Comments on: “Environmentalism” in Context: A Reminder from C.S. Lewis

By: M. H. Lucero

M. H. Lucero — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 05:59:29 +0000

Interesting article. The Abolition of Man is a great book that more people should read, especially these days.

I know this isn’t exactly the subject at hand, but since it was referred to briefly, I thought I’d mention that there is a really good book that specifically explores Lewis’ environmental ideas as present in his fiction and nonfiction works. It’s actually put out by the University of Kentucky’s “Culture of the Land” series, that Wendell Berry is one of the editors of. The book is called Narnia and the Fields of Arbol, and I believe is written by Matthew Dickerson.

By: D.W. Sabin

D.W. Sabin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:21:51 +0000

When a Coal Fired power plant or perhaps a clogged Los Angeles Freeway or Houston Petrochemical complex is viewed as an artifact of man and therefore of nature and not something conjured up out of the restless font of our exclusive imagination, we might come to view them more critically…. not to replace them automatically or retreat into a stone age abnegation …and furthermore, not to assess their compatibility with the reputed antipode nature but to establish their quality of fit within the larger context of an ethic which fundamentally values life, man-made or otherwise.

This is an important thread and Lewis was onto it.

By: on contraception | The League of Ordinary Gentlemen

on contraception | The League of Ordinary Gentlemen — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:43:32 +0000

[...] Peters has a very interesting post on C.S. Lewis, the environment, and the relationship between generations up at Front Porch [...]

By: Aaron Schroeder

Aaron Schroeder — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:47:04 +0000

This post recalls to me the last chapter of A Sand County Almanac where Leopold calls for an ethic of ecology, or a land ethic:

“All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in that community, but his ethics prompt him also to co-operate. . . . The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.”

Passages like this first suggest that Leopold shared in Lewis’ definitions of words like “ecology” and “environment.” But perhaps more importantly, in spite of an academic segregation between the likes of Lewis and Leopold, each insists that the cure for what ails us is a reimagining of the human position in the complete ontological spectrum, even if portions of that spectrum are as yet invisible to us.

A great post.

By: Mike at The Big Stick

Mike at The Big Stick — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:39:44 +0000

He was taking a stand against a project that has at its core (1) the belief that man is a progressive animal and (2) the presumption that he has an unassailable right to conform nature to his desires by the means of applied science.

Seems like we’re talking about preservationists(John Muir, Sierra Club)verses conservationists (Teddy Roosevelt, Ducks Unlimited). I’m firmly in the latter camp, as are most Americans.

By: Patrick Deneen

Patrick Deneen — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:07:12 +0000

It’s a curiosity that most of our “environmentalists” align politically with defenses of contraception, abortion, and stem cell research. If the “Right” believes that human nature is sacrosanct while the natural world is our filling station (“drill, baby, drill”!), the “Left” seems to hold that the natural world is sacrosanct while justifying thorough dominion over the human body. Lewis eloquently points to the incoherence of both these current political positions. A wonderful post, thanks.

By: H.C. Johns

H.C. Johns — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:53:53 +0000

-Fantastic- post. Just one thought (hopefully not too convoluted) before bed: environmentalism (at least its deep ecological variants) isn’t just normatively lacking in its absence of a eudamonic theory. The deeper problem is that it lacks an ontological doctrine of the human-in-nature, which would tell us what desire, humanity, love, etc. mean for us in our embeddedness in the natural world. The problem, at least to me, is that its not clear that a reclamation of Aristotlian ordering is what’s called for to do that. What’s been thought so far are limited accounts of human non-existence (deep ecology), returns to rationalism (social ecology), technocratic salvation (Friedman et al.) romantic idealisms (Abbey) or even eudamonic anti-consumerism (roughly FPR). Each of these pieces, since they articulate authentic possibilities for humans in history, represents some part of the knowledge we need before we can answer any ethical questions. But they’re incomplete (and therefore ungrounded) until we’ve really articulated the ground of our position in history.

Which is another reason Lewis’s work is so interesting on this point: by highlighting our position relative to the past and the future he’s pointing to a really key horizon of our natural life, namely, that unintended consequences not only come with the territory, but are essential features of it. (And that the closing of that horizon, for the last man, is tantamount to the end of history/his embeddedness in the natural world.)