J. Baird Callicott
Encyclopedia
J. Baird Callicott is an American philosopher
whose work has been at the forefront of the new field of environmental philosophy and ethics. He is University Distinguished Research Professor and a member of the Department of Philosophy
and Religion Studies
and the Institute of Applied Sciences at the University of North Texas
. Callicott held the position of Professor of Philosophy and Natural Resources at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point
from 1969 to 1995, where he taught the world’s first course in environmental ethics
in 1971. From 1994 to 2000, he served as Vice President then President of the International Society for Environmental Ethics
. Other distinguished positions include visiting professor of philosophy at Yale University
; the University of California, Santa Barbara
; the University of Hawai’i; and the University of Florida
.
Aldo Leopold
's A Sand County Almanac
is one of environmental philosophy’s seminal texts, and Callicott is widely considered to be the leading contemporary exponent of Leopold's land ethic. Callicott’s book In Defense of the Land Ethic (1989) explores the intellectual foundations of Leopold's outlook and seeks to provide it with a more complete philosophical treatment; and a following publication titled Beyond the Land Ethic (1999) further extends Leopold’s environmental philosophy. Callicott’s Earth’s Insights (1994) is also considered an important contribution to the budding field of comparative environmental philosophy; a special edition of the journal Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion (Vol. 1, Number 2) was devoted to scholarly reviews of the work. Callicott is co-Editor-in-Chief with Robert Frodeman
of the award-winning, two-volume A-Z Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy, published by Macmillan
in 2009. He is also author of numerous journal articles and book chapters in environmental philosophy and has served as editor or co-editor of many books, textbooks, and reference works in the same field.
), earning a B. A. in philosophy
with Honors in 1963. He received a Woodrow Wilson
Fellowship for graduate study at Syracuse University
, completing his M. A. in philosophy (1966) and his doctorate in the same field (1972) after earning a Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship. His dissertation, titled Plato
’s Aesthetics
: An Introduction to the Theory of Forms
, drew from the concentration of his undergraduate and graduate work: ancient Greek philosophy.
Callicott began his career as an academic philosopher in 1966 at Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis
). There, as faculty advisor to the Black Students Association, he was active in the Southern Civil Rights Movement
during the time of Martin Luther King Jr.’s last campaigns in the area. In 1969, Callicott joined the philosophy department of Wisconsin State University-Stevens Point (now the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
). As “an expatriate Southerner, fresh from the pitched battles of the Civil Rights struggle in Memphis, Tennessee,” Callicott believed that “the environment was under wholesale assault from every direction with no surcease in sight” and that “Civil Rights was a cause already won in the republic of ideas and in the courts (if not on Main Street in Memphis).” He “was a concerned citizen, but [he] was also, more particularly, a challenged philosopher.” So Callicott asked “how, as a philosopher, [he] could contribute to a rethinking of human nature and a reconstruction of human values to help bring them into line with the relatively new ideas about the nature of the environment emerging from ecology
and the new physics
.”
For 26 years, Callicott lived and taught in the northern reaches of Wisconsin's sand counties, located on the Wisconsin River
, just ninety miles from of Aldo Leopold's storied shack and John Muir
's first homestead on Fountain Lake, the region that stirred the souls of two very influential environmental thinkers. Callicott writes that “the landscape that had helped shape and inspire the nascent evolutionary-ecological thought of the youthful Muir and that of the mature Leopold was the perfect setting for (me) to inaugurate (my) life-long vocation as a founder of academic environmental philosophy.” In 1995, he joined the Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies at the University of North Texas
in Denton. The first graduate program in environmental philosophy had been launched at UNT in 1990 under the aegis of Eugene C. Hargrove, then department chair and founding editor of the journal Environmental Ethics. The addition of Callicott’s expertise helped cement its standing as the world's leading program in the field.
In accordance with Leopold's oft-quoted dictum — "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise" — Callicott espouses a holistic, non-anthropocentric environmental ethic. What he labels the “extentionist” approach to environmental ethics attempts to extend familiar anthropocentric ethical paradigm
s — legacies of the European Enlightenment — to other-than-human beings. Peter Singer
’s “animal liberation
,” for example, extends Jeremy Bentham
’s utilitarian
ethical paradigm to all sentient animals. Paul Taylor
’s “biocentrism” extends the Kant
ian deontological paradigm to all “teleological centers of life” (i.e. all organisms). Extensionist approaches, however, are inveterately individualistic, conferring “moral considerability” on individual organisms. Actual environmental concerns, however, focus on transorganismic entities: endangered species; threatened biotic communities and ecosystems; rivers and lakes; the ocean and atmosphere. Callicott believes that an adequate environmental ethic — an environmental-ethics paradigm that addresses actual environmental concerns — must be holistic.
Callicott traces the conceptual foundations of the Leopold land ethic first back to Charles Darwin
’s analysis of the “moral sense” in the Descent of Man and ultimately to David Hume
’s grounding of ethics in the “moral sentiments” espoused in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
. Hume argues that moral actions and moral judgments are based on such other-oriented sentiments as sympathy, beneficence, loyalty, and patriotism. Darwin argues that these “moral sentiments” evolved as the sine qua non
of social (or communal) solidarity, on which depends the survival and reproductive success of the individual members of society (or community). The tradition of dichotomous thinking in Western philosophy
inclines most philosophers to dismiss Hume’s ethics as a kind of irrational emotivism
, despite the fact that, Callicott believes, Hume clearly provides a key role for reason in moral action and judgment. The faculty of reason, according to Hume, determines (1) relations of ideas, which are essentially logical relationships; and (2) matters of fact. Among such matters of fact, reason both traces the often complex causal chain of the consequences of various actions and discloses the proper objects of the moral sentiments. Accordingly, Leopold also traces both the causal chain of ecological consequences of such seemingly innocent actions as tilling the soil and grazing cattle and discloses a proper object of those moral sentiments — such as loyalty and patriotism — which are excited by social membership and community identity. That proper object of such sentiments is the “biotic community,” revealed by the relatively new science of ecology.
