J Baird Callicott
Biographic Data
| ID | 467428 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J Baird Callicott |
| GIVEN NAMES | J Baird |
| FAMILY NAME | Callicott |
| SIGNATURE | CALLICOTT J B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of North Texas |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 60 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 131 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 56 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Roberta L. Millstein. The Land Is Our Community: Aldo Leopold’s Environmental Ethic for the New Millennium
“Odyssey” complements “A Biotic View of Land” to bolster the case for a more prominent place for Leopold
Three project ideas to fill research gaps in Aldo-Leopold scholarship
Reply to Merchant
Lisa H. Sideris, Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World
Lisa H. Sideris, Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017), xi + 300 pp., $34.95 (pbk), ISBN: 9780520294998
Japanese Environmental Philosophy
Comparative environmental philosophy is valuable in many ways. Perhaps it is most valuable because it reveals some of the foundational assumptions that run so deep in the poles of comparison that they might otherwise have gone unnoticed. These revelations may invite us to challenge those assumptions that have led to the kind of thinking responsible for much of the environmental degradation that we see today. Japanese Environmental Philosophy gath…
Kūkai and Dōgen as Exemplars of Ecological Engagement
The current environmental crisis is largely due to a particular conception of the human relationship to nature. Common in anthropocentric traditions of Western thought, this view depicts human beings as separate from, and superior to, all other beings in the natural world. Traditional East Asian understandings of this relationship are quite different and remarkably unanthropocentric, especially as exemplified in the ideas of Chinese Daoism and Ja…
Notes on ‘Self-Realization: An Ecological Approach to Being in the World’
How to conceive and experience one’s self is the linchpin for achieving an efficacious environmental philosophy. Naess was among the first to put the question of self at the center of environmental philosophy and laid cautious claim to ‘introduce ... a concept of ecological self’ for the first time. Naess’ ‘ecological self’ is vitiated by at least four flaws: (i) an eclectic and mutually inconsistent set of informative sources (Freud, Fromm, Will…
Committing to ecological restoration
Efforts around the globe need legal and policy clarification
Science as Myth (Whether Sacred or Not), Science as Prism
Linking Ecology and Ethics for a Changing World: Values, Philosophy, and Action
Environmental Philosophy in Asian Traditions of Thought
Reply to Thomas Greaves
I am delighted that Thomas Greaves has found my provocation piece, "A NeoPresocratic Manifesto," so provocative that
Environmental philosophy in Asian traditions of thought
Humor and Politics through the Animal in Cervantes and Leopold
Part of Thomas Hobbes's argument for the need for a social contract, enforced by a sovereign power, depends on a mistaken notion about the human animal. Hobbes thought that the original “natural” state of humanity was a purely animal existence. People once lived like wolves among one another—homo lupus homini—until the accession of a sovereign who then imposed a “civilizing” order.1 Hobbes thus proffers a fundamental misconception about the natur…
A NeoPresocratic Manifesto
Ancient Greek philosophy begins with natural philosophy (the Milesians, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras), followed after about a century by a focus on moral philosophy (Socrates and the sophists). The pattern is repeated in the Modern period: first natural philosophy re-emerged after the Dark and Middle Ages (Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Newton) followed by a correlative revolution in moral philosophy (Hobbes, Hume, Kant). In particular, mo…
The Worldview Concept and Aldo Leopold’s Project of ‘World View’ Remediation
A Sand County Almanac has a single overarching theme and purpose—worldview remediation: to replace the biblical with an evolutionary-ecological worldview. The epistemological foundations of the worldview concept were established by Kant, who rendered ‘reality’ phenomenal and potentially plural. No worldview is true, but competing worldviews may be adjudicated by the application of three criteria of tenability: (1) self-consistency; (2) consistenc…
The Other in A Sand County Almanac: Aldo Leopold’s Animals and His Wild-Animal Ethic
Much philosophical attention has been devoted to “The Land Ethic,” especially by Anglo-American philosophers, but little has been paid to A Sand County Almanac as a whole. Read through the lens of continental philosophy, A Sand County Almanac promulgates an evolutionary-ecological world view and effects a personal self- and a species-specific Self-transformation in its audience. It’s author, Aldo Leopold, realizes these aims through descriptive r…
