In a careful attempt to marry environmental ethics and virtue ethics, Van Wensveen argues that there already exists a flourishing “virtue language” among environmental writers and activists. The author attempts to describe this discourse and clarify its logic of justification. Particularly interesting is the way such an ecological virtue ethics (EVE) both builds on and challenges traditional notions of virtue. This chapter focuses on the virtue ethic of Murray Bookchin, known as social ecology, a unique path in environmental philosophy which is an alternative to biocentrism and anthropocentrism. The explanation of Bookchin’s ethic centers around the author’s examination of The Ecology of Freedom, considered Bookchin’s seminal piece on environmental philosophy. In the larger picture, Van Wensveen insists that any viable ecological virtue ethics must be non-anthropocentric: flourishing, human and non-human, must both be taken into account in our actions. Indeed, these cannot be separated, since flourishing ecosystems provide the physical, intellectual and spiritual resources for true human flourishing.