, similar to bioethics
and business ethics
, not a completely new domain of ethical theory or moral philosophy. Callicott offers a subjectivist
theory of nature’s intrinsic value: he does not challenge the modern classical distinction between subject and object, but rather insists that all value originates in subjects (human or otherwise) and is conferred by those subjects on various objects. In short, Callicott claims, there would be no value without valuers. These objects, however, are valued by subjects in two fundamentally different ways: instrumentally and intrinsically. Tools of various kinds epitomize the kind of objects that subjects value instrumentally; themselves and certain other human beings epitomize the kind of objects that human subjects value intrinsically. Neither kind of valuing is normally done irrationally. A rational person does not typically value a speck of dust instrumentally; nor does a rational person typically value a plastic cup intrinsically. One values various things as tools for various reasons: drills because by their means one can make neat holes; screwdrivers because by their means one can set screws. When a tool is broken or otherwise becomes useless, a rational person ceases to value it instrumentally; and often broken and useless tools are discarded as trash. One also values various things intrinsically for various good reasons.
Philosophers have long provided reasons why human beings should be valued intrinsically (and thus not discarded when broken or useless). Aldo Leopold, according to Callicott, provides reasons why non-human species, biotic communities, and ecosystems should be valued intrinsically (and thus not severely compromised or destroyed). Of wildflowers and songbirds, for example, species with little instrumental value, Leopold writes in Sand County’s “The Land Ethic”: “Yet these creatures are members of the biotic community, and if (as I believe) its stability depends on its integrity, they are entitled to continuance.” And later in “The Land Ethic,” Leopold directly invokes “philosophical value” — that is, what academic environmental philosophers call “intrinsic value”: “It is inconceivable to me that an ethical relationship to land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for land, and a high regard for its value. By value, I of course mean something far broader than mere economic value [instrumental value], I mean value in the philosophical sense [intrinsic value].”
“citizenship” environmental ethic as a more radical alternative to the familiar Judeo-Christian “stewardship” environmental ethic that was developed in response to criticism from environmental historians and philosophers. He has also explored the conceptual resources for environmental ethics in American Indian
worldviews and worked with comparative philosophers to explore the conceptual resources for environmental ethics in several Asian philosophical and religious traditions of thought, such as Hinduism
, Jainism
, Buddhism
, Confucianism
, and Daoism.
to develop a philosophy of conservation and conservation values and ethics, based in part on the recent paradigm shift in ecology from what he calls the “balance of nature” to the “flux of nature.” He has been a strong critic of the “received wilderness idea”: the idea that wildernesses are places that are “untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” That idea, Callicott claims in The Great New Wilderness Debate (1998), perpetuates a pre-Darwinian human-nature dualism
; in effect, it “erases” from collective memory the indigenous inhabitants of North America and Australia, liberating the current inhabitants of those continents from disturbing thoughts of their own heritage of genocide
. Exported to other regions of the world, such as Africa and India, where indigenous peoples still thrive, the wilderness idea has been used to justify their eviction and dispossession in the name of national parks. Callicott instead proposes that, because wilderness areas serve purposes of biological conservation, they should be reconceived more fittingly as “biodiversity reserves.”
,” notably leveled by Tom Regan
. If members of overpopulous species, such as deer, ought to be “culled” or “harvested,” in the name of preserving the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community, and if staggeringly overpopulous Homo sapiens is also but “a plain member and citizen” of the biotic community, then why should culling and harvesting humans be any less obligatory? In “The Conceptual Foundations of the Land Ethic,” Callicott replies that Leopold presented the land ethic as an “accretion” to our evolving complex set of ethics. In other words, the land ethic burdens us with additional moral obligations; it does not substitute for or replace our previously evolved moral obligations, among them the duty to respect the rights of our fellow human beings to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
This reply led to another criticism: that Callicott provides no “second-order principles” to prioritize duties to fellow humans and those to the biotic community when they conflict. In response, Callicott offered two second-order principles as a framework to adjudicate between conflicting first-order duties: 1) “obligations generated by membership in more venerable and intimate communities take precedence over those generated in more recently emerged and impersonal communities”; 2) “stronger interests take precedence over duties generated by weaker interests.” Because our various human community memberships are both more venerable and intimate and because human interests in enjoying rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are very strong, Callicott argues that our traditional obligations to individual fellow human beings trump our obligations to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community — at least, he believes, when it comes to the prospect of culling members of the overpopulous Homo sapiens species.
