Nathan Kowalsky

Abstract. On the naive reading, “radical social constructivism” would be the result of “deconstructing” science. Science would simply be a contingent construction in accordance with social determinants. However, postmodernism does not necessarily abandon fidelity to the objects of thought. Merold Westphal's Derridean philosophy of religion emphasizes that even theology need not eliminate the transcendence of the divine other. By drawing an analogy between natural and supernatural transcendence, I argue that science is similarly called to responsibility in the encounter with that which lies outside its horizon of expectation. Science's rational autonomy is overcome by the heteronomy of realities that precede it. Understanding species as homeostatic property clusters is an example of nonessentialist, postmodern, and scientific realism. Science is still a vehicle for encountering natural alterity, thus decentering the relativism thought to characterize postmodernism. However, natural science must not attempt to place the whole of being at human disposal if it is to fulfill the potential of Westphal's philosophy of religion

Every possible story of hunting I could tell both starts and finishes with home. Not the house I grew up in, but the semi-wild shortgrass prairies of southeastern Alberta. When I hunt them, I dwell there again; otherwise, I’m just visiting. The prey animal, rather than being the obvious focal point of hunting, is rather for me a portal into a larger experience of being environed. The prey, after all, is – like me – hidden by the land: the grass, the scrub brush, the coulees, the creek beds, and eventually, the darkness. In this paper I will interpret this aspect as both participation within the preexisting ecosystem and consanguinity with its other inhabitants, my prey especially. To hunt is to tacitly affirm that nothing about this environing world needs to be changed. Neither the prey animal’s freedom nor mine, not the wild biota, not my visceral contact with the animal’s mortality – and, by extension, my own. All of this – the death, the life, the default absence of domestication – fits into the axiologically transcendent order of the cosmos which hunting accepts. I see this as consonant with St. Augustine’s theodicy in the Confessions: “Far be it then that I should say, ‘These things should not be.’” Holmes Rolston, III says that hunting is a sacramental affirmation of the way the world is made, but perhaps the land covers the Lord as well? As I see it, the hunt reveals wild life as a sacrament of a wild God who “is inordinately fond of rough places” (Robert Farrar Capon), the numinous, mysterious, and fascinating terror which in its grace gives us peace (Rudolf Otto). Perhaps the hunt reveals a morally ambiguous world, but then, by natural theology, so is the divine. God is the other-than-all of us, and so we should expect to be transcended. Anything less is onto-theology (Heidegger). The Spirit blows where it wills and, as I experience it, hunting refuses to put it on a leash. In such an untamed God do I find myself at home.

The value of animal predation has been a religious concern for millennia and remains so today. Predators are a paradigmatic example of natural evil that calls God’s existence into question. This chapter gives an overview of the role predation plays in the nonhuman animal kingdom and argues that it should not be viewed as intrinsically evil. First, I briefly survey the history of Western religion’s engagement with the issue of predation. Then I give an account of welfare biology, a proposed new branch of science aimed at eradicating predation. Classical humane ethics, however, does not advocate for predator eradication even though it shares the moral framework of welfare biology. Holistic environmental ethics differs from both by relativizing the value of individual animals within the context of species and ecosystems, both of which include predation as a positive process. Contemporary philosophy of religion has more in common with welfare biology because it takes the apparent non-eradication of predation as evidence for God’s non-existence. I argue, by contrast, that there are strong religious reasons for seeing predation positively, in the manner of holistic environmental ethics.

