University of North Texas, at Denton. There is a M.A program in environmental ethics. Eugene Hargrove, Pete A. Y. Gunter, and J. Baird Callicott are the principal philosophers involved. About two dozen college faculty participate from other disciplines. Write Eugene C. Hargrove, University of North Texas, P. O. Box 310980, Denton, TX 76203-0980. Phone 940/565-2266. Fax: 940/565-4448.
University of Georgia, Athens, Department of Philosophy and other cooperating departments offer an Environmental Ethics Certificate Program. The Department also offers Ph.D. and M. A. degrees. The Certificate program has a faculty of 42 cooperating members and has been operating since 1983. A 30 page Handbook is available. One concentration is marine environmental ethics. Contact: Department of Philosophy, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602. Phone 706/542-2823.
Michigan State University, East Lansing. Jason
P. Matzke completed a Ph.D. thesis, A Pluralistic Humean Environmental Ethic:
Dealing with the Individualism-Holism Problem, Spring 2003. Environmental
ethicists often
argue for ethical holism, granting moral standing to ecosystems and species.
However, this conflicts with traditional ethics which attributes moral standing
to individual organisms. This is the individualism-holism problem. Marry Anne
Warren and J. Baird Callicott have each offered solutions which they claim are
monistic. I synthesize their views and reinterpret them as a pluralistic Humean
environmental ethic, one which ameliorates but cannot fully eliminate the conflict.
Warren's principles are revised in
light of my contention that interests play the central role in determining the
moral standing of individual organisms and this provides substance to Callicott's
otherwise more abstract approach. Callicott's work, in turn, provides theoretical
coherence for Warren's principles. Humean sentimentalism, however, is open to
the charge of relativism, especially since Hume's appeal to universal agreement
on central moral beliefs cannot be sustained in a world so obviously diverse.
Humean sentimentalism can be reinterpreted pluralistically. Differences in experience
and culture prevent universal agreement, but the common experience of living
as humans in this world, with its particularities,
limits the range of acceptable alternatives. Furthermore, because reason informs
sentiment, there are grounds for critically assessing Humean moral claims.
A pluralistic approach to moral
reasoning provides an alternative to the continuing theoretical and practical
stalemate between individualists and holists. Choices may have ethical remainders,
but neither side of a debate can so easily insist that compromise threatens
their moral integrity. The thesis advisor was Fred Gifford.
Fordham University, Bronx, NY. Robert L. Chapman completed
a Ph.D. dissertation, Values Beyond Culture: A Study in Environmental Axiology,
under Elizabeth Kraus. The central argument is that nature posses non-instrumental
value. Chapman is now at Pace University, New York City Campus, New York, New
York, where he is teaching environmental ethics.
University of New Mexico. Lisa Gerber completed a Ph. D. thesis, Environmental Virtues and Vices (Narcissism, Misanthropy, Humility, Attentiveness, Intimacy), 1999, Department of Philosophy. Virtue ethics is a better approach to environmental ethics than the extentionist position which allocates rights to animals, or the utilitarian position which takes into moral consideration all sentient creatures, or the land ethic position which seeks to promote the integrity and beauty of the biotic community. (1) Virtue ethics coherently explains why diverse examples, such as the killing of a sled dog and the destruction of a natural formation, are wrong. (2) More importantly, virtue ethics offers concrete ways in which to cultivate our characters in order to improve our relationship with nature. I explicate the vices of narcissism and misanthropy, and the virtues of humility, attentiveness, and intimacy. The adviser was Fred Schueler.
University of Iowa. Barbara Ellen Willard completed a
Ph.D. thesis, December 1997, What's for Dinner: Articulating and Antagonizing
the American Foodway. Department of Communication Studies. The rhetoric,
arguments and narrative influences that have shaped American meat-eating. Americans
have developed a cultural heritage with such components as the myth of human
dominion, the cowboy and rugged individualist myth, and the masculinization
of meat myth. These are transformed in contemporary accounts by themes of stewardship,
convenience, health, and sanitization. Other antecedents lie in Greek mythology
and philosophy, transmigration, animal ethics, and the purity of the body and
soul. Contemporary narratives of health care, high moral ground, and apocalyptic
rhetoric transform these antecedents. This complex background, operating in
the present, needs to be understood by any who try to persuade individuals to
change dietary habits. Willard is now Assistant Professor in the Department
of Speech Communication, Colorado State University.