Additionally, Callicott has been criticized for espousing an overbearing and impolitic monism
in environmental ethics. He does not reject pluralism in environmental ethics outright; he only rejects theoretical pluralism, not interpersonal pluralism or normative pluralism. Callicott claims that philosophers and laypersons should not adopt one theory, say utilitarianism
, for one purpose or in one context and another theory, say Kantian deontology, for another purpose or in another context (this would be theoretical pluralism). Such theories are mutually contradictory, and he believes that one’s moral life should be coherent and self-consistent; however, he also believes that each person should be free to adopt the theory that to them is the most intellectually compelling (interpersonal pluralism). The general theory that Callicott espouses, Humean communitarianism, correlates ethics to community membership. And because each moral agent is subject to as many ethics as his or her community memberships, therefore each person is subject to a plurality of duties and obligations (normative pluralism). In sum, Callicott is a theoretical monist and an interpersonal and normative pluralist.
Callicott’s comparative environmental philosophy also involves a tightrope walk between pluralism and monism. In Earth’s Insights: A Multicultural Survey of Ecological Ethics from the Mediterranean Basin to the Australian Outback, he seems to embrace pluralism by exploring the conceptual resources for environmental ethics in a wide variety of religious and indigenous worldviews. This work has been criticized, however, for privileging the Leopold land ethic as a norm in reference to which such alternative environmental ethics are evaluated. As Andrew Light observes, Callicott does not insist that the Leopold land ethic is based on the uniquely true worldview of evolutionary biology and ecology
. He agrees with multicultural pluralists that the evolutionary-ecological worldview is but one story among many stories. But he does argue that the worldview of evolutionary biology and ecology is more tenable than any other, that the evolutionary-ecological epic is a better story than any other grand narrative
.
Callicott’s justification for this claim is an analysis based on the following criteria for tenability: self-consistency; comprehensiveness; self-correction; universality; and beauty. The first test of a scientific worldview is logical self-consistency and the evolutionary-ecological worldview passes that test. A tenable scientific worldview must comprehend all known facts and so far the evolutionary-ecological worldview does account for all the facts, such as the existence of the fossil remains of extinct species. When the details of that worldview are shown to be inconsistent with themselves or unable to account for all the facts, the theory is revised accordingly; the evolutionary-ecological worldview is thus self-correcting and is therefore, Callicott believes, becoming ever more refined. The evolutionary-ecological worldview has global currency and enjoys international credibility; that is, it has universal appeal. And finally, as to beauty, Darwin himself observed in the final sentence of the Origin that “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
Most recent criticisms have been leveled at Callicott’s works addressing the idea of wilderness, the sanctum sanctorum of the twentieth-century environmental movement. Some scholars acknowledge the intellectual merits of Callicott’s critique of the wilderness idea, but regard it as both a betrayal of one of Aldo Leopold’s most cherished causes and as giving aid and comfort to the environmental movement’s enemies. Callicott counters that his quarrel is with an idea, not the places trammeled by the idea, the preservation of which places he appears to be as ardently supportive as any other environmentalist
. In “Should Wilderness Areas Become Biodiversity Reserves,” he argues that the pressing conservation needs of the twenty-first century are better served by the biodiversity-reserve idea. This idea indicates by its very name what the primary goal of wildland preservation is, whereas the wilderness idea is historically associated with outdoor recreation and thus, Callicott claims, confuses the preservation issue and fosters incoherent and contradictory wildlands-use policies.
American philosophy
American philosophy is the philosophical activity or output of Americans, both within the United States and abroad. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that while American philosophy lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can nevertheless be seen as both reflecting and...
whose work has been at the forefront of the new field of environmental philosophy and ethics. He is University Distinguished Research Professor and a member of the Department of Philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and Religion Studies
Religious studies
Religious studies is the academic field of multi-disciplinary, secular study of religious beliefs, behaviors, and institutions. It describes, compares, interprets, and explains religion, emphasizing systematic, historically based, and cross-cultural perspectives.While theology attempts to...
and the Institute of Applied Sciences at the University of North Texas
University of North Texas
The University of North Texas is a public institution of higher education and research in Denton. Founded in 1890, UNT is part of the University of North Texas System. As of the fall of 2010, the University of North Texas, Denton campus, had a certified enrollment of 36,067...
. Callicott held the position of Professor of Philosophy and Natural Resources at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point
University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point
The University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point is a public university located in Stevens Point, Wisconsin...
from 1969 to 1995, where he taught the world’s first course in environmental ethics
Environmental ethics
Environmental ethics is the part of environmental philosophy which considers extending the traditional boundaries of ethics from solely including humans to including the non-human world...
in 1971. From 1994 to 2000, he served as Vice President then President of the International Society for Environmental Ethics
International Society for Environmental Ethics
Since 1990, The International Society of Environmental Ethics has striven to advance research and education in the field of environmental ethics and philosophy, and to promote appropriate human use, respect, conservation, preservation, and understanding of the natural world...
. Other distinguished positions include visiting professor of philosophy at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
; the University of California, Santa Barbara
University of California, Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...
; the University of Hawai’i; and the University of Florida
University of Florida
The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906...
.
Aldo Leopold
Aldo Leopold
Aldo Leopold was an American author, scientist, ecologist, forester, and environmentalist. He was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and is best known for his book A Sand County Almanac , which has sold over two million copies...
