Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics

I wish to thank the faculty and administration of Brooklyn College and the City University of New York for permitting me to take a sabbatical leave of absence during the spring semester of 1982. This gave me the opportunity to bring to completion a first version of the book, which I had been working on since 1977.

To Tom Regan my thanks are also due. When he was Visiting Distinguished Professor at Brooklyn College in the Fall of 1982, he kindly read the last chapter of the book and made extensive comments on it. I benefited greatly from this, as well as from discussions with him concerning various matters related to other parts of the book.

The entire manuscript has been read and critically evaluated by Professors Michael Ruse, Mary Anne Warren, and C. G. Beer. Their detailed criticisms and suggestions were very helpful to me, and the book was much improved as a result. I am of course fully responsible for whatever errors and confusions remain.

I am grateful to Professor Eugene C. Hargrove, Editor-inChief of Environmental Ethics, for permission to use material from two of my articles: “The Ethics of Respect for Nature,” vol. 3, no. 3, Fall 1981, pp. 197–218; and “Are Humans Superior to Animals and Plants?” vol. 6, no. 2, Summer 1984, pp. 149–160.

Finally, I would especially like to thank the Editor-inChief of Princeton University Press, Sanford G. Thatcher, for his careful, patient, and expert guidance in directing the manuscript through all its successive stages of development and revision.

Brooklyn College,
City University of New York
September 1985

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