Emerson and Environmental Ethics

by Susan Dunston New Mexico Tech

Overview

At the core of Emerson’s philosophy is his view as a naturalist that we are “made of the same atoms as the world is.” In counterpoint to this identity, he noted the fluid evolution and diversity of combinations and configurations of those atoms. Thus, he argued, our “relation and connection” to the world are not occasional or recreational, but “everywhere and always,” and also reciprocal, ongoing, and creative. He declared he would be a naturalist, which for him meant being a knowledgeable “lover of nature.” Emerson’s famous insistence on an “original relation to the universe” centered on morally creative engagement with the environment. It took the form of a nature literacy that has become central to contemporary environmental ethics. The essential argument of this book is that Emerson’s integrated philosophy of nature, ethics, and creativity is a powerful prototype for a diverse range of contemporary environmental ethics. After describing Emerson’s own environmental literacy and ethical, aesthetic, and creative practices of relating to the natural world, Dunston delineates a web of environmental ethics that connects Emerson to contemporary eco-feminism, living systems theory, Native American science, Asian philosophy, and environmental activism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498552967
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	09/15/2018
Pages:	152
Product dimensions:	6.35(w) x 9.05(h) x 0.74(d)

About the Author

Susan L. Dunston is professor emerita at New Mexico Tech.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1, Emerson and Environmental Literacy
Original Relation
Environmental Literacy
Chapter 2, Emerson Valuing Nature: Aesthetics and Ethics
Being “A lover of nature”
Being a Writer of Nature
Value Creating: Reading and Writing Nature Fairly
Chapter 3, Emerson and Contemporary Environmentalism
Ecofeminism
Systems Thinking
Indigenous Environmental Philosophy
Philosophy as Activism
Chapter 4, The Garden and the Wilderness
The Politics of Garden and Wilderness in America
Emerson’s Garden
Creating with an “Ecological Conscience”
Chapter 5, Emerson and Ahimsa
Ontological Monism
Human Places, Human Perspective
Liberating Words
Mountains
Coda

Editorial Reviews

Susan L. Dunston's Emerson and Environmental Ethics reacquaints readers with Emerson as a brilliant mind in his time and ours. Every chapter is full of surprising insights into his work and its relevance to the most compelling concerns of today.

Catherine Rainwater

Emerson and Environmental Ethics is a timely study that lays important groundwork on Emerson and environmentalism. It is responsive to the critical canon and theoretical turns in Emerson studies, but not explicitly so. Beautifully and carefully written, the work itself feels Emersonian with startling turns of phrase and insight…This volume affirms that there is still much to learn from Emerson in our own time of environmental crisis.

Emerson Society Papers

Ralph Waldo Emerson is often considered essentially a poet, in verse and prose. But Susan Dunston takes him seriously as a philosopher whose environmental ethics influenced such diverse figures as Henry Thoreau, William James, D. T. Suzuki, Aldo Leopold, Loren Eiseley, Annie Dillard, Alan Watts, and E. O. Wilson, and whose ecological concerns are paralleled in contemporary eco-feminism, Indigenous culture, and other forms. Implicit in Emerson’s stirring charge to “Build. .. your own world,” Dunston shows, is not egoism but rather an ethic of accountability, “that we not harm.” Her widely informed, close analyses of Emerson’s writings open exciting new contexts for understanding his Transcendentalist manifesto Nature (1836) as well as several of his essential essays. At the same time, her book is a quietly impassioned call for an empathetic sense of “interconnected diversity” and genuine “nature literacy,” which are desperately needed for our planet’s ecological health.

Wesley Mott

Emerson is still vastly under-appreciated as a philosopher and, as Dunston thoroughly shows, must be appreciated as a fundamentally—and foundationally important—environmental thinker.

Environmental Philosophy

In this lucid, accessible, and beautifully written account of Emerson's philosophy, Susan Dunston charts a compelling path from Emerson's unifying vision to much later environmental philosophies. Her magnificent close readings reveal a writer equally committed to a philosophical thinking that is "sensuous, experiential, and reformist" and a practice that is "attentive, relational, empathetic, and aesthetically sensitive." Readers of this book will discover a progressive, practical, and influential Emerson who remains the deeply reflective writer we have long known.

Kristin Boudreau