Sustainability Ethics and Sustainability Research

The book identifies the specific ethical aspects of sustainability and develops ethical tools to analyze them. It also provides a methodological framework to integrate ethical and scientific analyses of sustainability issues, and explores the notion of a new type of self-reflective inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability research. With this, the book aims to strengthen the overall ability of academics to contribute to the analysis and solution of sustainability issues in an inclusive and integrated way.

1. Introduction

PART I: Sustainability and Ethics

2. The Meaning of Sustainability

3. The Inherent Ethical Dimension of Sustainability – Toward a Relational Ethical Perspective

4. Limits and Potential of Traditional Moral Philosophy and Current Ethics – Some Arguments For the Need For a New Type of Sustainability Ethics

4.1 The Limits of Utilitarianism and Deontology

4.2 Environmental Ethics and Sustainability Ethics

4.3 Virtue Ethics and Ethics of Care: The Ethical Relevance of Relationships

4.4 The Ethical Relevance of Social Structures and Institutions

5. The Challenges of Sustainability Ethics

PART II: Meta-structures and Sustainability

6. Sustainability, Institutions, and Patterns of Thought and Action

7. Meta-structures

7.1 Science As a Meta-structure

7.2 Technology As a Meta-structure

7.3 The Economy As a Meta-structure

7.4 Interrelations Among Meta-structures

8. The Impact of the Web of Meta-structures on the Sustainability Relations

PART III: Toward a New Sustainability Ethics

9. The Relational Dimension of Sustainability Ethics and the Role of Individual Morality

9.1 Ethics of the Human–Nature Relationship

9.2 Ethical Specifics of the Relationship With Future Generations

9.3 Sustainability and the Ethics of the Relationship Between Contemporaries

9.4 An Integrated Ethical Approach to All Sustainability Relations: The Sustainable Person

10. The Structural Dimension of Sustainability Ethics

10.1 An Ethical Critique of the Existing Web of Meta-structures

10.1.1 The Reduction of the Human–Nature Relation

10.1.2 The Reduction of the Relationship with Future Generations

10.1.3 The Reduction of the Relationship Between Contemporaries

10.1.4 Conclusion

10.2 Guidelines for a Redesign of the Meta-structures

10.3 Examples of Internal Structural Change: Biomimicry, Industrial Ecology, and Fair Trade

10.4 Excursus: Rationality, Human Self-identity, and Meta-structures

PART IV: Toward an Encompassing Sustainability Research

11. The Need For a New Type of Sustainability Research

12. Inter- and Transdisciplinarity

12.1 Interdisciplinary Integration of Sciences and Sustainability Ethics

12.2 Transdisciplinary Integration of Research Into the Sustainability Relations

13. Capabilities and Personal Identity of the Researcher

14. The Role of Philosophy for Sustainability Research

15. Conclusion