From Delight to Wisdom: Thirty Years of Teaching Environmental Ethics at Cornell

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper, the authors retrace the philosophy and method of Natural Resources 407, "Religion, Ethics, and the Environment," which has been continuously taught at Cornell University by the lead author since 1974. The works of Iris Murdoch, Stanley Hauerwas, Reinhold Niebuhr, Joseph Sax, and Thomas Merton are discussed, culminating in an aesthetic vision of environmental ethics as "praise for all things." The course aims more to foster a general moral maturity rather than to instill any any particular set of environmental behaviors in students, and the authors believe that such an aim makes a lasting contribution to environmental ethics.