Aristotelian Virtue Education and Education for Sustainable Development

This chapter considers the merits of integrating virtues education into education for sustainable development (ESD). ESD has aimed for the moral transformation of learners since its inception, aiming to shape learner values, attitudes, and behaviors. Understanding sustainability virtue and virtue development along Aristotelian lines, this chapter argues that reconceptualizing ESD’s transformative aims in terms of virtues education has several merits: It highlights the significance of human flourishing as the ultimate goal of sustainability; highlights the moral dimension of sustainable development; highlights the importance of experiencing the best things in life and of practicing sustainability virtue in a virtue-loving social environment; and helps to organize ESD’s transformative ambitions and structure our understanding of how they are to be achieved. The chapter also addresses two potential criticisms of the virtues approach, including that virtues concern individual behavior rather than coordinated collective action, and that Aristotelian virtue thinking is essentializing and parochial.

The Roles of Creativity and Open-Mindedness in Implementing Sustainable Solutions

Environmental virtue ethicists recognize the importance of the moral virtues for addressing environmental problems. In addition, I argue that there are at least two important intellectual virtues required in the process of developing and implementing environmentally sustainable systems of living: creativity and open-mindedness. A high degree of creativity is needed in the search for environmentally sustainable solutions, whether that be in developing new technologies, in imagining more efficient economic systems, or in reconsidering our current ways of living. But creativity on its own is not sufficient for implementing these solutions; open-mindedness is also essential. Open-mindedness allows us to appreciate and understand the sustainable solutions developed by others and to consider how those approaches might be implemented in our own context. These two intellectual virtues work in tandem to allow both a wide-ranging search for new ideas and the change in ways of thinking needed to make them a reality.

Respect for Nature

This essay considers the meaning of the virtue of respect for nature. Moving past the view that respect for nature is a “new” idea, it discusses indigenous conceptions of respect as an active virtue, in contrast with the view that respect for nature is primarily an attitude. The links between sovereignty and ethical autonomy are presented before turning to look at respect for nature in the moral system of the Iñupiaq communities of Alaska. The author also considers a recent example of indigenous youth activism regarding climate change, which highlights the importance of respect for subsistence practices and cultural survival.

Jain Dharma as a Virtue Ethics for Sustainability

Dharma, as a virtue ethics for sustainability, has served as a role model for Jains for several millennia. In this chapter, I share examples from key Jain texts and contexts. Jains continue to derive their inspiration from Mahavira (literally, the great hero, who was the contemporary of the Buddha) and their other great teachers whom they see as role models practicing dharma to attain moksha (i.e., liberation). In their teachings, they urge their followers to practice nonviolence and renunciation. They demonstrate that penance based on such a virtue ethics leads to moksha, the ultimate goal, according to Jain philosophy. Evidently, in Jain contexts, religion, ethics, and environmentalism are intertwined with each other instead of distinctly evolved theories. My observations of the Jains support Jain texts holding that human behavior is irrevocably interwoven with environmental conditions; the deterioration of one implies and involves the other.

Treading Lightly

This chapter casts conscientiousness as a virtue that is concerned with monitoring one’s impacts upon the world, from attending to and seeking to minimize the embedded carbon or virtual water in consumption activities to the awareness of and concern for one’s relationships with others that share our physical environment. In this respect, to be conscientious is to seek to minimize negative impacts on the environment but also to work positively to ensure that environmental quality is maintained and accessible, and to practice a form of citizenship in working with others to do the same. It is a virtue that, as Aldo Leopold noticed, is threatened by technologies and physical distance that separate modern humans from the land and its productive capacities, but may be enhanced by disclosure and transparency efforts that are assisted by information technology, which can increase cognitive awareness of our dependence and impacts upon our environment.

The Environmental Psychology of Pro-Sustainability Virtues

This chapter analyzes variables that may enhance or constrain the development of pro-sustainability virtues, and it discusses how certain changes in environmental conditions may lead virtuous people to produce either pro-sustainable or anti-sustainable behaviors. In our analysis, virtues are conceived as traits serving adaptive purposes and subject to environmental influences, which can moderate the virtues–sustainable behavior relationship. We introduce a framework to investigate environment–behavior interactions that include pro-sustainability virtues. This framework is based on the idea that “positive environments,” settings that are able to meet human needs, simultaneously incite the development of virtuous tendencies and behaviors aimed at protecting the socio-physical environment.

Virtue and Sustainable Behavior

A psychological perspective on virtue and sustainability stresses the individual’s perceptions, values, and motivations. Beginning with an examination of the way in which sustainability links environmental and social well-being, this chapter reviews research showing that most people do perceive sustainability to be virtuous, and therefore that sustainable behavior can be used as a way to demonstrate one’s own virtuous character. It describes some of the psychological factors that contribute to or impede that perception, including values, identity, social norms, and competing self-interest. The implications of taking an ethical perspective on motivating behavior are also considered, and the possibility that experiences in nature may even promote more virtuous behavior is explored. The chapter closes with a cautionary note about the limits of virtue in promoting behavior.

Cooperativeness as a Virtue of Sustainability

Cooperativeness, although mentioned by environmental philosophers, has not received adequate attention from scholars of environmental virtue. I seek to remedy this neglect by exploring the virtue’s relationship to both social and environmental sustainability. Cooperativeness must first be differentiated from cooperation, defined, and refined. Once this is accomplished, I use specific cases to demonstrate cooperativeness in action: ecological restoration (an example of environmental sustainability) and cooperative business (an example of social sustainability). Although this chapter draws on resources from Christian ethics, multiple religious and cultural perspectives support cooperativeness in one form or another; this chapter should prove interesting and informative to Christians and non-Christians alike.

The Emotional Heart of Environmental Virtues

Arguments for environmental virtues ought to include more attention to the emotional characteristics and skills that help constitute such virtues. By now a number of virtues have been suggested as necessary or useful for living sustainably. While these virtues are often persuasively justified and their cognitive and behavioral qualities carefully delineated, their emotional qualities are seldom investigated in any depth. Yet environmental virtues, like all virtues, depend on particular ways of emotionally engaging with oneself and the world, ways of engaging that in turn require advanced skills in working with emotions. Accordingly, arguments for environmental virtues will be more useful if they can help people understand the emotional aspects involved in developing and sustaining the virtues being advocated.

Patience and Sustainability

In this essay I first present a general account of the virtue of patience, drawing upon recent work by Matthew Pianalto and Nic Bommarito. I then illustrate how patience, so understood, will be a crucial virtue in achieving sustainability across a variety of contexts—from efforts in ecological restoration, to political and social action, to responding appropriately to setbacks, errors, and suffering more generally. I argue that a focus on patience in such contexts can bring to the fore often-overlooked aspects of the virtue, including its role (1) in pursuing goals where we ourselves will never see the full impacts and outcomes of our actions, and (2) in maintaining our goals and actions despite a lack of clear results and feedback. To pursue the long-term goals of sustainability effectively, often without clear, short-term, or immediate feedback will constitute a significant challenge; patience and perspective will be essential.