ocean, etc.…”

“…This, however, is unfortunate. Environmentalists seem to take for granted that virtues such as simplicity, respect, or care might function as cardinal environmental virtues (Treanor 2008;Wensveen 2000); however, upon consideration, there is good reason to think that public virtues-especially the subset of political virtues-play the role of a keystone in environmental virtue, without which the whole edifice of environmental virtue is doomed to fall. 2 This emphasis on personal virtue has not gone unnoticed.…”

Reading Ourselves through the Land: Landscape Hermeneutics and Ethics of Place

“…In this section, I draw heavily on reflections on the relevance of Ricoeur for environmental philosophy by Forrest Clingerman on 'emplacement' (Clingerman 2004), David Utsler on environmental identity(Utsler 2009) and Brian Treanor on 'narrative environmental virtue ethics'(Treanor 2008).…”