Reciprocity as an Environmental Virtue
Three recent developments in environmental ethics - interest in virtue and character, concern for psychological realism, and collective action required to address global ecological challenges - are in tension with one another. For example, virtue ethical approaches in environmental ethics face objec...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2021
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| In: |
Environmental ethics
Year: 2021, Volume: 43, Issue: 3, Pages: 195-217 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Three recent developments in environmental ethics - interest in virtue and character, concern for psychological realism, and collective action required to address global ecological challenges - are in tension with one another. For example, virtue ethical approaches in environmental ethics face objections from "situationist" critique and the strategic dimensions of collective action. This article proposes a conception of reciprocity as a response to this challenge for environmental virtue ethics. Environmental ethics has been traditionally skeptical of reciprocity due to its associations with self-interest, instrumental rationality, and well-defined contractual interactions. However, reciprocity can also be understood as a moral disposition of social agents who wish to respond proportionately and fittingly to the benefits they receive from others. Reciprocity is a psychologically robust moral disposition appropriate to contexts of strategic interaction underlying a variety of conservation and common pool resource challenges. As an environmental virtue, reciprocity's example demonstrates that environmental virtue ethics need not give up psychological realism or concern with collective action. |
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| ISSN: | 2153-7895 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Environmental ethics
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics20215421 |