PHIL 243: Global Environmental Ethics

PHIL 243-DL1: Global Environmental Ethics
(Fall 2025)

Online

View the schedule of classes

Section Information for Fall 2025

We all live incredibly complex lives and are preoccupied, much of the time, by highly
consuming questions. Should I have a family? Should I buy an electric vehicle or a gas vehicle?
Should I drive a vehicle at all? What food should I be buying? How can I take care of the world
around me? How much environmental damage do I cause? How can I instill change in a world
with so much injustice? These consuming questions are compounded by our current
environmental state of affairs, and people often additionally ask, “What can I do?”
This course aims at addressing that deceptively simple last question in a few ways.

First,it helps a great deal to expose yourself to different worldviews. People are often surprised at how
differently others can live and how they digest their experiences. Raising your awareness of
these differences is both beneficial to your milieu as well as the soul. Second, once we build
awareness, there can be a more thorough engagement with critical thinking. This critical thinking
does not always have to provide solutions. Sometimes it can be beneficial to train and practice in
asking meaningful questions, and those questions can lead to solutions down the road. Third, the
reading list in this course is heavily inspired by the spirit of William James’ analysis of attention.
Through this “re-attunement” to attention, we can shed our less helpful habits (ethics).

Our current world constantly yanks us away from the focus needed for meaningful
philosophical inquiry and reflection. As it turns out, the common colloquial phrase, “Pay
attention, it doesn’t cost anything” is incorrect. On the contrary, the stakes are high, and this is
especially so with how we choose to live in our environments. 

Course Information from the University Catalog