TOWARDS A SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENTALISM: LOVE OF PLACE AS AN ECOLOGICAL VIRTUE

Faced with ecological challenges and escalating messaging, some of those seeking to engage with environmentalism experience anxiety and hopelessness. Others experience apathy, sensing that “environmentalism” is not for them. The nascent environmental virtue ethics (EVE) field poses compelling responses to these challenges, offering practical and accessible approaches to stewardship. Accordingly, academic philosophy is not the only place one finds virtue language. Many prominent ecological authors who emphasize place, like Wendell Berry, implicitly draw on virtue ethics in their work. Love, in the sense of affection, seems to be a common thread throughout these accounts, though traditional virtue ethics centers on agapeic love. I bring the two types of love together, to develop an account of "love of place" as a virtue to bridge the gap between environmental virtue ethics and place. Leaning into EVE’s advantage as a framework for ordinary people, I advocate for a local, personal, and agential environmentalism. Such an environmentalism seeks to be “sustainable” in both the ecological and humane sense, supporting an ethical framework that bolsters against anxiety, apathy, and hopelessness as much as it helps us care for our places.