| Philosophers since Socrates have insisted that the unexamined life is not worth living, but only more recently have environmental philosophers insisted that life in an unexamined world is not worth living either. Examining his life, Socrates said, "I'm a lover of learning, and trees and country places won't teach me anything, whereas people in the city do" (Phaedrus 230d). Socrates loved the city, with its politics and culture; he lived and died defending, and criticizing, Athens. Socrates aspired to the excellence of a noble person, but he hardly knew he lived on a planet. Today we reside on a remarkable Earth; Homo sapiens is an Earthling; indeed, we discoverso Don Marietta argues in the pages that followthat we cannot know who we are without knowing where we are. We need an Earth ethics. |
| Aristotle placed humans, though they rise up from the humus, the earth, belonging by necessity in social communities, such as villages and towns: "Man is by nature a political animal" (Politics 1.2. 1253a). The human genus is animal, but the human differentia or essence is to build a polis, a town. The human habitat is town or city, which is another way of saying that human life is political and cultural. Humans are the creatures that nature did not specialize but rather equipped with marvelous faculties for Culture and craft. Humans rebuild their world through artifact and heritage, agriculture and culture, and political and economic, philosophical and religious, decisions. |
| Humans have minds coupled to hands; they think about and go to work on their world. They plan what they want; they build themselves a place to inhabit. Deliberately rebuilt environments replace spontaneous wild ones. This is true already in rural communities but becomes especially evident in towns. There must remain a biological understory for our towns as well as for our countrysides, just as the life of the mind requires ongoing biochemistry. But after that, we may think, the values of society are up to us. Our preferences are to be evaluated by culturing those native endowments we call reason and conscience. The town is our niche; we belong there, and no one can achieve full humanity without it. The values that humans cherish in towns cannot be modeled on |
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