The Emergence of the Land Ethic: Aldo Leopold’s Idea of Ultimate Reality and Meaning
Author(s)
Boulting, Noel
Abstract
In the development of his land ethic, Leopold passed through three intellectual stages once his narrower utilitarian concerns were superseded. His final position can only be understood not literally as a passage from ecological holism, through moral extensionism to biotic communitarianism but rather, as a form of Peircian reasoning where these three positions can be interpreted in terms of Peirce’s three categories to be used as fibers in forming a cable of argument to overcome the weaknesses of each.
