A Case Study in Thomistic Environmental Ethics

Book excerpt: This original study applies the philosophical/theological thought of Thomas Aquinas to issues of environmental ethics, specifically in relation to the restoration and preservation of the plains of the Loess Hills in Iowa. This study should appeal to scholars working in environmental ethics, philosophy, theology, and ecology. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae to a particular environmental region, namely the Loess Hills of Iowa. The book begins by telling the ecological story of the Loess Hills and then proceeds to summarize the development of environmental ethics through the legacy of Henry David Thoreau, thereby revealing certain tensions that exist in contemporary environmental debates. Then, after considering the strengths and weaknesses of anthropocentric and ecocentric ethical systems, the author provides an exposition of Aquinas' understanding of the bonum naturalis, the bonum connaturalis, and the bonum supernaturalis, as these are found in the Summa Theologiae. flourishing only in ways that simultaneously save the contextualizing ecosystems. This ethic is then applied to the particular case of the Loess Hills, producing an eudaimonistic ecoregionalism.