In this paper, I set out to refute several charges that have recently been raised against Plato’s attitude toward the environment and to present him under a new light of relevance for the contemporary environmental debate. For this purpose, I assess the meaning of Plato’s metaphysical dualism, his notion of nature and teleology, and the kind of value that he attributes to animals, plants, and the land in general. I thus show how Plato’s organicist view of the universe endows it with an intrinsic value that is over and above each of its parts, including humans, and provides an argument for the preservation of species of nonhuman animals, which in many relevant ways are not ranked below the human species. In addition, I show how Plato’s dialogues provide good evidence for human concern about the environment and how such a concern is promoted rather than hindered by his nonanthropocentric notion of teleology.

I propose that the appropriate appreciation of nature must include the moral capacity for acknowledging the reality of nature apart from humans and the sensitivity for listening to its own story. I argue that appreciating nature exclusively as design is inappropriate to the extent that we impose upon nature a preconceived artistic standard as well as appreciation based upon historical/cultural/literary associationsinsofar as we treat nature as a background of our own story. In contrast, aesthetic appreciation informed by our attempt to make sense of nature, such as science, mythology, and folklore, is appropriate because it guides our experience toward understanding nature’s own story embodied in its sensuous surface.

Although many small businesses and a great number of large enterprises have environmental policies, the contents of such policies vary widely according to their emphases either on technical rationality and technocentrism/technocracy or on ecological rationality and ecocentrism/ecocracy. I present them in four categories: with regard to strong anthropocentrism, (1) the neo-technocratic enterprise and (2) the techno-environmentalist enterprise; and with regard to weak anthropocentrism, (3) the pseudo-environmentalist enterprise and (4) the quasi-environmentalist enterprise. Such a typology can be useful for business managers to write and/or review their environmental policies. However, it only reflects the “ideal values” of the enterprise, not the corporate story with regard to environmental issues.

It is plausible to hold that ethical obligations are concerned with bringing about the existence of things that have value, where something is of value if and only if it is in the interest of some entity. Here the notion of an interest may be defined as whatever contributes to the well-being of a morally significant entity. I argue that interests are limited to individuals with the capacity for affective response. After briefly distinguishing between various different types of value, I defend this emotocentric theory of interests against objections raised by Paul Taylor and Gary Varner, both of whom grant interests to a larger class of entities. I argue that there are serious problems with attempts to associate interests with mere goaldirectedness or with the mere possession of biological functions.

Richard Rorty’s pragmatic abandonment of epistemological representationalism has important implications for environmental ethics, particularly postmodern environmental ethics. I discuss Rorty’s position and show that Mark Sagoff’s version of it allows for both rational negotiation of public environmental issues and for the creation of solidarity among people regarding the environment. I then discuss Eugene Hargrove’s view that representation, rather than being implicated in the destruction of nature, is a key element in preserving (the intrinsic value of) nature. I conclude that Hargrove’s position is compatible with Rorty’s and Sagoff’s positions and I argue that aesthetic representation may still be needed in a postmodern world that has abandoned epistemological representationalism.