Nature Ethics: An Ecofeminist Perspective

[This is a] comprehensive and fair-minded account of the contrasting positions, particularly with respect to animals, between ecofeminist nature ethics and the celebrated holistic views of Theodore Roosevelt, Aldo Leopold, Holmes Rolston III, and Warwick Fox. Anyone interested in women’s studies, animal welfare, hunting, vegetarianism, or environmental ethics will find this impressive book helpful and challenging. — Peter Wenz

Nature Ethics is a major contribution to ecofeminist philosophy, animal liberation, and environmental ethics. Marti Kheel provides an invaluable critique of the ecological position that accepts violence toward individual beings while professing love and respect for the larger natural world. — Carol J. Adams, author of The Sexual Politics of Meat

Kheel’s book is a ground-breaking contribution to the literature and a must-read for anyone concerned with the links between environmental ethics, animal liberation and feminist critique of male cultural bias. — Rosemary Radford Ruether, Claremont School of Theology

A major figure in ecofeminism, Kheel”s original thinking about nature ethics culminates in this sweeping volume. She offers vital insights into the destructive consequences of a detached masculine self-identity, and a path toward the development of a genuinely inclusive nature ethic that respects all living beings. — Greta Gaard, University of Wisconsin

This precise focus and the rigorous way in which she challenges ecophilosophies by scrutinising their attitudes towards individual animals brings the author’s inherent logic out into the open by applying it to individual action. Thus she is able to confront holist philosophers with an ethics of nature from an ecofeminist perspective. I have high regard for the transparency and the truly dialogical spirit in which Kheel carefully, and in a very accommodating way, puts forward her criticism and invites the reader to follow her line of argument, with its clear structure and precise naming of her standpoint and assumptions. Her challenging core thesis that the treatment of individual animals should be the benchmark for any nature ethic and her revelation of the underlying masculinist identity that permeates current concepts make the book a gainful read for feminist scholars, environmental philosophers at the graduate level, as well as activists interested in better understanding the traditions they bring forward. Published On: 2011-06-23