The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics (History of American Thought and Culture) - Softcover

Nash, Roderick Frazier

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0299118444 ISBN 13: 9780299118440

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989

Synopsis

Charting the history of contemporary philosophical and religious beliefs regarding nature, Roderick Nash focuses primarily on changing attitudes toward nature in the United States.  His work is the first comprehensive history of the concept that nature has rights and that American liberalism has, in effect, been extended to the nonhuman world.

“A splendid book.  Roderick Nash has written another classic.  This exploration of a new dimension in environmental ethics is both illuminating and overdue.”—Stewart Udall
    
“His account makes history ‘come alive.’”—Sierra

“So smoothly written that one almost does not notice the breadth of scholarship that went into this original and important work of environmental history.”—Philip Shabecoff, New York Times Book Review

“Clarifying and challenging, this is an essential text for deep ecologists and ecophilosophers.”—Stephanie Mills, Utne Reader

About this title

About the Author:

Roderick Nash is professor of history and environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the author of nine books.

From Publishers Weekly:

For more than two centuries, the rights of people were the predominant concern of intellectuals and reformers; in recent years, nature has been granted an ethical status equal to that of people, in what may be the most dramatic expansion of morality in the history of human thought, says Nash ( Wilderness and the American Mind ). He traces the origin of environmental ethics from the Roman jus animalium to the radical groups of today (Greenpeace, Earth First!) and follows the new perspectives on nature through the writings of Aldo Leopold, Rene Dubos and others. Nash notes that some theologians are questioning the Judeo-Christian tradition of anthropocentrism, reinterpreting the Scriptures to include the rights of nature. Natural-rights philosophy is simply the old American ideal of liberty applied to nature, he argues, placing environmental ethics at the forefront of liberal thought in the 20th century. Illustrations.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0299118444
• ISBN 13: 9780299118440
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304