Is Environmental Virtue Ethics a "Virtuous" Anthropocentrism?

Overview & Synopsis

This Special Issue addresses the preconception that virtue ethics is intrinsically anthropocentric and cannot fulfill the task of developing a moral attitude toward the environment. The provocative notion of “virtuous anthropocentrism” is intended to stimulate a renewal in the field of environmental ethics at large, including environmental virtue ethics as one of its most promising strains. More specifically, the field of environmental virtue ethics aims to overcome the dichotomy between human flourishing and environmental welfare. To this end, a number of theoretical and practical difficulties need to be overcome. The Special Issue is the first comprehensive contribution to the field in the context of European philosophical perspectives and includes contributions by authors from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland, in addition to one author from Australia. Their emphasis is placed on the possibility of converting vicious anthropocentrism into virtuous anthropocentrism or considering non-anthropocentric virtue ethics. In addition to highlighting a large range of moral postures within the environmental virtue ethics landscape, they surface a number of political implications with respect to environmental issues. Virtues that concern individuals and not institutions can nonetheless have a wide political reach and mean a shift in the appraisal of the political decisions that may apply. As a whole, the Special Issue invites a re-appraisal of virtue ethics in order to face the present global environmental crisis, which is simultaneously an unprecedented anthropological crisis.