York University, Faculty of Environmental Studies, Toronto, Ontario. Andy Fisher completed a Ph.D. thesis, Nature and Experience: A Radical Approach to Ecopsychology, 1999. I propose an approach to ecopsychology which is (1) naturalistic, in that it aims to link human nature to the larger natural world; (2) experiential, in that it uses bodily felt meaning as its touchstone; (3) and radical, in that it locates itself within critical currents within both psychology and ecology. Its method is interpretive and rhetorical, understanding the human-nature relationship in a way that normal science cannot and arguing for concerns counter to those of the dominant social order. My own version of ecopsychology, "naturalistic psychology," asserts that to be claimed by the natural order means to belong to it, to be limited by it, and to feel its demands within our bodily experience. Naturalistic psychology advocates fidelity to nature, being in service of nature, and cultivating our inherent relations with a more-than-human world. This calls for a countering of the dominant pattern of our technologized and economized society. The general advance of technology leads not to the fulfilment of our nature but to a natural rebellion that the ruling powers of our society must constantly turn to advantage, administer, or out-maneuver. The radical task is to recognize the suffering intrinsic to the modern enterprise and to create loving contexts for the bearing of this suffering. Thus may we both discover what our suffering means and work toward a society more congruent with and respectful of our nature and our experience. The advisor was Mora Campbell. This thesis has been published as Radical Ecopsychology: Psychology in the Service of Life (Albany, State University of New York Press, 2002).
York University, Toronto, Ontario. Catriona Alison Hayward Sandilands completed a Ph.D. thesis: The Good Natured Feminist: On the Subject of Ecofeminism and the Quest for Democracy, in 1995, in sociology and women's studies. Ecofeminism embodies both considerable promise and numerous problems, notably its tendency to reduce feminist-ecological collaboration to "identity." This focus causes a number of difficulties, including the reduction of women and nature to their supposed "difference" from male culture. Identity politics, including ecofeminism, are understood as embodying a democratic desire; in light of the critique of identity offered by Laclau and Mouffe, it also becomes possible to retrieve that desire into a more "radical" democratic politics. Ecofeminism has a potential ability to construct a series of democratic conversations about nature, in which identities are seen as performative and potentially subversive. At the core of this democratic possibility lies a Lacanian "ethics of the Real," in which ecofeminism recognizes the unspeakability of nature; this "lack" is not only what keeps radical democratic politics from "getting it right" (thus preserving a desirable openness), but suggests an environmental ethics of human humility toward a partially-enigmatic nature. The advisor was Karen Anderson.
University of Utah. Edward Morris Barbanell completed
a Ph. D. thesis, Private Property and Common-property Arrangements: The Case
of Water in the West, 1999, Department of Philosophy. Private ownership
is not the preferred end state for all scarce resources, illustrated by water
in the American West. Because of water's "factor endowments", e.g., its degrees
of jointness, divisibility and excludability, one individual's use creates significant
negative externalities for other users. Individuals' interests can be better
protected by splitting the various rights of ownership between individual resource
users and the "resource community" to which they belong.
This dissertation offers an expanded framework
of "ownership", or rights-relationships. Locke's account of property is inadequate
for water and other resources with similar factor endowments. Economists often
conflate "open access" with "common ownership." The former describes a state
of affairs where there are no rights-relationships at all, whereas the latter
denotes a situation where definite property rights have been established. When
the rights-relationship among members of a resource community is based on shared
expectations of reciprocal behavior, then a common-property arrangement can
function effectively to control the overuse of scarce resources. The advisor
was Bruce Landesman.
State University of New York, Stony Brook. David L. Strong completed a Ph.D. thesis, To the Things Themselves: Technology, Metatechnology, and the Environment, 1990. Humans need to awaken from the spell of technology--the notion that it is devices and commodities that makes our lives good--or else see ruinous conflict between nature and culture continue. Persons need a "correlational coexistence," a kind of symmetry between ourselves and "things," in Heidegger's sense. That balance has been upset by the overpowering and disposable nature of technological devices that have come to replace natural and traditional things. One of the moral consequences of this new asymmetry is the development of a petty homocentrism with regard to nature and a loss of traditional virtue in society. The advisor was Edward S. Casey, and committee members were Robert C. Neville, Marshall Spector, and Peter Manchester. Strong is teaching philosophy at Rocky Mountain College, Billings, Montana, and has published Crazy Mountains: Learning from Wilderness to Weigh Technology, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.