Myth and environmental philosophy
New New (Buddhist?) Ecology
Simultaneous with the emergence of an ‘environmental crisis’ and attendant widespread environmental consciousness and conscience in the1960s, Eugene Odum, then dean of the field, announced the advent of the ‘New Ecology’. Odum’s new ecology was based on the ecosystem concept as its organizing idea and reiterated the classic notion of nature, unperturbed by human disturbance, as in a steady state of dynamic equilibrium. This New Ecology is now old…
Cuál Wilderness en los Ecosistemas de Frontera
Para los puritanos del siglo XVII, la costa este de América del Norte, las áreas silvestres o wilderness eran abominables y lacerantes. En el siglo XVIII, el predicador y teólogo puritano Jonathan Edwards inició el proceso de transformación de las áreas silvestres estadounidenses en un recurso estético y espiritual, un proceso que completó en el siglo XIX Ralph Waldo Emerson. Henry David Thoreau fue el primer estadounidense en recomendar la prese…
What “Wilderness” in Frontier Ecosystems
Wilderness, forseventeenth-century Puritan colonists irtAmerica, washideous and howling. In the eighteenth century, Puritan preacher and theologian, Jonathan Edwards, began the process of transforming theAmerican wilderness into anaesthetic and spiritual resource, a process completed in thenineteenth century by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Henry David. Thoreau was thefirst American to recommend wilderness preservation for purposes of transcendental recre…
The Future of Environmental Philosophy
Robert Frodeman, Dale Jamieson, J. Baird Callicott, Stephen M. Gardiner, Lori Gruen, Dale Jamieson, Irene J. Klaver, Eugene Hargrove, Ben A. Minteer, Bryan Norton, Clare Palmer, Holmes Rolston, III, Ricardo Rozzi, James P. Sterba, William M. Throop, Victoria Davion, Commentary on the Future of Environmental Philosophy, Ethics and the Environment, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Fall, 2007), pp. 117-150
Models of natural and human dynamics in forest landscapes: Cross-site and cross-cultural synthesis
Biocomplexity in the Big Thicket
Introduction: Overview of the Big Thicket and BiocomplexityThe Big Thicket is an ill-defined region of southeast Texas on the coastal plain of theGulf of Mexico between the Trinity and Sabine rivers, not far from Houston.Because the biological-diversity index of the area is one of the highest in NorthAmerica, the Big Thicket National Preserve (BTNP)—an archipelago of isolatedconservation ‘units’ administered by the US National Park Service—was es…
Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair
Clothed-in-Fur and Other Tales: An Introduction to an Ojibwa World View
Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics
The central and most recalcitrant problem for environmental ethics is the problem of constructing an adequate theory of intrinsic value for nonhuman natural entities and for nature as a whole. In part one, I retrospectively survey the problem, review certain classical approaches to it, and recommend one as an adequate, albeit only partial, solution. In part two, I show that the classical theory of inherent value for nonhuman entities and nature a…
Traditional American Indian and Western European Attitudes toward Nature: An Overview
A NeoPresocratic Manifesto
Ancient Greek philosophy begins with natural philosophy (the Milesians, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras), followed after about a century by a focus on moral philosophy (Socrates and the sophists). The pattern is repeated in the Modern period: first natural philosophy re-emerged after the Dark and Middle Ages (Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Newton) followed by a correlative revolution in moral philosophy (Hobbes, Hume, Kant). In particular, mo…
What “Wilderness” in Frontier Ecosystems
Wilderness, forseventeenth-century Puritan colonists irtAmerica, washideous and howling. In the eighteenth century, Puritan preacher and theologian, Jonathan Edwards, began the process of transforming theAmerican wilderness into anaesthetic and spiritual resource, a process completed in thenineteenth century by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Henry David. Thoreau was thefirst American to recommend wilderness preservation for purposes of transcendental recre…
Rolston on Intrinsic Value: A Deconstruction
Models of natural and human dynamics in forest landscapes: Cross-site and cross-cultural synthesis
Wetland gloom and wetland glory
Mountains were once no less feared and loathed than wetlands. Mountains, however, were aesthetically rehabilitated (in part by modern landscape painting), but wetlands remain aesthetically reviled. The three giants of American environmental philosophy--Thoreau, Muir, and Leopold--all expressed aesthetic appreciation of wetlands. For Thoreau and Muir--both of whom were a bit misanthropic and contrarian--the beauty of wetlands was largely a matter …
