An Environmental Ethic of Home

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-1-2022

Publication Title

Environment, Space, Place

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that our lives are situated in territories of natural and built environments that should be included in our conceptions of home. I maintain that this expanded conception is indispensable for an environmental ethic that is both well-grounded and practically efficacious. Thus, I take a serious look at the things, places, and others that ought to be included in our concept of home. In the first section I discuss persistent problems for dominant theories of environmental ethics, namely that they fail to connect or give equal weight to value in nature and valuing nature. In the second section, I rely on the work of Hans Jonas to show that ethical responsibility is central to any robust theory of ethics. Ethical theory requires both a source of value and a feeling of responsibility toward that value to be appropriately grounded. Sections three and four contain my arguments for a conception of home in an expanded sense. There I also argue that homes act as primal sites of responsibility, ones that establish both value in nature and a feeling that grounds an environmental ethic. The final section builds on this ground by providing a set of values or ideals to which individuals can commit in order to make their homes good ones in an ethicallycharged sense.

Department

Philosophy, Religion and Liberal Studies

Volume Number

14

Issue Number

2

First Page

28

Last Page

60

DOI

10.1353/spc.2022.0017

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