Abstract

One might expect the field of environmental ethics, which has developed over the past forty years, to have much to say to landscape architects, environmental planners and all those, such as foresters, engineers, land managers, developers, etc., whose professional practice has often very direct impacts upon land and environment. As will be shown, an argument over anthropocentric versus non-anthropocentric theories of value and a fixation upon non-humanized environments (supposed wildernesses) has, until recently, pushed consideration of landscapes and the built environment to the periphery of ethicists’ concerns. However, as the latter part of the chapter will show, new lines of thought from pragmatism, continental philosophy and virtue ethics are taking the subject in promising new directions, as ethicists engage with the humanized places where we work and dwell.