Ethics and Philosophy Books Authored or Edited by Robin Attfield
Robin is an emeritus professor of philosophy who has written and edited an array of works throughout his career. Get in touch today for more information about his ethics and philosophy books.
Latest book out October 2022: Applied Ethics an Introduction
"Comprehensive, systematic and clear, covering enormous territory, it will be highly successful for use in courses, as well as for general readers looking for a guide to applied ethics."
Roger Crisp, Professor of Moral Philosophy, Oxford University
Last year: Environmental Thought: a Short History
published in the USA May, UK in March 2021
We have just had a review of this by Dr Martin Hodson - see below
Environmental Thought a Short History
LATEST BOOK 2021 PUBLISHED MARCH IN THE UK AND MAY 22nd IN USA:Robin Attfield, Environmental Thought: A Short History, Polity Press, Cambridge in 2021
Dr Martin J Hodson reviews “Environmental Thought. A Short History” by Robin Attfield October 22, 2021 How did we get where we are?? What is behind the ethical and theological positions we take on the environment? Robin Attfield is a leading environmental philosopher and ethicist, and has been at the forefront of these areas for many years. Here he writes something slightly different, but related, a history of environmental thought. It is a very good book, is easy to read, and fills in a lot of the background to an awful lot of topics. The scope of the book is vast, and it is not a massive tome, so inevitably some topics are given little space, and others are missed out altogether (see below). But where else would you find Empedocles, Charles Darwin, David Bellamy, James Lovelock, Aldo Leopold, Arthur Tansley, Jürgen Moltmann and Gerard Manley Hopkins all in one volume? Rather amazingly, JRI gets its own mention: “Thus, when Lynn White (1967) effectively challenged the Christian world to rediscover the attitudes of St Francis, one central response was to reaffirm the teachings of advocates of stewardship, not least through the inauguration of the John Ray Initiative (founded 1997).” I take this to refer to the thinking of our founders, Professor Sam Berry and Sir John Houghton, who were both strong advocates for Christian stewardship. But this is not primarily a theology book, but a history book, although environmental theology does figure in a number of places.
Quite deliberately, Attfield speeds through his material to begin with, and we only have two chapters before we reach Darwin. What I really liked was that reading the book gave me an overview of a huge amount of topics and linked them together in my mind. As an undergraduate I studied ecology, and I was introduced to concepts like ecosystem, hydrophytes and xerophytes, succession, climax vegetation, plant communities, and population cycles. But I never quite worked out where they came from or who was behind them. Maybe I wasn’t listening that well, but I think the concepts were largely taught divorced from their history. I have actually published academic papers in the journal, New Phytologist, but I never knew its origins- I do now! I have friends who are senior editors of the Journal of Ecology and the Journal of Animal Ecology. Again the history of the journals was unknown to me.
For years now, I have been interested in environmental ethics. I co-led a module on it for Oxford Brookes University with my wife, Margot, and together we wrote the Grove booklet, An Introduction to Environmental Ethics. I have loved getting to grips with this topic, and then linking the ethics with my science and my faith. Attfield, not surprisingly, has the history of environmental ethics at his fingertips. We look at George Perkins Marsh, John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau- the American Debate as Attfield has it. And they all kind of led up to Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson. We see anthropocentric, biocentric and ecocentric views all competing with each other in some respects. Religion is often involved, but often not.
The later part of the book considers topics such as ecofeminism, environmental justice and green political movements. We end by considering the environmental issues the author considers to be most crucial: pollution, biodiversity less and climate change.
But what is missing? Attfield has ranged over a huge amount of material, but what would I have added in if there was room?I found it slightly odd that although Islamic views on the environment get some coverage, Jewish views beyond biblical times are almost entirely absent. Spinoza does get a mention, but he was expelled from the Jewish community because of his controversial ideas, and he is certainly not in the mainstream of Jewish religious thought. But Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) is a towering figure in Jewish religious and philosophical thought, and he rejected anthropocentric views of the world. His work was hugely influential even beyond Judaism, and Thomas Aquinas refers to Maimonides in a number of his works. Perhaps less well known is kabbalist Isaac Luria (1534-1572) who developed the doctrine of zimzum, a self-limitation of God. This idea has been taken up by a number of Christian theologians, and Jürgen Moltmann has a whole section of his book, God in Creation, on it where he uses it to expand on the idea of creatio ex nihilo(creation out of nothing). Rabbinic ideas have had more influence on environmental thinking than is often realised.