Conceptual Resources for Environmental Ethics in Asian Traditions of Thought: A Propaedeutic
J. Baird Callicott, Conceptual Resources for Environmental Ethics in Asian Traditions of Thought: A Propaedeutic, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 37, No. 2, Environmental Ethics (Apr., 1987), pp. 115-130
The Metaphysical Implications of Ecology
The Case against Moral Pluralism
Despite Christopher Stone’s recent argument on behalf of moral pluralism, the principal architects of environmental ethics remain committed to moral monism. Moral pluralism fails to specify what to do when two or more of its theories indicate inconsistent practical imperatives. More deeply, ethical theories are embedded in moral philosophies and moral pluralism requires us to shift between mutually inconsistent metaphysics of morals, most of whic…
Hume’s Is/Ought Dichtomy and the Relation of Ecology to Leopold’s Land Ethic
This chapter reviews David Hume’s is/ought-dichotomy in its historical theoretical context. It aims to locate both the is/ought dichotomy and the naturalistic fallacy in their respective historical contexts. The chapter argues that the much more general problem of the transition from is to ought in practical moral reasoning actually has an easy solution within the ethical system of Hume, the first to pose the problem. As Anthony Flew has pointed …
Elements of an Environmental Ethic: Moral Considerability and the Biotic Community
Lisa H. Sideris, Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World
Lisa H. Sideris, Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017), xi + 300 pp., $34.95 (pbk), ISBN: 9780520294998
Science as Myth (Whether Sacred or Not), Science as Prism
Reply to Thomas Greaves
I am delighted that Thomas Greaves has found my provocation piece, "A NeoPresocratic Manifesto," so provocative that
New New (Buddhist?) Ecology
Simultaneous with the emergence of an ‘environmental crisis’ and attendant widespread environmental consciousness and conscience in the1960s, Eugene Odum, then dean of the field, announced the advent of the ‘New Ecology’. Odum’s new ecology was based on the ecosystem concept as its organizing idea and reiterated the classic notion of nature, unperturbed by human disturbance, as in a steady state of dynamic equilibrium. This New Ecology is now old…
Turning the Whole Soul: The Educational Dialectic of a Sand County Almanac
A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold is arguably the most influential text for the contemporary environmental movement. It is designed to entice readers to seek direct and sustained experience of nature and to structure that experience through the lens of ecology and evolutionary biology. Part I implicitly conveys the evolutionary-ecological worldview through descriptive prose; in Part II it is expressed in more abstract, conceptual terms; Part …
The Indigenous World or Many Indigenous Worlds
Elements of an Environmental Ethic: Moral Considerability and the Biotic Community
Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair
Hume’s Is/Ought Dichtomy and the Relation of Ecology to Leopold’s Land Ethic
This chapter reviews David Hume’s is/ought-dichotomy in its historical theoretical context. It aims to locate both the is/ought dichotomy and the naturalistic fallacy in their respective historical contexts. The chapter argues that the much more general problem of the transition from is to ought in practical moral reasoning actually has an easy solution within the ethical system of Hume, the first to pose the problem. As Anthony Flew has pointed …
Traditional American Indian and Western European Attitudes toward Nature: An Overview
Clothed-in-Fur and Other Tales: An Introduction to an Ojibwa World View
Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics
The central and most recalcitrant problem for environmental ethics is the problem of constructing an adequate theory of intrinsic value for nonhuman natural entities and for nature as a whole. In part one, I retrospectively survey the problem, review certain classical approaches to it, and recommend one as an adequate, albeit only partial, solution. In part two, I show that the classical theory of inherent value for nonhuman entities and nature a…
The Case for Animal Rights
The Metaphysical Implications of Ecology
Companion to A Sand County Almanac: Interpretive and Critical Essays
Conceptual Resources for Environmental Ethics in Asian Traditions of Thought: A Propaedeutic
J. Baird Callicott, Conceptual Resources for Environmental Ethics in Asian Traditions of Thought: A Propaedeutic, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 37, No. 2, Environmental Ethics (Apr., 1987), pp. 115-130
Companion to a Sand County Almanac. Interpretive and Critical Essays
The first sustained study of Leopold's seminal book as well as a work of art, philosophy, and social commentary.