University of Wisconsin-Madison. Gary E. Varner completed
a Ph.D. thesis with the title: Interests: Their Nature, Scope, and Significance,
in 1988. Moral agents have direct, prima facie duties toward any entity that
has interests. Preference interests are probably present in all animals with
a functional prefrontal cortex, and probably not present in any non-mammalian
creature. Having desires does not require having true language of the kind that
humans have. All and only individual living organisms have welfare interests,
analyzed on the model of needs. Such a view is not impracticable but there are
practicable means of adjudicating such interests. Desires ought to be given
preference over biologically defined needs and the "ground projects" of humans
ought to be given precedence over all interests of non- human beings. Still,
humans as moral agents can, on consideration of the interests of non-human creatures,
sometimes accommodate these interests. The thesis advisor was Jon H. Moline.
Varner teaches philosophy at Texas A and M University.
State University of New York, Stony Brook. Charles Whitmer Wright completed a Ph.D. thesis: Toward an Environmentally Responsive Ethics of Communication (Frankfurt School of Social Theory, Jurgen Habermas, Germany), in 1996, in philosophy. First generation members of the Frankfurt School of social theory--Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse-- anticipated the need for theoretical reflection concerning the causes of environmental degradation, but their philosophical approach was burdened with serious conceptual difficulties. Jurgen Habermas's reconstruction promises to resolve many of these difficulties. Yet his linguistic and pragmatic approach seems to entail an anthropocentrism that prevents an adequate environmental ethic. This thesis outlines the obstacles facing environmental thinkers in Habermas's conception of practical reason and in his conception of modernity. But his theoretical approach can be reconciled with the aims of environmental ethics and philosophy. A place for a moral dimension to human interaction with the natural world can be secured. The advisor was Kenneth Baynes.
State University of New York, Stony Brook. Robert Kirkman
completed a Ph.D. thesis, Environmentalism Without Illusions: Rethinking
the Roles of Philosophy and Ecology, 1995. Environmental thinkers make broad
factual and normative claims that are usually based on a profound misunderstanding
of the scope and limits of human knowledge. The most telling symptom of this
problem is the deep ambivalence of environmental thinkers toward the sciences.
Speculative nature philosophy must always fall short of the mark; the world
is far too complex and detailed to be fully comprehended by reason. An alternative
is a model of scientific inquiry as a process by which metaphors are refined
by an open- ended process of testing and criticism. Scientific knowledge is
always tentative and somewhat ambiguous. An emphasis on scientific knowledge,
properly understood, results in a radical revision of the meaning and the prospects
of environmental thought. The advisors were Anthony Weston, Mary C. Rawlinson,
and Edward S. Casey. Kirkman taught at the Department of Philosophy, University
of New Hampshire, Durham, and is now with the Learning Communities Program,
SUNY Stony Brook.
State University of New York, Stony Brook. David Mark Macauley completed a Ph.D. thesis, Be-wildering Order: Toward an Ecology of the Elements in Ancient Greek Philosophy and Beyond, 1998. The present environmental crisis is, in part, a crisis of our historical relation to the four classical elements: earth, air, fire and water, in ancient Greek cosmology and philosophy. A typology of the elements, their role in framing a physical and metaphysical order. Debates related to the social construction of nature, hylozoism and the significance of the elements for understanding philosophical language, Greek culture, and the environment. Particular attention to Empedocles' Peri Phuseus and Katharmoi--and their subsequent place and displacement in the thought of Plato's Timaeus and Aristotle's De Caelo, De Anima, De Generatione et Corruptione and Physics. Relevance for our conceptions of pollution, democracy, evolutionary theory, philosophy of nature and place. An "ecology of the elements" using Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gaston Bachelard and Henry David Thoreau. The role of dwelling, walking, the body and an ontological poetics of revery. The advisor was Edward S. Casey.