Judging a place as wasteland or homeland is a matter of perspective: presupposed values, knowledge through acquaintance, and comportment. Therefore, contra Martin Drenthen, the value of wilderness is a judgement call, not a conceptual necessity. I show this by first distinguishing wilderness from “wildness,” then culture from civilization, and finally, by situating Nietzsche’s teachings of the will to power in the context of a devalued world-view.Nevertheless, I agree with Drenthen that some understandings of wilderness are more appropriate than others. When wild nature is understood to be “good” in an axiologically transcendent sense, morality and humanness per se are not undermined, and the transcendence of wildness is still sufficiently immanent to avoid the drive to devalue it. Even though such conceptualization can be attained by civilized urbanites, it seems to be optimally actualized in life by non-civilized cultures. This leads to implications that are not easy for us to accept, but deserve our serious consideration nonetheless

Hunting - Philosophy for Everyone presents a collection of readings from academics and non-academics alike that move beyond the ethical justification of hunting to investigate less traditional topics and offer fresh perspectives on why we hunt. The only recent book to explicitly examine the philosophical issues surrounding hunting Shatters many of the stereotypes about hunting, forcing us to rethink the topic Features contributions from a wide range of academic and non-academic sources, including both hunters and non-hunters

This paper critiques the use of the term ‘evil’ in philosophical discussions of the problem of evil. We argue that what is commonly identified as ‘evil’ in this debate is better as ‘misfortune.’ The division between moral and natural evil equivocates between agentic and non-agentic ‘evil,’ undermining its coherence as a unifying concept. Evil events are necessarily caused by evildoers, which are non-existent in events of natural evil. By contrast, ‘misfortune’ places the focus on the victim regardless of the source, better capturing what philosophers intend with the prior term ‘evil.’ Our more precise definition of ‘evil’ satisfies Jean Nabert’s notion of evil as the unjustifiable while also being sufficiently distinct from badness. What distinguishes ‘evil’ from mere badness is moral erasure, which is the perception of other human beings as objects unworthy of moral consideration. While a bad person causes misfortunes as a trade-off in pursuit of a perceived good, an evil person is either completely indifferent to their victim’s misfortunes, or malicious by deliberately causing misfortunes for pleasure’s sake. Our distinction between ‘misfortune’ and ‘evil’ clarified as (im)moral, indifferent, or malicious challenges the assumption that evil, as traditionally framed, poses a direct contradiction to God’s existence.

Extending ethical considerability to animals consistently takes the form of imperialism: progressing outward from the core of human morality, it incorporates only those animals deemed relevantly similar to humans while rejecting or reforming those lifeforms which are not. I develop an ethic of animal treatment premised on the species difference of undomesticated animals, which has the potential to reunite not only animal and environmental ethics, but environmental and interhuman ethics: each species has evolutionarily specified patterns of behavior for the proper treatment of members of its own species and members of other species.

Any mediation of the humanity-nature divide driven by environmental concern must satisfactorily account for ecologically destructive human behavior. Holmes Rolston, III argues that human cultures should “follow nature” when interacting with nature. Yet he understands culture to necessarily degrade ecosystems, and allows that purely cultural values could legitimate the destruction of nature itself. Edward O. Wilson, meanwhile, argues that culture’s evolutionary function is to fit humanity to its niche; culture necessarily follows “epigenetic rules” naturally selected for this purpose. However, because humanity cannot but follow these rules, any human behavior—even (post)modern societies’ ecologically catastrophic behavior—is entirely natural. Therefore, Rolston’s reconciliation is too weak and Wilson’s too strong. Yet the two can be mutually modifying. Rolston’s “pure” culture should follow the natural value of human nature; yet, humans must be free to disobey (at their peril) Wilson’s epigenetic rules. Humanity thus becomesreconciled to nature by freely following its own nature, which is violated when the wider natural world is treated unnaturally.

The Alberta tar sands, and the proposed pipelines which would carry their bitumen to international markets, comprise one of the most visible environmental controversies of the early twenty-first century. Jacques Ellul’s theory of technology presents ostensibly physical phenomena, such as the tar sands, as social phenomena wherein all values are subsumed under the efficient mastery of nature. The effect of technological rationality is totalizing because technical means establish themselves as the exclusive facts of the matter, which creates a socio-political environment wherein ethical engagement is precluded. Analyzing the tar sands controversy through Ellul’s hermeneutic challenges environmental ethics to a more radical stance than the continuation of the technological worldview, and thus offers meaningful and hopeful alternatives to the status quo.