ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

This course explores the theoretical and practical foundations of ethics as applied to the environment, analyzing how moral principles can guide decision-making in an era of global environmental crisis. It examines major ethical theories and their approaches to ecosystem protection, resource management, and climate change, with a special focus on sustainability as a guiding criterion for political, economic, and personal choices.

Expected Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

• Understand the foundations of environmental ethics and their role in addressing today’s environmental crisis.

• Recognize the principles of sustainability as tools to balance human development with environmental protection.

• Analyze ethical dilemmas related to climate change, the use of natural resources, and biodiversity protection.

• Integrate philosophical, scientific, and social perspectives to make ethical judgments on complex problems.

Knowledge Acquired

By the end of the course, students will know:

• The main theories of environmental ethics (anthropocentrism, biocentrism, ecocentrism, care ethics).

• The meaning of sustainability and its application in political, economic, and social contexts.

• The moral dimensions of the environmental crisis: responsibilities toward future generations, climate justice, intergenerational equity.

• The connections between environmental ethics, ecological economics, and global environmental governance.

Skills and Competencies Developed

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

• Apply ethics to evaluate decisions in situations of environmental crisis.

• Propose sustainable solutions, ethically justified, to complex problems such as resource depletion or pollution.

• Argue critically and coherently in favor of policies oriented toward sustainability.

The course explores the roots of the contemporary environmental crisis, analyzing its technological and economic dimensions and reflecting on its ethical and social implications. It examines the main theories of environmental ethics (respect for life, land ethics, biocentrism) and their limits, leading to an extension of the principle of responsibility and the development of a new ecological awareness. The course discusses the need for an ecological humanism that puts nature back at the center, recovering a sensory and aesthetic relationship with the world and fostering ecological education. It proposes an epistemological shift that encourages complex and relational thinking, overcoming the separation between humans and nature. Particular attention is given to the ethics of commitment, care for the planet, and the promotion of lifestyles based on sustainability, in contrast to consumerist logic.

link of principal book's Index: https://www.carocci.it/prodotto/etica-e-ambiente

Contents:

1. The Environment as an Ethical Issue
Nature and Environment / Dualism and Ambivalence / Environmental Problems / Questions of Scale / Types of Harm / Causes of Environmental Problems / The Role of Technology / The Economic Perspective / Religion and Worldviews / Ethics, Aesthetics, and Values

2. Human Morality
The Nature and Functions of Morality / Challenges to Morality / Amoralism / Theism / Relativism / What These Challenges Teach Us

3. Moral Philosophy
The Thematic Framework / Metaethics / Valuation / Intrinsic Value

4. Normative Ethics
The Lay of the Land / Ethical Theory / Consequentialism / Virtue Ethics / Kantianism / Practical Ethics

5. Human Beings and Other Animals
Speciesism / Singer and Animal Liberation / Korsgaard’s Fellow Creatures / Ethical Convergence

6. Animals, Food, and the Environment
How Animals Are Used / Animal Agriculture / Killing versus Causing Pain / The Conscientious Omnivore / Vegetarians and Vegans / Animals and Other Values

7. The Value of Nature
Sentience and Life / Beyond Individualism / Deep Ecology / Being Prey / Ethical Challenges

8. The Plurality of Values
Reconsidering Valuation / Prudential Values / Cultural Values / Aesthetic Values / Natural Values / The Challenges of Pluralism

9. Conflicts in California
The Golden State / Feral Goats versus Endemic Plants / Tule Elk versus Cattle / Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep versus Mountain Lions

10. The Future of Nature
Entering the Anthropocene / Climate / Conservation / Causes / Justice and Future Generations / Visions of the Future

11. How Should I Live?
Ethics in the Anthropocene / Changing Ourselves / Changing the World? / Living with Environmental Breakdown / New Beginnings

Dale Jamieson, Etica e ambiente, Carocci, Rome 2024 (https://www.carocci.it/prodotto/etica-e-ambiente). The book is also available at the DiSFor Library, under the call number: 089 Fil. Mor. 52.

Teaching materials on the main proto-ecologists and ecologists will be provided by the lecturer via Studium or Moodle.

During the course, mid-term assessments will be organized to allow students to verify their understanding of the topics covered in class and to enable the instructor to evaluate the effectiveness of the teaching process.

Students will be encouraged to prepare group projects (reports, PowerPoint presentations, or other formats), experimenting with a flipped classroom approach, in order to make the course more interactive and engaging.

Teaching assistants, Dr. Nunzia Sanfilippo and Dr. Grazia Cassarisi, will guide students in these group projects and will also hold six seminars on specific topics of particular interest.

The dates of the mid-term assessments will be agreed upon with students at the beginning of the course.

The exam topics will cover all the material addressed during the course.

To get an idea of the scope of the program, students may refer to the table of contents of the main textbook (see the “Program” section above).