State University of New York, Stony Brook. Irene Klaver completed a Ph.D. thesis, 1996, Indeterminacy in Place. A Heraclitian mode of being and thinking is preserved in Plato's notion of space. Oppositions are dealt with as mutually constitutive instead of mutually exclusive. This absence of dualistic thinking is related to the way that space is designated as an indeterminate, feminine, and material realm. There are consequences for concepts of intentionality, agency, responsibility, subjectivity, and community. Environmental ethics needs to be predicated upon the necessity to give place indeterminacy and upon a notion of place that is fundamentally indeterminate. This leads to a pragmatic environmental policy that takes specific places seriously. The advisors were Edward S. Casey, Mary Rawlinson, Anthony Weston, and Peter Manchester. Klaver, who is Dutch, afterward taught at Montana State University, Billings. She did further teaching and research at the Universities of Amsterdam and Leiden, and is now Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of North Texas.
University of Kansas. Brian Clyde Black completed a Ph.D. thesis in environmental history: Petrolia: The Landscape of Pennsylvania's Oil Boom, 1859-1873, completed in 1996. The tapping of the first commercial oil well in 1859 and the ensuing boom in western Pennsylvania was a revolution in land use--an ecological revolution--that rationalized a method of exploiting the environment and developing resources that was unprecedented. This was a watershed in American attitudes toward future modes of industrial development. The early oil industry helped to shape the ethics with which the broader culture defined acceptable use of natural resources. Americans were given a commodity of such significance that it overwhelmed the meaning of a place and made it worth sacrificing. The advisor was Donald Worster.Catholic University of America, Washington. Theodore
W. Nunez completed a Ph.D. thesis, spring 1999, Holmes Rolston, Bernard Lonergan,
and the Foundations of Environmental Ethics. The ecophilosophy of Holmes
Rolston in dialogue with the thought of Canadian Jesuit philosopher Bernard
Lonergan in an attempt to clarify and develop the foundations of a contemporary
environmental ethic.
Part I. An interpretive analysis of Rolston's
major writings. His meta-ethical positions in the areas of epistemology, metaphysics,
axiology, and philosophical anthropology. Rolston's interpretive natural history
and its relation to his theology of nature. Rolston defends a critical-realist
epistemology as the meta-ethical basis for a science-based, ecocentric ethic.
His most important epistemological claim is that human beings are capable of
worldview-formation, moral oversight, and planetary altruism.
Part II. Aspects of Lonergan's philosophy
relevant to environmental ethics: cognitional theory, transcendental method,
and critical-realist epistemology. Cognitive and moral objectivity is the fruit
of authentic subjectivity. Lonergan's theory of emergent probability and the
related notions of development and finality. Lonergan's dialectic of progress,
decline, and redemption in history and society. Lonergan's view of the humanity-nature
relationship clarified and developed by drawing on Robert Doran's related notions
of an ecological differentiation of consciousness, an integral dialectic of
culture, and psychic conversion.
Part III. In a mutually critical dialogue
between Rolston and Lonergan on foundational issues in environmental ethics,
each thinker complements and corrects the other in several ways. (1) Critical
realism offers the most adequate epistemological grounding for environmental
ethics. (2) Meeting the eco-social crisis requires a new, nonanthropocentric
ethic that is scientifically informed and religiously based (a theocentric ethic).
(3) It is both necessary and possible for a new environmental ethic to integrate
a nonanthropocentric theory of values in nature with a humanistic value theory.
(4) A new ethic must include, as a central component, a character ethic informed
by an evolutionary epic and a normative vision of sensitive earth residence.
A summary, with commentary, appears as "Rolston,
Lonergan, and the Intrinsic Value of Nature, Journal of Religious Ethics
27 (no. 1, Spring 1999):105-128. Nunez is taught ethics, including environmental
ethics, at Villanova University, and is now at Middlebury College, VT.
Duke University. Paul Joseph Medeiros completed a Ph.D.
thesis, Juxtaposing Aldo Leopold and Martin Heidegger: Interpretation, Time,
and the Environment, May, 2000. The concepts of authentic time, inauthentic
time, and everyday time, articulated by Martin Heidegger in the 1924 lecture
"The Concept of Time" and in Being and Time, are used to disclose American environmentalism
as a tradition calling for a temporal modification of everyday life through
engaged contact with the wild. The essays of conservationist Aldo Leopold, forerunner
of contemporary environmental ethics, are chosen as representative of a tradition
that includes Emerson, Thoreau, and Muir. The three main themes intrinsic to
Leopold's essays--that our historical roots in the wild yield cultural values,
that the whole of nature can be perceived as a community, and that we ought
to respect and care for the land (the famous "land ethic")--are interpreted
in terms of Heidegger's concepts of the authentic past, present, and future,
respectively.