's A Sand County Almanac
A Sand County Almanac
A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There is a 1949 non-fiction book by American ecologist, forester, and environmentalist Aldo Leopold. Describing the land around the author's home in Sauk County, Wisconsin, the collection of essays advocate Leopold's idea of a "land ethic", or a...
is one of environmental philosophy’s seminal texts, and Callicott is widely considered to be the leading contemporary exponent of Leopold's land ethic. Callicott’s book In Defense of the Land Ethic (1989) explores the intellectual foundations of Leopold's outlook and seeks to provide it with a more complete philosophical treatment; and a following publication titled Beyond the Land Ethic (1999) further extends Leopold’s environmental philosophy. Callicott’s Earth’s Insights (1994) is also considered an important contribution to the budding field of comparative environmental philosophy; a special edition of the journal Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion (Vol. 1, Number 2) was devoted to scholarly reviews of the work. Callicott is co-Editor-in-Chief with Robert Frodeman
Robert Frodeman
Robert Frodeman Professor and former Chair, Dept of Philosophy and Religion Studies, University of North Texas, previously at the University of Colorado, is Director of UNT's Center for the Study of Interdisciplinarity...
of the award-winning, two-volume A-Z Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy, published by Macmillan
Macmillan Publishers (United States)
Macmillan Publishers USA, also known as Macmillan Publishing, is a privately held American publishing company owned by the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than 30 others....
in 2009. He is also author of numerous journal articles and book chapters in environmental philosophy and has served as editor or co-editor of many books, textbooks, and reference works in the same field.
Biography
Callicott was born in Memphis, Tennessee on May 9, 1941, to distinguished regional artist and art instructor Burton H. Callicott (1907–2003), of the Memphis Academy of Arts (now Memphis College of Arts). In 1959, Callicott graduated from Memphis's then racially segregated Messick High School and attended Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes CollegeRhodes College
Rhodes College is a private, predominantly undergraduate, liberal arts college located in Memphis, Tennessee, USA. Originally founded by freemasons in 1848, Rhodes became affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in 1855. Rhodes enrolls approximately 1,700 students pursuing bachelor's and master's...
), earning a B. A. in philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
with Honors in 1963. He received a Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
Fellowship for graduate study at Syracuse University
Syracuse University
Syracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...
, completing his M. A. in philosophy (1966) and his doctorate in the same field (1972) after earning a Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship. His dissertation, titled Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
’s Aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
: An Introduction to the Theory of Forms
Theory of Forms
Plato's theory of Forms or theory of Ideas asserts that non-material abstract forms , and not the material world of change known to us through sensation, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality. When used in this sense, the word form is often capitalized...
, drew from the concentration of his undergraduate and graduate work: ancient Greek philosophy.
Callicott began his career as an academic philosopher in 1966 at Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis
University of Memphis
The University of Memphis is an American public research university located in the Normal Station neighborhood of Memphis, Tennessee and is the flagship public research university of the Tennessee Board of Regents system....
). There, as faculty advisor to the Black Students Association, he was active in the Southern Civil Rights Movement
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
during the time of Martin Luther King Jr.’s last campaigns in the area. In 1969, Callicott joined the philosophy department of Wisconsin State University-Stevens Point (now the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
The University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point is a public university located in Stevens Point, Wisconsin...
). As “an expatriate Southerner, fresh from the pitched battles of the Civil Rights struggle in Memphis, Tennessee,” Callicott believed that “the environment was under wholesale assault from every direction with no surcease in sight” and that “Civil Rights was a cause already won in the republic of ideas and in the courts (if not on Main Street in Memphis).” He “was a concerned citizen, but [he] was also, more particularly, a challenged philosopher.” So Callicott asked “how, as a philosopher, [he] could contribute to a rethinking of human nature and a reconstruction of human values to help bring them into line with the relatively new ideas about the nature of the environment emerging from ecology
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
and the new physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
.”
For 26 years, Callicott lived and taught in the northern reaches of Wisconsin's sand counties, located on the Wisconsin River
Wisconsin River
-External links:* * * , Wisconsin Historical Society* * * *...
, just ninety miles from of Aldo Leopold's storied shack and John Muir
John Muir
John Muir was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions...
's first homestead on Fountain Lake, the region that stirred the souls of two very influential environmental thinkers. Callicott writes that “the landscape that had helped shape and inspire the nascent evolutionary-ecological thought of the youthful Muir and that of the mature Leopold was the perfect setting for (me) to inaugurate (my) life-long vocation as a founder of academic environmental philosophy.” In 1995, he joined the Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies at the University of North Texas
University of North Texas
The University of North Texas is a public institution of higher education and research in Denton. Founded in 1890, UNT is part of the University of North Texas System. As of the fall of 2010, the University of North Texas, Denton campus, had a certified enrollment of 36,067...
in Denton. The first graduate program in environmental philosophy had been launched at UNT in 1990 under the aegis of Eugene C. Hargrove, then department chair and founding editor of the journal Environmental Ethics. The addition of Callicott’s expertise helped cement its standing as the world's leading program in the field.
Callicott's Environmental Ethic
“I set out, as a philosopher, to work as a peer to the moral philosophers of the past, to create something new under the philosophical sun — under the gaze of ApolloApolloApollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...
, as it were — ‘a new, an environmental ethic,’ such as Richard Routley had warranted in 1973.”
In accordance with Leopold's oft-quoted dictum — "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise" — Callicott espouses a holistic, non-anthropocentric environmental ethic. What he labels the “extentionist” approach to environmental ethics attempts to extend familiar anthropocentric ethical paradigm
Paradigm
The word paradigm has been used in science to describe distinct concepts. It comes from Greek "παράδειγμα" , "pattern, example, sample" from the verb "παραδείκνυμι" , "exhibit, represent, expose" and that from "παρά" , "beside, beyond" + "δείκνυμι" , "to show, to point out".The original Greek...
s — legacies of the European Enlightenment — to other-than-human beings. Peter Singer
Peter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer is an Australian philosopher who is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne...
