Semester One
1. The roots, both religious and philosophical, of the dominant tradition in Western culture and civilisation behind the ecological crisis of today. Who are the real villains, Genesis or the Greek philosophers (Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics) and those they influenced (Descartes, Kant)?
2. Are there conceptual resources within the modern Western philosophical tradition to generate a new ethic of the environment (not merely an ethic about the environment) or is there a need to depart radically to found a new ethic or indeed, a new branch of philosophy? If there is, what would such a new ethic/environmental philosophy look like?
3. The nature of industrial civilisation; the concept of homo faber.
4. The concept of Nature; the nature/human dualism and the postmodern rejection of it; the ontological distinction between the natural and the artefactual.
5. The ontological threat posed to Nature by modern technology, especially technology of the rising future.
6. Conservationism (resourcism), preservationism.
7. Anthropocentrism and nonanthropocentrism.
8. Speciesism/human chauvinism - souls, rationality, self-consciousness, language.
9. Instrumental value and intrinsic value.
10. Instrumentalism and the Last Person Argument.
Book List