Brian Treanor

One of the central points of Derrida’sArchive Fever is that the nature of the “archive” affects not only what is archived, but also how we relate to and access it. The archive also conditions the process of archiving itself and, indeed, the very nature of what is archivable. Derrida's comments, however, were made in 1995, when the full extent of the Internet boom was only beginning to become evident. The intervening years have reshaped the archive in ways that Derrida could scarcely have foreseen in 1995. Although many of the changes bear out his fundamental theses, the power that the Internet has come to exert over public and private discourse demands that we re-examine the archive in order to begin to assess what these changes portend

Much of the literature addressing environmental virtue tends to focus on what might be called “personal virtue”—individual actions, characteristics, or dispositions that benefit the individual actor. There has, in contrast, been relatively little interest in either “virtue politics”—collective actions, characteristics, or dispositions—or in what might be called “public virtues,” actions, characteristics, or dispositions that benefit the community rather than the individual. This focus, however, is problematic, especially in a society that valorizes individuality. This paper examines public virtue and its role in environmental virtue ethics. First, I outline different types of virtue in order to frame the discussion of public virtues and, in particular, a subclass of virtues I will refer to as political virtue. Second, I focus on practical problems and address the inadequacy of personal virtue for effecting social change and, therefore, for addressing most environmental crises. Finally, I argue that public and political virtues are necessary, if under emphasized, conditions for the flourishing of the individual, and that they are important complements to more traditional environmental virtues