Discussion questions for Vogel

1. What do you make of the prefatory remark that environmental philosophers are hesitant to engage continental philosophy?

2. How is continental philosophy different from environmental philosophy? For instance:

            a. Leopold’s ‘land ethic’,

            b. Naess’ ‘deep ecology’,

            c. Weston’s reluctance to advocate intrinsic value, and

            d. Preston’s Grounding Knowledge.

3. Who is Vogel’s audience? Who exactly is he speaking to or about when he discusses the ‘nature as origin’ view of nature? Is the ‘nature as origin’ view a familiar view to environmental authors we’ve read so far?

4. NATURE DOES NOT EXIST! This (170) is an important corollary of the ‘critique of nature’ view. Given the discussion of “wilderness”, do you think that this is a constructive way, in terms of effecting environmental reform, to conceive of nature?

5. The ‘critique of nature’ position avoids a certain pitfall of the ‘nature of origin’ view. Namely, humans are unnatural if we assume nature to be prior to humans. Does Preston’s dialectical biology and enactivism encounter this pitfall?

6. Is it merely equivocation to say, on the one hand, that there is no nature in the sense of an independent, original state of the world, but, on the other hand, to define nature as difference? (The argument: There is no ‘nature’, therefore ‘nature’ is ‘difference’.)

7. Deconstruction entails infinite deference in linguistic meaning. What are the values that Vogel suggests are consequences of this view of nature, i.e., the view that defining nature conclusively is impossible?

8. You are a public official. The deconstructionists tell you: “Since the term ‘nature’ exemplifies the inadequacy of language and defining, the term fails as well in so far as an account of ‘nature’ as difference is itself inadequate – in ways that cannot even be expressed in language” (174). Your response.

9. Vogel’s final section – “Nature and Practice” – illustrates “Vogel’s” position. What is the ‘ethical imperative’ driving Vogel’s environmental philosophy?

10. Where are standards found for an environmental philosophy that is antifoundationalist? How will this environmental philosophy not fail to produce desirable consequences?

11. Vogel claims that it is the notion of ‘practice’ that is lacking from the conventional continental philosophies (‘critique of nature’, ‘nature as difference’). Is it lacking from environmental philosophy in general (from our reading of it so far)?