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More-than-Human Ethics: Rethinking Nature, Dwelling, and Responsibility
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More-than-Human Ethics: Rethinking Nature, Dwelling, and Responsibility

A special issue of Philosophies (ISSN 2409-9287). This special issue belongs to the section "Virtues".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 May 2026) | Viewed by 2324

Editor

Dr. Luca Valera

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
1. Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy and Literature, University of Valladolid, 47002 Valladolid, Spain
2. Bioethics Centre, Faculty of Medicine, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago 8331150, Chile
3. Cape Horn International Center, Cabo de Hornos 6350000, Chile
Interests: environmental philosophy; philosophy of emerging technologies; bioethics

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue, “More-than-Human Ethics: Rethinking Nature, Dwelling, and Responsibility”, aims to rethink our ethical approach in the context of environmental philosophy, drawing on the concepts of responsibility (Jonas 1984) and dwelling (e.g., Ingold 2000; Young 2000; Botha 2003). In fact, if our dwelling in the age of ecological crisis is essentially co-dwelling (Harrison 2007) with other living beings (and not only with other human beings), ethics should be reconfigured (Rozzi 2012; 2018). So, the starting point for this Special Issue is that it is possible to conceive of a “more-than-human” ethic and responsibility (Ginn 2023). Such ethics and responsibility are “more-than-human” (e.g., Braun 2005; Franklin 2023), on the one hand, because they have, as their ultimate reference point, Nature as a whole (and no longer human beings); on the other hand, because they arise within the relationship with human and non-human otherness at once. The fundamental concern of this Special Issue, therefore, is not so much to understand how to resolve certain ethical dilemmas in the ecological sphere by applying pre-established principles (Valera et al. 2021) but, rather, to understand how to dwell on the Earth with other living beings (Gildersleeve & Crowden 2022). The ethical question thus essentially turns into the issue of dwelling: our ethos is the way we dwell our oikos (home) (e.g., Malpas 1999; Valera 2025). In this sense, the focus of this Special Issue will not primarily be ethical but, rather, ontological, cosmological, anthropological, and cultural. The various papers should help the reader understand the basis for developing an environmental ethics oriented toward otherness (Rozzi et al. 2023).

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Co-dwelling, ecology, and (sub)cultures;
  • What is a home in the age of the ecological crisis?;
  • Respect, love, or responsibility towards other living beings?;
  • Ethical paradigms consistent with more-than-human ethics;
  • Worldviews consistent with a more-than-human ethics;
  • Eco-theology and eco-religions as a basis for a more-than-human ethics;
  • Anthropologies (philosophies) consistent with an ethics oriented towards ecological otherness.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of about 200 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editor (luca.valera@uva.es) or to the Philosophies Editorial Office (philosophies@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editor for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

We look forward to receiving your insightful contributions and to advancing the dialogue on more-than-human ethics together.

References

Botha, C. F. (2003). Heidegger, technology and ecology. South African Journal of Philosophy, 22(2), 157–171.

Braun, B. (2005). Environmental issues: writing a more-than-human urban geography. Progress in Human Geography 29(5), 635–650.

Franklin, A. (ed.) (2023). The Routledge International Handbook of More-than-Human Studies. London & New York: Routledge.

Gildersleeve, M., Crowden, A. (eds.) (2022). Philosophy of place: finding place and self in the world. New York: Peter Lang.

Ginn, F. (2023). More-than-Human Ethics. In: Franklin, A. (ed.) (2023). The Routledge International Handbook of More-than-Human Studies. London & New York: Routledge.

Harrison, P. (2007). The space between us: opening remarks on the concept of dwelling. Environment and planning D: society and space, 25(4), 625–647.

Ingold, T. (2000). The Perception of the Environment Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. London & New York: Routledge.

Jonas, H. (1984). The imperative of responsibility. In search of an ethics in the technological age. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Malpas, J. E. (1999). Place and Experience. A Philosophical Topography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rozzi, R. (2012). Biocultural ethics: Recovering the vital links between the inhabitants, their habits, and habitats. Environmental Ethics, 34(1), 27–50.