Ah, Wilderness
Eugene C. Hargrove: Foundations of Environmental Ethics
The Case against Moral Pluralism
Despite Christopher Stone’s recent argument on behalf of moral pluralism, the principal architects of environmental ethics remain committed to moral monism. Moral pluralism fails to specify what to do when two or more of its theories indicate inconsistent practical imperatives. More deeply, ethical theories are embedded in moral philosophies and moral pluralism requires us to shift between mutually inconsistent metaphysics of morals, most of whic…
Leopold’s Means and Ends in Wild Life Management
Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought: Essays in Environmental Philosophy
In Defense of the Land Ethic
La Nature est morte, vive la nature
In a notorious passage of The Gay Science, Friedrich Nietzsche portrays a madman carrying a lantern in broad daylight and searching for God. Nietzsche's mirthless character then declares that is dead and says that we have murdered Him. Three years ago, Bill McKibben, with dramatic flourish of a contemporary Nietzsche, proclaimed the end of His book by that title was serialized in New Yorker magazine and went on to become a best seller.[1] Once fl…
Rolston on Intrinsic Value: A Deconstruction
The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold
Journal Article The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold Get access The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold. Edited by Flader Susan L. Callicott J. Baird. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991. xv + 384 pp. Illustrations, chart, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $24.95.) John Daniel John Daniel Portland, Oregon Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Western…
On Warren and Cheney’s Critique of Callicott’s Ecological Metaphysics
Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology
Introduction to the Fourth Edition, Michael E. Zimmerman. I. ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS. Introduction, J. Baird Callicott. Is There a Need for a New, an Environmental, Ethic? Richard Sylvan (Routley). All Animals Are Equal, Peter Singer. Animal Rights, Human Wrongs, Tom Regan. On Being Morally Considerable, Kenneth E. Goodpaster. The Ethics of Respect for Nature, Paul W. Taylor. Challenges in Environmental Ethics, Holmes Rolston III. The Land Ethic, Al…
Earth's Insights: A Multicultural Survey of Ecological Ethics from the Mediterranean Basin to the Australian Outback
The environmental crisis is global in scope, yet contemporary environmental ethics is centered predominantly in Western philosophy and religion. Earth's Insights widens the scope of environmental ethics to include the ecological teachings embedded in non-Western worldviews. J. Baird Callicott ranges broadly, exploring the sacred texts of Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Zen Buddhism, as well as the oral traditions of Polynesia,…
Environmental Wellness
Calicott uses the recent history of his home, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, to illustrate what he argues is an important distinction between the traditional model of health and a more involved understanding of wellness. He argues that health is usually defined as the absence of disease, while wellness encompasses a proactive stance in which human health is understood as one facet of ecosystemic health. The wellness movement makes the connection betwe…
Do Deconstructive Ecology and Sociobiology Undermine Leopold’s Land Ethic
Philosophy (43 works) · Environmental ethics (34 works) · Epistemology (33 works) · Biology (21 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Ecology (19 works) · Contemporary philosophy (18 works) · Environmental Philosophy and Ethics (18 works) · General interest (18 works) · Applied philosophy (17 works)