One fairly big omission, in my mind, is that there is no mention at all for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or for the preceding Millennium Development Goals. Yet there is plenty on sustainability, and development comes up in a number of places as well. The SDGs are a major plank in the United Nations plans for environmental sustainability, but sadly they just don’t get the attention they deserve even in an academic context like this. I was also surprised that there was no space in the chapter on the environmental crisis for the Planetary Boundaries concept, which certainly is a dominant theme within scientific discourse on this topic.
But the truth is that almost anyone reading this book who has any knowledge of these topics will say “what about this person?” or “what about that idea?” It is just not possible to fit everything in. If I had tried to write this book I would have done far worse. There are whole areas that I had only sketchy ideas about until I read Environmental Thought. Robin Attfield is to be congratulated on his excellent book. It deserves a wide readership. Dr Martin J. HodsonOperations Director, JRIEnvironmental Thought. A Short History by Robin Attfield is published by Polity Presss (Cambridge, 2021)
Environmental Ethics: A Very Short Introduction
Environmental Ethics: A Very Short Introduction, was published by Oxford University Press in December 2018. Very popular among students and the general public, this is a succinct, illustrated and reader-friendly introductory book, on sale at £7.99.
Wonder, Value and God
Wonder, Value and God, published by Routledge in 2017, bestrides environmental ethics, philosophy of religion and theories of creativity. Its cover has an amazing picture of the Grand Canyon; Leela and I have been there but sadly we probably didn't take this photo.
Author and Editor Credits
Please note: A list of Robin’s 267 articles was previously available via this site and can now be requested by emailing shamimeolive@gmail.com.
1A. Robin Attfield, God and The Secular: A Philosophical Assessment of Secular Reasoning from Bacon to Kant, Cardiff: University College Cardiff Press, 1978, pp. 231, ISBN 90142692-X
1B. Robin Attfield, God and The Secular: A Philosophical Assessment of Secular Reasoning from Bacon to Kant (2nd edn.), Aldershot: Gregg Revivals and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1993, pp. 231, ISBN 0-7512-0243-6.
2A. Robin Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern, Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publisher, 1983, pp. xi + 220, ISBN 0-631-13137-X, and New York: Columbia University Press, ISBN 0-231-05798-9 (hb), 0-231-05799-7 (pb).
2B. Robin Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern (2nd edn.), Athens, GA and London: University of Georgia Press, 1991, pp. xxiii + 249, ISBN 0-8203-1349-1 (hb), 0-8203-1344-0 (pb)
2C. Robin Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern, (2nd. edn.), translated into Korean by Seunghoe Koo, Seoul: Earth Love Publications, 1997, pp. 377, ISBN 89-85277-21-9.
2D. Robin Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern, (2nd. edn.), translated into Chinese by Professor Lei Yi (Tsinghua Univ., Beijing), Beijing: Science Press, 2018, ISBN 010-64035853.
3. Robin Attfield, A Theory of Value and Obligation, London, Sydney, New York: Croom Helm, 1987, pp. x + 262, ISBN 0-7099-0572-6.
4A. Robin Attfield and Katharine Dell (eds.), Values, Conflict and the Environment (Report of the environmental ethics interdisciplinary Working Party of the Ian Ramsey Centre, St. Cross College, Oxford), Oxford: Ian Ramsey Centre and Cardiff Centre for Applied Ethics, 1989, pp. 100, ISBN 1-873453-00-0.
4B. Robin Attfield and Katharine Dell (eds.), Values, Conflict and the Environment (Report of the environmental ethics interdisciplinary Working Party of the Ian Ramsey Centre, St. Cross College, Oxford), 2nd edn., Aldershot: Avebury, and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1996, pp. xii + 174; ISBN 1-85972-491-4.
5. Robin Attfield and Barry Wilkins (eds.), International Justice and the Third World: Essays in the Philosophy of Development, London and New York: Routledge, 1992, pp. ix + 207, ISBN 0-415-06924-6 (hb); 0-415-06925-4 (pb).
