Moral Habitat: Ethos and Agency for the Sake of Earth

by Nancie Erhard

Overview

Moral Habitat explores how our moral imaginations and moral norms have been shaped by and even cocreated with Earth in diverse biotic communities. Weaving together science and religion with indigenous and womanist traditions, Nancie Erhard uses examples from a variety of sources, including post-Cartesian science, the Old Testament, and the Mi´kmaq tribe of Eastern Canada. She demonstrates how each portrays the agency—including the moral agency—of the natural world. From this cross-cultural approach, she recasts the question of how we conceive of humans as moral agents. While written for "the sake of Earth," this thought-provoking book goes well beyond the issue of ecology to show the contribution that such an approach can make to pluralist ethics on a range of timely social issues.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780791479858
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	02/01/2012
Series:	SUNY series on Religion and the Environment
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	154
File size:	308 KB

About the Author

Nancie Erhard is Assistant Professor of Comparative Religious Ethics at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Ethos as Moral Habitat

2. “The Great Community of Persons”

3. Agents of and Respondents to God  

4. The Continuum

5. Reconsidering Human Moral Agency

6. Doing Ethics in a Moral Habitat

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Of interest to scholars and advanced students of environmental ethics and religion because of its sustained focus, rigorous scholarship, and numerous insights into how this reworking of our basic orientation may be profitably applied, this book deserves a wide readership." — Studies in Religion

"…Erhard has developed the idea of the moral habitat in a promising and creative manner." — Environmental Ethics

"This is a powerful work that achieves a radical undermining of anthropocentrism. The author's treatment of culture and the many ways it is generated and expressed is excellent." — Daniel C. Maguire, Marquette University

From the Publisher