’s “animal liberation
Animal Liberation
Animal liberation may refer to:*Animal rights, animals being considered as legal persons**Animal-liberation movement**Abolitionism , an abolitionist approach to animal rights**Veganarchism, a combined theory of animal liberation and anarchism...
,” for example, extends Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism...
’s utilitarian
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness", by whatever means necessary. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can...
ethical paradigm to all sentient animals. Paul Taylor
Paul Taylor
Paul Taylor is one of the foremost American choreographers of the 20th century.Paul Taylor is the last living member of the pantheon that created America’s indigenous art of modern dance...
’s “biocentrism” extends the Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
ian deontological paradigm to all “teleological centers of life” (i.e. all organisms). Extensionist approaches, however, are inveterately individualistic, conferring “moral considerability” on individual organisms. Actual environmental concerns, however, focus on transorganismic entities: endangered species; threatened biotic communities and ecosystems; rivers and lakes; the ocean and atmosphere. Callicott believes that an adequate environmental ethic — an environmental-ethics paradigm that addresses actual environmental concerns — must be holistic.
Callicott traces the conceptual foundations of the Leopold land ethic first back to Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
’s analysis of the “moral sense” in the Descent of Man and ultimately to David Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
’s grounding of ethics in the “moral sentiments” espoused in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals is a book by Scottish enlightenment philosopher David Hume. In it, Hume argues that the foundations of morals lie with sentiment, not reason....
. Hume argues that moral actions and moral judgments are based on such other-oriented sentiments as sympathy, beneficence, loyalty, and patriotism. Darwin argues that these “moral sentiments” evolved as the sine qua non
Sine qua non
Sine qua non or condicio sine qua non refers to an indispensable and essential action, condition, or ingredient...
of social (or communal) solidarity, on which depends the survival and reproductive success of the individual members of society (or community). The tradition of dichotomous thinking in Western philosophy
Western philosophy
Western philosophy is the philosophical thought and work of the Western or Occidental world, as distinct from Eastern or Oriental philosophies and the varieties of indigenous philosophies....
inclines most philosophers to dismiss Hume’s ethics as a kind of irrational emotivism
Emotivism
Emotivism is a meta-ethical view that claims that ethical sentences do not express propositions but emotional attitudes. Influenced by the growth of analytic philosophy and logical positivism in the 20th century, the theory was stated vividly by A. J. Ayer in his 1936 book Language, Truth and...
, despite the fact that, Callicott believes, Hume clearly provides a key role for reason in moral action and judgment. The faculty of reason, according to Hume, determines (1) relations of ideas, which are essentially logical relationships; and (2) matters of fact. Among such matters of fact, reason both traces the often complex causal chain of the consequences of various actions and discloses the proper objects of the moral sentiments. Accordingly, Leopold also traces both the causal chain of ecological consequences of such seemingly innocent actions as tilling the soil and grazing cattle and discloses a proper object of those moral sentiments — such as loyalty and patriotism — which are excited by social membership and community identity. That proper object of such sentiments is the “biotic community,” revealed by the relatively new science of ecology.
Intrinsic Value in Nature
The distinctiveness of environmental ethics turns on the question of non-anthropocentrism, and that question turns on the question of nature’s intrinsic value, according to Callicott. For if nature’s only value is its instrumental value to humans, then environmental ethics is just a species of applied ethicsApplied ethics
Applied ethics is, in the words of Brenda Almond, co-founder of the Society for Applied Philosophy, "the philosophical examination, from a moral standpoint, of particular issues in private and public life that are matters of moral judgment"...
, similar to bioethics
Bioethics
Bioethics is the study of controversial ethics brought about by advances in biology and medicine. Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, and philosophy....
and business ethics
Business ethics
Business ethics is a form of applied ethics or professional ethics that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that arise in a business environment. It applies to all aspects of business conduct and is relevant to the conduct of individuals and entire organizations.Business...
, not a completely new domain of ethical theory or moral philosophy. Callicott offers a subjectivist
Subjectivism
Subjectivism is a philosophical tenet that accords primacy to subjective experience as fundamental of all measure and law. In extreme forms like Solipsism, it may hold that the nature and existence of every object depends solely on someone's subjective awareness of it...
theory of nature’s intrinsic value: he does not challenge the modern classical distinction between subject and object, but rather insists that all value originates in subjects (human or otherwise) and is conferred by those subjects on various objects. In short, Callicott claims, there would be no value without valuers. These objects, however, are valued by subjects in two fundamentally different ways: instrumentally and intrinsically. Tools of various kinds epitomize the kind of objects that subjects value instrumentally; themselves and certain other human beings epitomize the kind of objects that human subjects value intrinsically. Neither kind of valuing is normally done irrationally. A rational person does not typically value a speck of dust instrumentally; nor does a rational person typically value a plastic cup intrinsically. One values various things as tools for various reasons: drills because by their means one can make neat holes; screwdrivers because by their means one can set screws. When a tool is broken or otherwise becomes useless, a rational person ceases to value it instrumentally; and often broken and useless tools are discarded as trash. One also values various things intrinsically for various good reasons.
Philosophers have long provided reasons why human beings should be valued intrinsically (and thus not discarded when broken or useless). Aldo Leopold, according to Callicott, provides reasons why non-human species, biotic communities, and ecosystems should be valued intrinsically (and thus not severely compromised or destroyed). Of wildflowers and songbirds, for example, species with little instrumental value, Leopold writes in Sand County’s “The Land Ethic”: “Yet these creatures are members of the biotic community, and if (as I believe) its stability depends on its integrity, they are entitled to continuance.” And later in “The Land Ethic,” Leopold directly invokes “philosophical value” — that is, what academic environmental philosophers call “intrinsic value”: “It is inconceivable to me that an ethical relationship to land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for land, and a high regard for its value. By value, I of course mean something far broader than mere economic value [instrumental value], I mean value in the philosophical sense [intrinsic value].”
Comparative Environmental Philosophy
Despite its newness and its departure from familiar ethical paradigms, environmental ethics was, at its inception, using the methods and conceptual resources of the Western philosophical tradition. While that tradition has been enormously influential in shaping Western culture and institutions — especially in the domains of law, politics, and jurisprudence — the Western religious tradition has also been enormously influential in shaping Western culture and institutions. At first, the Western religious tradition was vilified in environmental ethics as the root cause of the environmental crisis. Callicott has explored the possibility of a Judeo-ChristianJudeo-Christian
Judeo-Christian is a term used in the United States since the 1940s to refer to standards of ethics said to be held in common by Judaism and Christianity, for example the Ten Commandments...
“citizenship” environmental ethic as a more radical alternative to the familiar Judeo-Christian “stewardship” environmental ethic that was developed in response to criticism from environmental historians and philosophers. He has also explored the conceptual resources for environmental ethics in American Indian
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
worldviews and worked with comparative philosophers to explore the conceptual resources for environmental ethics in several Asian philosophical and religious traditions of thought, such as Hinduism
Hinduism
Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...
, Jainism
Jainism
Jainism is an Indian religion that prescribes a path of non-violence towards all living beings. Its philosophy and practice emphasize the necessity of self-effort to move the soul towards divine consciousness and liberation. Any soul that has conquered its own inner enemies and achieved the state...
, Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
, Confucianism
Confucianism
Confucianism is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius . Confucianism originated as an "ethical-sociopolitical teaching" during the Spring and Autumn Period, but later developed metaphysical and cosmological elements in the Han...
, and Daoism.
Philosophy of Conservation and the Received Wilderness Idea
Callicott has worked with conservation biologistsConservation biology
Conservation biology is the scientific study of the nature and status of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction...
to develop a philosophy of conservation and conservation values and ethics, based in part on the recent paradigm shift in ecology from what he calls the “balance of nature” to the “flux of nature.” He has been a strong critic of the “received wilderness idea”: the idea that wildernesses are places that are “untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” That idea, Callicott claims in The Great New Wilderness Debate (1998), perpetuates a pre-Darwinian human-nature dualism
Dualism
Dualism denotes a state of two parts. The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages. Dualism can refer to moral dualism, Dualism (from...
; in effect, it “erases” from collective memory the indigenous inhabitants of North America and Australia, liberating the current inhabitants of those continents from disturbing thoughts of their own heritage of genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
. Exported to other regions of the world, such as Africa and India, where indigenous peoples still thrive, the wilderness idea has been used to justify their eviction and dispossession in the name of national parks. Callicott instead proposes that, because wilderness areas serve purposes of biological conservation, they should be reconceived more fittingly as “biodiversity reserves.”
Criticisms
In response to Callicott’s elaboration of the Aldo Leopold land ethic, the land ethic (and, by implication, Callicott’s own non-anthropocentric, holistic environmental ethic to the extent that it may differ from Leopold’s) has been subject to the charge of “ecofascismEcofascism
Ecofascism, can be used in two different ways:# The term is used as a pejorative by political conservatives, centrists, and leftists to discredit deep ecology, mainstream environmentalism, radical environmentalism and other ecological positions....
,” notably leveled by Tom Regan
Tom Regan
Tom Regan is an American philosopher who specializes in animal rights theory. He is professor emeritus of philosophy at North Carolina State University, where he taught from 1967 until his retirement in 2001....
. If members of overpopulous species, such as deer, ought to be “culled” or “harvested,” in the name of preserving the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community, and if staggeringly overpopulous Homo sapiens is also but “a plain member and citizen” of the biotic community, then why should culling and harvesting humans be any less obligatory? In “The Conceptual Foundations of the Land Ethic,” Callicott replies that Leopold presented the land ethic as an “accretion” to our evolving complex set of ethics. In other words, the land ethic burdens us with additional moral obligations; it does not substitute for or replace our previously evolved moral obligations, among them the duty to respect the rights of our fellow human beings to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
This reply led to another criticism: that Callicott provides no “second-order principles” to prioritize duties to fellow humans and those to the biotic community when they conflict. In response, Callicott offered two second-order principles as a framework to adjudicate between conflicting first-order duties: 1) “obligations generated by membership in more venerable and intimate communities take precedence over those generated in more recently emerged and impersonal communities”; 2) “stronger interests take precedence over duties generated by weaker interests.” Because our various human community memberships are both more venerable and intimate and because human interests in enjoying rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are very strong, Callicott argues that our traditional obligations to individual fellow human beings trump our obligations to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community — at least, he believes, when it comes to the prospect of culling members of the overpopulous Homo sapiens species.