Rozzi, R. (2018). Biocultural Homogenization: A Wicked Problem in the Anthropocene. In Rozzi, R. et al. (eds.). From Biocultural Homogenization to Biocultural Conservation. Dordrecht: Springer.

Rozzi, R. et al. (eds.) (2023). Field Environmental Philosophy: Education for Biocultural Conservation. Dordrecht: Springer.

Valera, L., Leal, Y., Vidal, G. (2021). Beyond Application. The Case of Environmental Ethics. Tópicos (México) 60: 437–459.

Valera, L. (2025). Earth Stewardship: Oikophilia and Philanthropy. Salmanticensis 72(1): 127-147.

Young, J. (2000). What is Dwelling? The Homelessness of Modernity and the Worlding of the World. In: Wrathall, M.A., Malpas, J. (eds.). Essays in Honor of Hubert L. Dreyfus: Heidegger, authenticity, and modernity. Cambridge & London: The MIT Press.

Dr. Luca Valera
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Philosophies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • environmental philosophy
  • responsibility
  • ecological crisis
  • dwelling
  • ethics

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

12 pages, 207 KB  
Article
On the Impossibility of Dwelling in the Metaverse
by Iago Ramos
Philosophies 2026, 11(3), 100; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11030100 (registering DOI) - 20 Jun 2026
Abstract
This paper examines whether genuine dwelling—understood as embodied engagement with a world that resists, endures, and exceeds human control—can occur in the metaverse. Drawing on Heidegger’s account of dwelling and Ingold’s concept of the ‘taskscape’, it argues that the metaverse is structurally unable [...] Read more.
This paper examines whether genuine dwelling—understood as embodied engagement with a world that resists, endures, and exceeds human control—can occur in the metaverse. Drawing on Heidegger’s account of dwelling and Ingold’s concept of the ‘taskscape’, it argues that the metaverse is structurally unable to sustain dwelling in the full ontological sense. The argument unfolds in three steps. First, dwelling is shown to depend on friction: bodily cost, temporal irreversibility, material resistance, and exposure to mortal finitude. Second, the metaverse is interpreted as a technological and commercial project oriented toward reducing these frictions through attenuated bodily burden, reversible action, programmable environments, and artificial scarcity. Third, the paper extends the concept of the metaverse beyond immersive hardware to describe a broader condition of digitalized life in which experience becomes increasingly modifiable, personalized, and optimized. In this wider sense, the difficulty of dwelling in the metaverse is not limited to a niche technology but reveals a tendency within late-digital culture itself. The paper concludes by proposing a politics of friction: a public deliberation over which resistances are unjust and should be transformed, and which are constitutive conditions of ethical, ecological, and responsible life. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue More-than-Human Ethics: Rethinking Nature, Dwelling, and Responsibility)
13 pages, 247 KB  
Article
Rewilding Home: Reconsidering Our Dwelling in the World
by Luca Valera
Philosophies 2026, 11(3), 96; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11030096 - 12 Jun 2026
Viewed by 168
Abstract
This paper focuses on the increasing relevance of rewilding in the context of the global ecological crisis. This crisis is conceived not only as a loss of biodiversity, but also as a breakdown in our capacity to dwell meaningfully on Earth. Although rewilding [...] Read more.
This paper focuses on the increasing relevance of rewilding in the context of the global ecological crisis. This crisis is conceived not only as a loss of biodiversity, but also as a breakdown in our capacity to dwell meaningfully on Earth. Although rewilding has been developed primarily as an ecological restoration strategy, this paper argues that it is first and foremost an ethical concept. In this sense, starting from Næss’s ecosophy, contemporary theories of self-rewilding, and environmental virtue ethics, this paper develops a philosophical framework that interprets rewilding as a form of dwelling based on the concept of oikos (home). It shows that rewilding entails a transformation of human agency through identification and self-realization, which makes the “ecological self” emerge. As for its methodology, the paper adopts a conceptual and interdisciplinary approach, combining ecology, environmental philosophy, and virtue ethics. The paper concludes that the concept of rewilding should be linked both to ecological restoration and ethical flourishing, requiring the development of certain virtues—e.g., humility and the recognition of ecological dependence. In this regard, rewilding should offer a relevant context to rethink our relationship with nature, starting from the idea of dwelling in the common home. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue More-than-Human Ethics: Rethinking Nature, Dwelling, and Responsibility)
