Wilderness, Morality, and Value

Duclos argues that the technological and ethical reality of the Anthropocene warrants a fundamental reassessment of the value of wilderness.

After exposing the moral ambiguity of wilderness preservation, he explores the value of wilderness itself by engaging with anthropocentricism and nonanthropocentrism; sentientism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism; and instrumental value and intrinsic value.

Duclos argues that the value of wilderness is a narrow form of anthropocentric intrinsic value, one with a religio-spiritual dimension.

By integrating scholarship from bioethics on the norms of engineering human nature with debates in environmental ethics concerning the prospect of engineering non-human nature, sets the stage for wilderness ethics—or wilderness faith—in the Anthropocene.