Ethics, Geography and

Ethics is an inquiry into the moral values embodied in discourse and practice and a concern for what is good, right, or just in our individual and collective lives. It is an attempt to formulate rules of thumb to help us grasp the ends and means of life, providing insight and guidelines to strive for what the ancient Greeks termed eudaimonia, a term sometimes translated as happiness but better understood as “flourishing.” The ancient geographer Strabo referenced this notion when he noted that geographers and ethicists alike are interested in “the art of life, that is, of happiness.”

Ethics can be a subject that is difficult to discuss in geography (and elsewhere) for it raises fears of dogmatic worldviews. There are indeed people who use ethics to scold others, score debating points, or justify doctrinaire approaches to life. But this is not the main tradition of ethics. Rather, as Socrates notes in Plato's Republic, ethics is an exploration of “how we ought to live.” It is a conversation about the moral values that inform (or ought to inform) our way of life. This involves a process of critique and vision. We criticize what detracts from our well-being, and at the same time, we envision how we might improve our lives.

Ethics may be informed or distorted by religion, spirituality, personal experience, or social custom, but it is not reducible to these sources. Instead, it is a reasoned and evidentiary dialogue that bridges cultural and disciplinary positions to improve the well-being of ourselves and others. These others can include different entities (e.g., human or nonhuman) considered at different scales (e.g., local to global, individual to system). Thus, ethics may concern itself with the well-being of people, animals, and the rest of nature, whether they present themselves as individuals or communities, ecological systems or societies, over space or through time.