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Piers Stephens

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PROFESSOR
ETHICS & THE ENVIRONMENT EDITOR -- environmental philosophy, history of ideas, moral and political philosophy

Piers H.G. Stephens (PhD University of Manchester) is an environmental philosopher with a background in the history of ideas in moral and political philosophy as well as in literature. He serves as the editor of Ethics and the Environment as well as philosophy reviews editor of the international interdisciplinary academic journal Environmental Values, and is a member of the International Society for Environmental Ethics, the American Philosophical Association, the Society for Advancement of American Philosophy, and the William James Society. His primary research interests center upon the environmental turn in political and moral philosophy but extend into the philosophical mainstream, particularly in relation to the history of ideas with special concern for ideas of freedom, nature and the good in the liberal and pragmatist traditions.

Research Areas:
Research Interests:
  • Environmental Philosophy
  • Moral Philosophy
  • Political Philosophy
Selected Publications:

"Green Liberalism", in the Handbook of Environmental Political Theory in the Anthropocene, Eds. Amanda Machin, Luke Velderman & Marcel Wissenburg, Edward Elgar, forthcoming 2025.

"'We Need to Act as a Sort of Translator': Environmental Philosophy, Politics of Redistribution and the Ecological Crisis", (interview by co-author Magdalena Holy-Luczaj), Hybris, 56, No. 1, (2022)

"Pragmatism, Pluralism, Empiricism and Relational Values", Environmental Values, 30, No.6, (2021).

"James, British Empiricism, and the Legacy of Utilitarianism", in The Jamesian Mind, Ed. Sarin Marchetti, (New York: Routledge, 2021).

"Nature, Liberty and Ontology: Why Nature Experience Still Exists and Matters in the Anthropocene", in Liberty and the Ecological Crisis: Freedom on a Finite Planet, Eds. Christopher J. Orr, Kaitlin Kish & Bruce Jennings, (New York: Routledge, 2019).

"Norton vs Callicott on Interpreting Aldo Leopold: A Jamesian View", in A Sustainable Philosophy: The Work of Bryan Norton, Eds. Ben A. Minteer & Sahotra Sarkar, (New York: Springer, 2018).

"Foreword", in first English translation of Bernard Charbonneau, Le Feu Vert (The Green Light): A Self-Critique of the Ecological Movement, translated by Christian Roy, (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018).

"The Tragedy of the Uncommon: Property, Possession and Belonging in Community Gardens’, in The Greening of Everyday Life: Challenging Practices, Imagining Possibilities, Eds. John M. Meyer and Jens Kersten, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

"Comments on Brook Muller’s 'The Machine is a Watershed for Living In (Reconstituting Architectural Horizons)'", The Pluralist, 11, No. 1, (2016). 

“Environmental Political Theory and the Liberal Tradition” in The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory, Eds. John M. Meyer and Cheryl Hall, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

"On the Nature of 'Nature': The Real Meanings and Significance of John Stuart Mill’s Misunderstood Essay", Environmental Ethics, 37. No. 3, (2015). 

"John Stuart Mill and the Greening of the Liberal Heritage", in Engaging Nature: Environmentalism and the Political Theory Canon, Eds. Peter Cannavo and Joseph Lane, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014).

"The Turn of the Skew: Pragmatism, Environmental Philosophy and the Ghost of William James", Contemporary Pragmatism, 9, No. 1, (2012); reprinted in Pragmatism and Environmentalism, Ed. Hugh P. McDonald, (New York, NY: Rodopi, 2012).

"Toward a Jamesian Environmental Philosophy", Environmental Ethics, 31, No. 3, (2009).

"Plumwood, Property, Selfhood and Sustainability", Ethics and the Environment, 14, No. 2, (2009).

"Sustainability, Democracy and Pragmatism: Bryan Norton's Philosophy of Ecosystem Management," Organization and Environment (2007).

Contemporary Environmental Politics: From Margins to Mainstream (edited with John Barry and Andrew Dobson) (2006).

Articles Featuring Piers Stephens

Associate Professor Elizabeth Brient presented the keynote lecture, “The Infinite Sphere as Think Tank: Suspension (of the finite in the infinite/ of the infinite in the finite) as Meditative Praxis” at the…

Richard Winfield’s latest book, Rethinking the Arts After Hegel: From Architecture to Motion Pictures, will be published by Palgrave Macmillan this November.  

Professor Yuri Balashov gave a talk on "Harnessing the Power of Domain Adaptation" at the Annual Conference of the American Translators…

Professor Yuri Balashov continues his work on his project on human and machine translation.

Distinguished Research Professor, Richard Winfield published his twenty-third single-authored book, In Defense of Reason after Hegel: Why…

Ethics & the Environment celebrates 25 years of editorship at the University of Georgia Department of Philosophy. This biannual peer-review journal of environmental philosophy was founded in 1995 by UGA professor and…

Events featuring Piers Stephens
Fine Arts Balcony Theater (Room 400)

 

This year’s UGA Ethics & Cinema event presents "I Am Greta: Environmental Ethics…

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