Environmental Virtue Ethics: Half the Truth But... —Sandler, Cafaro, Environmental Virtue Ethics, 2005

"Environmental Virtue Ethics: Half the Truth but Dangerous as a Whole." Pages 61-78 in Ronald Sandler and Philip Cafaro, eds., Environmental Virtue Ethics. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2005. Online at: http://hdl.handle.net/10217/37600

Virtue cannot be self-contained but must be in place. We actualize a uniquely human capacity for excellence when we respect non-human life. If this really comes from appreciating otherness, then such human virtue is tributary to value in other forms of life. If a virtue ethics is unable to disentwine human virtues from intrinsic values in nature, we have but a half truth, dangerous if taken for the whole.