17 pages, 284 KB  
Article
The Epistemic Stratification of Ecological Thought: An Inquiry into the Models of Environmental Understanding
by Andrea Gentili
Philosophies 2026, 11(3), 92; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11030092 - 4 Jun 2026
Viewed by 284
Abstract
What do we mean when we talk about the “environment” inside the ecological discourse? Do we really have a clear and distinct notion of it? This paper argues that the “environment” is not a single object approached from different disciplinary angles, but a [...] Read more.
What do we mean when we talk about the “environment” inside the ecological discourse? Do we really have a clear and distinct notion of it? This paper argues that the “environment” is not a single object approached from different disciplinary angles, but a stratified epistemic field in which distinct models produce distinct results. Against the assumption of a unified environmental referent, the article reconstructs four major models of understanding: (1) the scientific model of the ecosystem, (2) the moral model of nature as value, (3) the aesthetic model of landscape, and (4) the juridical model of territory or land. Each of these models is shown to function as a specific device of objectivation, unifying heterogeneous elements according to its own rationality: systemic regulation, axiological orientation, experiential appearance, or the normative ordering of living space. Through historical and conceptual analyses, the paper demonstrates that these models are neither mutually reducible nor merely complementary perspectives on the same object. Rather, they generate different environmental objects, each governed by its own epistemic logic. What the paper suggests is that the environment remains (as it should) a polyvocal concept, and that a critical epistemology of the environment, precisely because of this polyvocality, must concern itself with mapping these models and explicating their architecture and techniques of functioning. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue More-than-Human Ethics: Rethinking Nature, Dwelling, and Responsibility)
12 pages, 214 KB  
Article
The Ethics of Intergenerational Justice: From the Gortyn Code to Climate Courts
by Dimitrios Dimitriou, Aristi Karagkouni, Maria Sartzetaki, Evangelia Schoinaraki, Antonia Moutzouri and Vasileios Benteniotis
Philosophies 2026, 11(3), 74; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11030074 - 9 May 2026
Viewed by 454
Abstract
Intergenerational equity has become central to contemporary sustainability discourse and climate litigation, as courts increasingly confront whether present generations may legitimately deplete ecological resources in ways that impose irreversible burdens on those yet to come. This article argues that the normative structure underlying [...] Read more.
Intergenerational equity has become central to contemporary sustainability discourse and climate litigation, as courts increasingly confront whether present generations may legitimately deplete ecological resources in ways that impose irreversible burdens on those yet to come. This article argues that the normative structure underlying contemporary intergenerational climate claims reflects a recurring institutional logic identifiable much earlier in legal history. Focusing on the Gortyn Code (5th century BCE), one of the earliest and most extensive surviving Greek law codes, the analysis reveals how rules governing property, inheritance, guardianship, and family relations constructed an architecture of intergenerational continuity through enforceable constraints on present authority over inherited assets. The Code restricted alienation of inherited assets, structured succession through fixed distributive formulas, and imposed mechanisms designed to preserve the material foundations of future social existence. These provisions are then interpreted in relation to contemporary sustainability frameworks, emphasizing trusteeship, burden inheritance, and ecological thresholds. The article considers recent climate litigation to illustrate how modern courts increasingly translate intergenerational commitments into enforceable duties through functionally equivalent reasoning. The findings suggest that climate adjudication represents a modern manifestation of a deeper logic already visible in the Gortyn Code, one that emerges regardless of whether the resource at stake is owned or unowned, and that this parallel carries implications for the design and institutional anchoring of intergenerational obligations in contemporary climate governance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue More-than-Human Ethics: Rethinking Nature, Dwelling, and Responsibility)
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