6. Robin Attfield, Environmental Philosophy: Principles and Prospects, Aldershot: Avebury and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1994, pp.viii + 262; ISBN 1-85628-566-9.
7. Robin Attfield and Andrew Belsey (eds.), Philosophy and the Natural Environment (also published as Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 36), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. vi+ 250, ISBN 0-521-46903-1.
8. Robin Attfield, Value, Obligation and Meta-Ethics, Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1995, pp. xv + 319; ISBN 90-5183-857-3 (hb); 90-5183-862-X (pb).
9A. Robin Attfield, The Ethics of the Global Environment, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999, in the World Ethics Series edited by Nigel Dower, pp. viii + 232, ISBN: 07486-0895-8; also West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1999, ISBN: 1-55753-189-7.
9B. Robin Attfield, Etika Lingkungan Global, trans. (into Bahasa Indonesia) Saut Pasaribu, Yogyakarta: Kreasi Wacana, 2010. ISBN 978-602-8001-48-9.
10A. Robin Attfield, Environmental Ethics: An Overview for the Twenty-First Century, Polity Press, Cambridge, and Blackwell, Malden, MA, 2003, pp. xii + 232. ISBN: 0-7456-2737-4 (hb); 0-7456-2738-2 (pb).
10B Robin Attfield, Environmental Ethics: An Overview for the Twenty-First Century, 2nd edn, Polity Press, Cambridge, and Blackwell, Malden, MA, 2014, xvi + 272; ISBN 978-0-7456-5252-8.
11. Robin Attfield, Creation, Evolution and Meaning, Aldershot, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006, pp. ix + 234. ISBN 0-7546-0474-8 and 0-7546-0475-6. Also an e-book.
12. Robin Attfield (ed.), The Ethics of the Environment, Farnham, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008, pp. xxx + 620, ISBN, 978-0-7546-2786-9.
13. Robin Attfield, Ethics: An Overview, London and New York: Continuum/Bloomsbury, 2012, pp. xii + 262. ISBN 978-1-4411-4403-4 (hb); 978-1-4411-8205-0 (pb). Also an e-book.
14. Robin Attfield, The Ethics of the Global Environment (2nd edn.), Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015, in the World Ethics Series, edited by Nigel Dower, pp. viii + 272; ISBN 978-0-748-654802
15. Robin Attfield (with L. Andrianos, J-W Sneep and Guillermo Kerber) (eds), Sustainable Alternatives for Poverty Reduction and Eco-Justice, (second edition) Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, pp. xxi + 416. ISBN (13) 978-1-4438-6689-7;ISBN (10) 1-4438-6689-X
16. Robin Attfield, Wonder, Value and God, New York: Routledge, 2016 (copyright 2017); ISBN 978-1-4724-5718-9, pp. vii + 196
17. Robin Attfield, Environmental Ethics: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018; ISBN 978-0-19-879716-6, pp. 137
LATEST BOOK 2021 PUBLISHED MARCH IN THE UK AND MAY 22nd IN USA: 18. Robin Attfield, Environmental Thought: A Short History, Polity Press, Cambridge in 2021
1B. Robin Attfield, God and The Secular: A Philosophical Assessment of Secular Reasoning from Bacon to Kant (2nd edn.), Aldershot: Gregg Revivals and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1993, pp. 231, ISBN 0-7512-0243-6.
2A. Robin Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern, Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publisher, 1983, pp. xi + 220, ISBN 0-631-13137-X, and New York: Columbia University Press, ISBN 0-231-05798-9 (hb), 0-231-05799-7 (pb).
2B. Robin Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern (2nd edn.), Athens, GA and London: University of Georgia Press, 1991, pp. xxiii + 249, ISBN 0-8203-1349-1 (hb), 0-8203-1344-0 (pb)
2C. Robin Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern, (2nd. edn.), translated into Korean by Seunghoe Koo, Seoul: Earth Love Publications, 1997, pp. 377, ISBN 89-85277-21-9.
2D. Robin Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern, (2nd. edn.), translated into Chinese by Professor Lei Yi (Tsinghua Univ., Beijing), Beijing: Science Press, 2018, ISBN 010-64035853.
