Fittingness and Environmental Ethics: Philosophical, Theological and Applied Perspectives(Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies)

This volume focuses on ‘fittingness’ as an ethical-aesthetical idea, and in particular examines how the concept is beneficial for environmental ethics. It brings together an innovative set of contributions to argue that fittingness is a significant but under-investigated facet of human ethical deliberation with both ethical and aesthetic dimensions. In widely diverse matters – from architecture to table manners – individuals and communities make decisions based on ‘fittingness’, also expressed in related terms, such as appropriateness, prudence, temperance, and mutuality. In the realm of environmental ethics, fittingness denotes a relation between conscious embodied persons and their habitats and is of relevance to judgements about how humans shape, and take up with, the non-human environment, and hence to ethical decisions about the development and use of the environment and non-human creatures. As such, fittingness can be of great benefit in reframing human relationships to the non-human, stimulating a way of living in the world that is fitting to the preservation of its fruitfulness, goodness, beauty, and truth.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures List of Contribuotrs Acknowledgements Introduction Michael S. Northcott and Steven C. van den Heuvel Part I Metaphysics and Aesthetics 1 Fittingness and Other-Regarding Attitudes in Environmental Aesthetics Emily Brady 2 Commonage Consciousness and Fitting in with the Earth: John Moriarty and Deep Ecology Nora Ward 3 On the Ethics and Metaphysics of Fittingness, Affordances and Providence Michael Bauwens 4 Fittingness and Environmental Ethics: Perspectives from Chinese Religion and Philosophy JunSoo Park Part II Theological Perspectives on Fittingness 5 The Ontological Turn, Religious Tradition, and Human Cosmological Fittingness Michael S. Northcott 6 Fittingness and the Spiritual-Religious Nature of Environmentalism Johan de Tavernier 7 Fittingness as Attunement? Being Ecological with Timothy Morton and Hans Urs von Balthasar Yves de Maeseneer 8 Anselm on Fittingness: Various Concepts of Fittingness in the Cur Deus homo Rostislav Tkachenko Part III Practical Applications 9 Fittingness as a Dynamic of Social Interaction: Implications for Embedding Ecological Concerns in Community Life and Practice Jack Barentsen 10 When ‘Fitting in’ means to ‘Care’: Proposing a Form-of-Life for Environmental Care Emilio di Somma 11 Representation as Isolation: The Unfittingness of Waste Gregory Jensen 12 The Challenge and Promise of Queer Ecology for Understanding ‘Fittingness’: A Theological Engagement Steven C. van den Heuvel Index

About the Author :
Michael S. Northcott is Professor Emeritus of Ethics at the University of Edinburgh and Guest Professor at the Indonesian Consortium of Religious Studies at Universitas Gadjah Mada Graduate School in Yogyakarta (Indonesia). He is also Guest Professor of Systematic Theology at the Evangelische Theologische Faculteit, Leuven (Belgium). Steven C. van den Heuvel is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at the Evangelische Theologische Faculteit, Leuven (Belgium).