Issues of interpretation, specifically the
linguistic and metaphysical obstacles to our understanding of Heidegger and
the problem of a philosophical representation appropriate to Leopold and the
American environmental tradition in general, are a major concern of the dissertation.
These problems are unraveled by virtue of the dissertation's hermeneutical structure:
Part I presents the evolution of the three themes in Leopold's essays leading
up to their explicit formulation in A Sand County Almanac, Part II is a tripartite
analysis of Heidegger's translated works from the 1966 Der Spiegel interview
back to "The Concept of Time" guided by Leopold's themes, and Part III reinterprets
Leopold's environmental philosophy, including the land ethic, in light of the
results of Part II i.e., Heidegger's phenomenological conception of past, present,
and future. The dissertation concludes that the possibility of authentically
interpreting both Leopold and Heidegger in this circular manner is grounded
in their common heritage in German Romanticism. Principal advisors were Alasdair
MacIntyre and Gregory Cooper. Medeiros is teaching environmental ethics at Oregon
State University, Corvallis.
Duke University. Penka Dinkova Kouneva completed a Ph.D, thesis, writing a cantata for soprano and baritone soloists, mixed chorus and chamber orchestra, entitled Where Nature and Soul Meet, completed 1997. The advisor was Stephen Jaffe. The cantata addresses the relationship between humans and nature. The subject was prompted by two concerns: first, that an attitude of condescension, exploitation and senseless destruction of nature will deepen the present ecological crisis; second, that dualisms such as nature/culture, emotion/reason, matter/spirit, body/soul, historically formative in much of Western culture, result in alienation and division, and in turn, reinforce such an attitude. The underlying poetic premise of the cantata is that the human soul can be fully realized only through a new environmental ethics based on integration and partnership with nature. The cantata is an attempt to critique, through music and poetic texts, an alienated world view, and to celebrate in song a new environmental ethic.
University of Western Ontario. Kevin de Laplante completed a Ph.D thesis, Toward a General Philosophy of Ecology, 1998. Department of Philosophy. Examines the role that ecological concepts and theories play in environmental philosophy and defends a conception of ecological science that is broad enough to address the philosophical and scientific concerns of environmental philosophers. These aims are consistent with the dominant tradition in contemporary environmental philosophy, but the argument is highly critical of the way the ecology-environmental philosophy relationship is conceived in contemporary environmental philosophy. Rather than view ecology as a conceptual and scientific resource that is relevant to environmental philosophy only insofar as it provides support for the ethical, social and political aims of environmentalism, deLaplante argues that the core problems of environmental philosophy are essentially problems for a general science and philosophy of ecology. The thesis defends the robustness of a conception of ecology that is sufficiently broad to encompass "ecological psychology", "ecological economics", and "ecological anthropology", as well as traditional ecological science.University of Texas-Austin. Cynthia Ann Botteron completed a Ph.D. thesis in political science, What the Study of Tiger Preservation in India Reveals about Science, Advocacy, and Policy Change, 2000. Investigates the legitimacy of the claim that imperialism was the motive and mode of transferring from one cultural context to another the "wilderness" version of "national parks" as a means of saving species and habitat, specifically with reference to tigers in India. The vast and powerful role played by the coalition of conservation scientists and international environmental organizations in creating and promoting this "ethic" is analyzed as is the impact on the development of science by its close association with environmental advocacy organizations. This "constructed" science was used to delegitimize alternative interpretations of the problem of species decline, habitat degradation, and the role and function of humans in the environment. The advisor was David Braybrooke. Botteron taught political science at Colorado State University, and is now teaching political science at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania, Shippensburg, PA.
Michigan State University. Adeyinka Christopher Thompson completed a Ph.D. thesis, Ethics in International Politics? The Contradictions and Ethical Implications of Foreign Aid in Africa, 2000. Independence brought, for many African peoples, a return not only to repressive government, but also to economic decline and hardship. Some have blamed the international community--primarily the Western or developed nations. I make an ethical analysis of the relationship between African nations and the developed world--with specific reference to foreign aid. Normative questions are central to international relations; actors in international relations cannot but raise normative questions. There is an obligation for Western developed nations to assist poor under-developed Third world (in particular African) nations. A case study of aid to Somalia. Three key issues facing African nations--(1) what type of democracy is suitable; (b) corruption; and (c) compromising sovereignty by allowing intervention. This complexity reinforces the need for ethics in international politics. Without morality to evaluate our actions we will be unaware of what we are doing. The advisor was Martin Benjamin.
