Place and Personal Commitment In Teaching Environmental Ethics
[Article]
Philip Cafaro
Leiden
Brill
This essay, a personal account of teaching environmental ethics, advances two main points. First, focusing on local environmental issues makes for better classes. Teachers can take advantage of local environmental expertise at their institutions and in the wider community; local focus provides a good balance given philosophy's tendency to abstractness; students tend to feel more engaged and excited about the class. Second, environmental ethics classes should spend more time helping students articulate their own ethical positions and showing them how to act upon them. In this way, our classes will better prepare and inspire students to do right by nature. This essay, a personal account of teaching environmental ethics, advances two main points. First, focusing on local environmental issues makes for better classes. Teachers can take advantage of local environmental expertise at their institutions and in the wider community; local focus provides a good balance given philosophy's tendency to abstractness; students tend to feel more engaged and excited about the class. Second, environmental ethics classes should spend more time helping students articulate their own ethical positions and showing them how to act upon them. In this way, our classes will better prepare and inspire students to do right by nature.
2004
366-376
Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology