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Envisioning a De-Anthropocentrised World: Critical Comments on Anthony Weston's ‘The Incompleat Eco-Philosopher’

Weston and I will be forever linked in the field of environmental philosophy because of an exchange of essays that were published in the journal Environmental Ethics in 1985 and 1987 on the subject of pragmatism and intrinsic value in the field of environmental ethics (Katz, 1987; Weston, 1985; both essays reprinted in Light and Katz, 1996). That connection may have been what prompted Jason Kawall, the organiser of this session, to invite me in as a so-called ‘critic’ of Weston. But I am a strange critic, for Weston and I share, I believe, a fundamental orientation in philosophy: we both consider ourselves pragmatists in the classic American tradition of Pierce, James, and Dewey. So our debate of 25 years ago had all the hallmarks of an in-house affair; perhaps each of us was trying to establish what exactly a pragmatic environmental ethic would look like. And it would be odd if that debate were to be repeated here. Surely our positions must have evolved over the last quarter century! So let me use the occasion of commenting on this new book as an opportunity to review my agreements and disagreements with Weston’s version of environmental pragmatism. Our destination may be the same, but I believe that we are traveling by different routes.