Additionally, Callicott has been criticized for espousing an overbearing and impolitic monism
Monism
Monism is any philosophical view which holds that there is unity in a given field of inquiry. Accordingly, some philosophers may hold that the universe is one rather than dualistic or pluralistic...
in environmental ethics. He does not reject pluralism in environmental ethics outright; he only rejects theoretical pluralism, not interpersonal pluralism or normative pluralism. Callicott claims that philosophers and laypersons should not adopt one theory, say utilitarianism
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness", by whatever means necessary. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can...
, for one purpose or in one context and another theory, say Kantian deontology, for another purpose or in another context (this would be theoretical pluralism). Such theories are mutually contradictory, and he believes that one’s moral life should be coherent and self-consistent; however, he also believes that each person should be free to adopt the theory that to them is the most intellectually compelling (interpersonal pluralism). The general theory that Callicott espouses, Humean communitarianism, correlates ethics to community membership. And because each moral agent is subject to as many ethics as his or her community memberships, therefore each person is subject to a plurality of duties and obligations (normative pluralism). In sum, Callicott is a theoretical monist and an interpersonal and normative pluralist.
Callicott’s comparative environmental philosophy also involves a tightrope walk between pluralism and monism. In Earth’s Insights: A Multicultural Survey of Ecological Ethics from the Mediterranean Basin to the Australian Outback, he seems to embrace pluralism by exploring the conceptual resources for environmental ethics in a wide variety of religious and indigenous worldviews. This work has been criticized, however, for privileging the Leopold land ethic as a norm in reference to which such alternative environmental ethics are evaluated. As Andrew Light observes, Callicott does not insist that the Leopold land ethic is based on the uniquely true worldview of evolutionary biology and ecology
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
. He agrees with multicultural pluralists that the evolutionary-ecological worldview is but one story among many stories. But he does argue that the worldview of evolutionary biology and ecology is more tenable than any other, that the evolutionary-ecological epic is a better story than any other grand narrative
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
.
Callicott’s justification for this claim is an analysis based on the following criteria for tenability: self-consistency; comprehensiveness; self-correction; universality; and beauty. The first test of a scientific worldview is logical self-consistency and the evolutionary-ecological worldview passes that test. A tenable scientific worldview must comprehend all known facts and so far the evolutionary-ecological worldview does account for all the facts, such as the existence of the fossil remains of extinct species. When the details of that worldview are shown to be inconsistent with themselves or unable to account for all the facts, the theory is revised accordingly; the evolutionary-ecological worldview is thus self-correcting and is therefore, Callicott believes, becoming ever more refined. The evolutionary-ecological worldview has global currency and enjoys international credibility; that is, it has universal appeal. And finally, as to beauty, Darwin himself observed in the final sentence of the Origin that “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
Most recent criticisms have been leveled at Callicott’s works addressing the idea of wilderness, the sanctum sanctorum of the twentieth-century environmental movement. Some scholars acknowledge the intellectual merits of Callicott’s critique of the wilderness idea, but regard it as both a betrayal of one of Aldo Leopold’s most cherished causes and as giving aid and comfort to the environmental movement’s enemies. Callicott counters that his quarrel is with an idea, not the places trammeled by the idea, the preservation of which places he appears to be as ardently supportive as any other environmentalist
Environmentalist
An environmentalist broadly supports the goals of the environmental movement, "a political and ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment through changes to environmentally harmful human activities"...
. In “Should Wilderness Areas Become Biodiversity Reserves,” he argues that the pressing conservation needs of the twenty-first century are better served by the biodiversity-reserve idea. This idea indicates by its very name what the primary goal of wildland preservation is, whereas the wilderness idea is historically associated with outdoor recreation and thus, Callicott claims, confuses the preservation issue and fosters incoherent and contradictory wildlands-use policies.
See also
- American philosophyAmerican philosophyAmerican philosophy is the philosophical activity or output of Americans, both within the United States and abroad. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that while American philosophy lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can nevertheless be seen as both reflecting and...
- List of American philosophers
- Environmental philosophyEnvironmental philosophyEnvironmental philosophy is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with the natural environment and humans' place within it. Environmental philosophy includes environmental ethics, environmental aesthetics, ecofeminism and environmental theology...
- Environmental ethicsEnvironmental ethicsEnvironmental ethics is the part of environmental philosophy which considers extending the traditional boundaries of ethics from solely including humans to including the non-human world...
- Aldo LeopoldAldo LeopoldAldo Leopold was an American author, scientist, ecologist, forester, and environmentalist. He was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and is best known for his book A Sand County Almanac , which has sold over two million copies...
- Causey, Ann (1994). “Callicott, John Baird” Page 124 in W. P. Cunningham et al., ed. Environmental Encyclopedia. Detroit: Gale Research Inc. ISBN 13: 978-0787654863.
- Egan, Michael (2001). “Callicott, J. Baird,” Pages 141-143 in Ann Becher, Kyle McClure, Rachel White Scheuering, and Julia Willis, eds. American Environmental Leaders: From Colonial Times to the Present, vol 1. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC CLIO. ISBN 13-978-1576071625
- Lo, Y. S. (2008). “Callicott, J. Baird 1941–.” Pages 129-130 in J. Baird Callicott and Robert Frodeman, eds., Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy. New York: Macmillan Reference USA. ISBN 978-0-02-866138-4
- Nelson, Michael P. (2001). “J. Baird Callicott, 1941-.” Pages 290-295 in Joy A. Palmer, ed. Fifty Key Environmental Thinkers. London: Routledge, 2001. ISBN 10-0415162289
- Nelson, Michael P. (2005) “Callicott, J. Baird (1941-).” Pages 252-254 in Bron Taylor and Jeffrey Kaplan, eds., Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature. London: Continuum International. ISBN 978-1-84706-273-4.
