Wonder and empathy in environmental ethics

Abstract

My aim in this article to argue that wonder is a basic moral capacity, akin to the capacity for empathy, that is required for the virtue of environmental benevolence. I begin by examining Geoffrey Frasz’s account of benevolence as a set of environmental virtues, and I identify a gap that not only threatens the coherence of Frasz’s theory, but also points to an important cause of our widespread apathy toward the environment: the inherently limited and biased nature of the capacity for empathy. My proposal is that the capacity for wonder can fill this gap, that is, I think wonder can play the role in environmental benevolence that empathy plays in interpersonal benevolence.