Toward a Joyful Environmental Ethic: Open-Ended Curiosity as an Environmental Virtue

Abstract

This paper seeks to advance the joyful environmental ethic of Robin Wall Kimmerer. According to Kimmerer's environmental ethic of gratitude and reciprocity, each person has a responsibility to share their unique gifts with the world in return for the gifts they have received from nature. Drawing on Karen Barad, this paper contends that nonhumans are active, open-ended, and relational singularities that also provide ontological gifts by coconstituting the very being of humans and the world. Since sharing one's gifts to make good gifts for a nonhuman requires knowing oneself and the nonhuman, this paper argues that open-ended curiosity is an onto-epistemic, environmental virtue because it enables humans to understand nonhumans as open-ended and relational singularities. Epistemically, a person must be open to transforming their beliefs and questions in relation to nonhumans. Ontologically, a person must be open to transforming their bodies, practices, and world in relation to nonhumans. To develop this account of open-ended curiosity, this paper engages the work of Vinciane Despret.