3. Robin Attfield, A Theory of Value and Obligation, London, Sydney, New York: Croom Helm, 1987, pp. x + 262, ISBN 0-7099-0572-6.
4A. Robin Attfield and Katharine Dell (eds.), Values, Conflict and the Environment (Report of the environmental ethics interdisciplinary Working Party of the Ian Ramsey Centre, St. Cross College, Oxford), Oxford: Ian Ramsey Centre and Cardiff Centre for Applied Ethics, 1989, pp. 100, ISBN 1-873453-00-0.
4B. Robin Attfield and Katharine Dell (eds.), Values, Conflict and the Environment (Report of the environmental ethics interdisciplinary Working Party of the Ian Ramsey Centre, St. Cross College, Oxford), 2nd edn., Aldershot: Avebury, and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1996, pp. xii + 174; ISBN 1-85972-491-4.
5. Robin Attfield and Barry Wilkins (eds.), International Justice and the Third World: Essays in the Philosophy of Development, London and New York: Routledge, 1992, pp. ix + 207, ISBN 0-415-06924-6 (hb); 0-415-06925-4 (pb).
6. Robin Attfield, Environmental Philosophy: Principles and Prospects, Aldershot: Avebury and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1994, pp.viii + 262; ISBN 1-85628-566-9.
7. Robin Attfield and Andrew Belsey (eds.), Philosophy and the Natural Environment (also published as Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 36), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. vi+ 250, ISBN 0-521-46903-1.
8. Robin Attfield, Value, Obligation and Meta-Ethics, Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1995, pp. xv + 319; ISBN 90-5183-857-3 (hb); 90-5183-862-X (pb).
9A. Robin Attfield, The Ethics of the Global Environment, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999, in the World Ethics Series edited by Nigel Dower, pp. viii + 232, ISBN: 07486-0895-8; also West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1999, ISBN: 1-55753-189-7.
9B. Robin Attfield, Etika Lingkungan Global, trans. (into Bahasa Indonesia) Saut Pasaribu, Yogyakarta: Kreasi Wacana, 2010. ISBN 978-602-8001-48-9.
10A. Robin Attfield, Environmental Ethics: An Overview for the Twenty-First Century, Polity Press, Cambridge, and Blackwell, Malden, MA, 2003, pp. xii + 232. ISBN: 0-7456-2737-4 (hb); 0-7456-2738-2 (pb).
10B Robin Attfield, Environmental Ethics: An Overview for the Twenty-First Century, 2nd edn, Polity Press, Cambridge, and Blackwell, Malden, MA, 2014, xvi + 272; ISBN 978-0-7456-5252-8.
11. Robin Attfield, Creation, Evolution and Meaning, Aldershot, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006, pp. ix + 234. ISBN 0-7546-0474-8 and 0-7546-0475-6. Also an e-book.
12. Robin Attfield (ed.), The Ethics of the Environment, Farnham, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008, pp. xxx + 620, ISBN, 978-0-7546-2786-9.
13. Robin Attfield, Ethics: An Overview, London and New York: Continuum/Bloomsbury, 2012, pp. xii + 262. ISBN 978-1-4411-4403-4 (hb); 978-1-4411-8205-0 (pb). Also an e-book.
14. Robin Attfield, The Ethics of the Global Environment (2nd edn.), Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015, in the World Ethics Series, edited by Nigel Dower, pp. viii + 272; ISBN 978-0-748-654802
15. Robin Attfield (with L. Andrianos, J-W Sneep and Guillermo Kerber) (eds), Sustainable Alternatives for Poverty Reduction and Eco-Justice, (second edition) Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, pp. xxi + 416. ISBN (13) 978-1-4438-6689-7;ISBN (10) 1-4438-6689-X
16. Robin Attfield, Wonder, Value and God, New York: Routledge, 2016 (copyright 2017); ISBN 978-1-4724-5718-9, pp. vii + 196
17. Robin Attfield, Environmental Ethics: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018; ISBN 978-0-19-879716-6, pp. 137
LATEST BOOK 2021 PUBLISHED MARCH IN THE UK AND MAY 22nd IN USA: 18. Robin Attfield, Environmental Thought: A Short History, Polity Press, Cambridge in 2021
Writing about Ethics and Philosophy
Robin has extensive experience in writing and editing ethics and philosophy books.