- Palmer, Clare and Bron Taylor, eds. (1997). Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion (Special Theme Issue on J. Baird Callicott’s Earth’s Insights). Volume 1 / Number 2.
- Ouderkirk, Wayne and Jim Hill, eds. (2002). Land, Value, and Community: Callicott and Environmental Philosophy, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-5229-8.
Selected Publications
- Callicott, J. Baird, ed. (1987). Companion to A Sand County Almanac: Interpretive and Critical Essays. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0-299-11230-6.
- Callicott, J. Baird (1989). In Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays in Environmental Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-88706-899-5.
- Callicott, J. Baird and Roger T. Ames, eds. (1989). Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought: Essays in Environmental Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-88706-950-9.
- Flader, Susan L. and J. Baird Callicott (1991). The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0-299-12760-5.
- Zimmerman, Michael, ed.; J. Baird Callicott, George Sessions, Karen Warren, and John Clark, assoc. eds. (1993). Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-666959-X.
- Callicott, J. Baird (1994). Earth’s Insights: A Multicultural Survey of Ecological Ethics from the Mediterranean Basin to Australian Outback. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-08559-0.
- Callicott, J. Baird and Fernando J. R. da Rocha, eds. (1996). Earth Summit Ethics: Toward a Reconstructive Postmodern Philosophy of Environmental Education. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-3053-7.
- Callicott, J. Baird and Michael P. Nelson, eds. (1998). The Great New Wilderness Debate. Athens: University of Georgia Press. ISBN 0-8203-1983-X.
- Zimmerman, Michael, ed.; J. Baird Callicott, George Sessions, Karen Warren, and John Clark, assoc. eds. (1998). Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Social Ecology, 2nd edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-778366-3.
- Callicott, J. Baird and Eric T. Freyfogle, eds. (1999). For the Health of the Land: Previously Unpublished Essays and Other Writings on Conservation by Aldo Leopold. Washington: Island Press. ISBN 1-55963-763-3.
- Callicott, J. Baird (1999). Beyond the Land Ethic: More Essays in Environmental Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7194-4084-2.
- Zimmerman, Michael, ed.; J. Baird Callicott, George Sessions, Karen Warren, and John Clark, assoc. eds. (2001). Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology, 3rd edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-028913-2.
- Callicott, J. Baird and Michael P. Nelson (2004). American Indian Environmental Ethics: An Ojibwa Case Study. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-043121-4.
- Zimmerman, Michael, ed.; J. Baird Callicott, Karen Warren, Irene Kaver, and John Clark, assoc. eds. (2005). Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Social Ecology, 4th edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-112695-4.
- Callicott, J. Baird and Clare Palmer, eds. (2005). Environmental Philosophy: Critical Concepts in the Environment, Values and Ethics, vol.1. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-32647-8 / ISBN 0-415-32646-X (five-volume set).
- Callicott, J. Baird and Clare Palmer, eds. (2005). Environmental Philosophy: Critical Concepts in the Environment, Society and Politics, vol. 2. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-32648-6 / ISBN 0-415-32646-X (five-volume set).
- Callicott, J. Baird and Clare Palmer, eds. (2005). Environmental Philosophy: Critical Concepts in the Environment, Economics and Policy, vol. 3. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-32649-4 / ISBN 0-415-32646-X (five-volume set).
- Callicott, J. Baird and Clare Palmer, eds. (2005). Environmental Philosophy: Critical Concepts in the Environment, Issues and Applications, vol. 4. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-32650-8 / ISBN 0-415-32646-X (five-volume set).
- Callicott, J. Baird and Clare Palmer, eds. (2005). Environmental Philosophy: Critical Concepts in the Environment, History and Culture, vol. 5. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-34145-0 / ISBN 0-415-32646-X (five-volume set).
- Nelson, Michael P. and J. Baird Callicott, eds. (2008) The Wilderness Debate Rages On: Continuing the Great New Wilderness Debate. Athens: University of Georgia Press. ISBN 0-8203-2740-9.
- Callicott, J. Baird and Robert Frodeman, eds.-in-chief (2009). Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy, New York: Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-02-8666137-7 (set); ISBN 978-0-02-866138-4 (vol 1); ISBN 978-0-02-866139-1 (vol 2); ISBN 978-0-02-866140-7 (ebook).
- Callicott, J. Baird (2009). Genèse (French translation of “Genesis and John Muir” with an Afterword by Catherine Larrère). Marseille: Editions Wildproject L'écologie culturelle/Cultural ecology. ISBN 978-2-918490-02-04.
- Callicott, J. Baird (2009). 山内、村上監訳『地球の洞察』 2009年, みすず書房、東京 or Chikyu no Dosatsu (Japanese translation of Earth’s Insights by T. Yamauchi, Y. Murakami et al.). Tokyo: Misuzu‐shobo. ISBN 978-4-622-08165-4.
- Callicott, J. Baird (2010). Éthique de la Terre. Paris: Éditions Wildproject, Collection Domaine Sauvage. ISBN 978-2-918490-06-7.
External links
- Callicott's UNT Webpage
- Callicott's personal Webpage
- International Society for Environmental Ethics home page