Wrapping up the course
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Announcements:
(1) Review sessions: Monday May 9, 10am: Fernow room 304
(2) Final Exam: Friday May 13, Bradfield 101, 3:00 pm.
Importance of giving authorship credit
Demonstrating mastery of the material
Cronon argues in his essay that wilderness “is a product of . . . civilization, and could hardly be contaminated by the very stuff of which it is made. Wilderness hides its unnaturalness behind a mask that is all the more beguiling because it seems so natural.”
Relate to broad themes of the course
Examples of biodiversity and endangered species
II. The example of un-diverse Adirondack lakes:
environmental restoration of Adirondack lakes
One point of John Haldane’s essay on environmental aesthetics: these issues are often put in terms of “environmental ethics” when in reality they are really aesthetic issues; see highlighted passage p. 99.
the diversity-stability hypothesis
Cronon:
“To return to my opening argument: there is nothing natural about the concept of wilderness. It is entirely a creation of the culture that holds it dear, a product of the very history it seeks to deny. Indeed, one of the most striking proofs of the cultural invention of wilderness is the thoroughgoing erasure of history from which it sprang. In virtually all of its manifestations, wilderness represents a flight from history. Seen as the original garden, it is a place outside of time, from which humans had to be ejected before the fallen world of history could properly begin. Seen as the frontier, it is a savage world at the dawn of civilization, whose transformation represents the very beginning of the national historical epic. Seen as the bold landscape of frontier heroism, it is the place of youth and childhood, into which men escape by abandoning their pasts and entering a world of freedom where the constraints of civilization fade into memory. Seen as the sacred sublime, it is the home of a God who transcends history by standing as the One who remains untouched and unchanged by time’s arrow. No matter what the angle from which we regard it, wilderness offers us the illusion that we can escape the cares and troubles off the world in which our past has ensnared us.”
Cronon continues:
“This escape from history is one reason why the language we use to talk about wilderness is often permeated with spiritual and religious values that reflect human ideals far more than the material world of physical nature. Wilderness fulfills the old romantic project of secularizing Judeo-Christian values so as to make a new cathedral not in some petty human building but in God’s own creation—Nature itself.”
“Many environmentalists who reject traditional notions of God and who regard themselves as agnostics or even atheists nonetheless express feelings tantamount to religious awe when in the presence of wilderness—a fact that testifies to the success of the romantic project. Those who have no difficulty seeing God as the expression of our human dreams and desires nonetheless have trouble recognizing that in a secular age Nature can offer precisely the same sort of human mirror.” (80)
IV. Ethics and environmental decision making
See also Nelson, R. J. "Ethics and Environmental Decision Making." Environmental Ethics 1, no. 3 (1979): 263-78. “A properly ethical approach,” Nelson claims, “must begin where we are, as moderately moral people desiring the best for all.”
Neurath’s boat