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Katie McShane completed a Ph.D. thesis, The Nature of Value: Environmentalist Challenges to Moral Theories, 2002 in the Department of Philosophy. Environmentalists have argued that contemporary ethical theories have overly strict rules about what kinds of things can be intrinsically valuable. These rules make it impossible for many of the things that environmentalists care deeply about to be considered bearers of intrinsic value--things which are not rational, sentient, or in some cases, even alive. In this dissertation I consider possible responses to this environmentalist criticism from within mainstream ethical theories. Using the value of ecosystems as a test case, I analyze what features a thing must have, and why, in order to be a (potential) possessor of intrinsic value on each of three ethical theories: wellbeing-based, Moorean, and rational attitude accounts. Ultimately, I argue that while a place can be made for the intrinsic value of ecosystems on all three theories, rational attitude accounts do the best job of accommodating environmentalist concerns without incurring other significant theoretical costs. McShane is in philosophy at North Carolina State University, but this year a visiting professor at the Center for Ethics and the Professions at the Kennedy School, Harvard University. Her committee was: Elizabeth Anderson (chair), Stephen Darwall, P. J. Ivanhoe, John Vandermeer (Biology).
Georgia Institute of Technology. Paul D. Hirsch completed a Ph.D., thesis, Making Space for Environmental Problem Solving: A Study Of the Role of "Place" in Boundary Choices Using Georgia's Statewide Planning Process as a Case, 2008. The concept of "problem bounding," argued by Bryan Norton and colleagues to be an important but understudied aspect of environmental problem solving, is operationalized and empirically investigated. The empirical part of the work involves participant observation and survey research on how diverse individuals - all of whom were invited by a state agency to advise the development of an institutional framework for statewide water planning - engaged in problem bounding both conceptually and in their choice of a spatial structure for ongoing water management. My particular focus is on the multiple ways in which the "place" an individual views the problem from shapes the way they engage in problem bounding. Although more research is needed and there are significant limitations to the data, my findings indicate that place - particularly in terms of location on an upstream/downstream continuum and rural/urban selfidentification - does play a role in problem bounding. The dissertation concludes with a review and discussion of the major findings, and implications for the development of institutional frameworks that are both responsive to ecological dynamics and representative of the relevant public(s). The principal advisor was Bryan Norton. Hirsch is now Research Director, Environmental Conflicts and Collaboration Center for Environmental Policy and Administration Maxwell School of Citizenship, Syracuse University.
University of North Texas. Gao, Shan completed
a Ph.D. thesis, The Beauty of Nature as the Foundation for Environmental
Ethics: China and the West at the University of North Texas, Department
of Philosophy, spring 2012. This dissertation seeks to construct an environmental
ethics based on environmental aesthetics. I first examine the aesthetic appreciation
of nature in the philosophical traditions of China. Nature is viewed as an organic
system which is always in a self-generating process of production and reproduction
of life. The metaphysical foundation for this perspective is ch'i, and
its aesthetic appreciation. (1) what are the objective and aesthetic features
of ch'i? (2) How do the Chinese appreciate aesthetic features of ch'i?
(3) Why are the objective features of ch'i regarded as the objects of
aesthetic appreciation? The Chinese use intellectual intuition and empathy to
appreciate the objective features of ch'i as aesthetic features. I further
examine two major philosophical schools in China: emptiness and creativity.
Traditional Western philosophical
thinking does not support aesthetic appreciation of nature. Aesthetic appreciation
of nature did not begin until the eighteenth century. I examine Kant's aesthetic
categories of beauty and the sublime. In contemporary aesthetics, I focus on
Allen Carlson's positive aesthetics and Arnold Berleant's engagement model.
I conclude by attempting to construct an integrated theory of aesthetic appreciation
of nature, East and West. The key point is to establish a caring relationship
with nature based on aesthetic appreciation of nature and active participation
in its beauty. This will motivate people to protect nature and also contribute
to human happiness. Gao, Shan is the first Chinese scholar to complete a Ph.D.
thesis at an American university.