Perché Studiare le Etiche dell'Ambiente?, "Why Study Environmental Ethics?" translated into Italian, pages 72-75 in Matteo Andreozzi, ed., Etiche dell’Ambiente: Voci e Prospettive [Environmental Ethics: Voices and Perspectives] (Milan: LED Edizioni Universitarie, 2012). Online at: http://hdl.handle.net/10217/79016

Study environmental ethics to figure out who you are, where you are, and what you ought to do. "The unexamined life is not worth living." But Socrates avoided nature, thinking it profitless. The country places and trees won't teach me anything. Socrates was wrong. I found that out in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Life in an unexamined world is not worthy living either. Become a three-dimensional person. One needs experience of the urban, and the rural, and the wild. You don't want to live a denatured life. Study environmental ethics to get put in your place.

Originally published in English in David R. Keller, ed., Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions (Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pages 40-41.