Agricultural Ethics in East Asian Perspective ― A Transpacific Dialogue

This book brings together agricultural ethics scholars from the US, Japan and Taiwan to discuss crucial issues in agricultural ethics and sustainability ethics in comparative context. Agricultural ethics and sustainability ethics are wide-ranging and closely linked to environmental ethics, bioethics, virtue ethics, animal welfare, soil conservation, not to mention rural traditions and lifestyles. Six of the chapters cover historical traditions and values in Europe, the US and East Asia. Four of the chapters cover the role of virtue ethics in the analysis of agrarian and environmental ethics, agricultural biotechnology, food ethics, and alternative agriculture, respectively. Finally, two of the chapters cover field efforts of agricultural ethics involving preserving agricultural heritage and building consensus for sustainable farming, respectively. Although the papers are divided into three groups, their contents are interconnected and mutually informative.

Kirill Thompson – b. Northfield, Minnesota. Received advanced degrees from the University of Hawaii. Teaches in the Foreign Languages and Literatures Department & serves as Assoc. Dean for Humanities at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences (IHS) of NTU. Currently a short-term visiting research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Research (IAR) of Nagoya University. Thompson is broadly interested in the humanities. Specialized in the philosophy of Zhu Xi and Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism, he also investigates early Chinese philosophy, e.g., Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, Sophism, such later traditions as Buddhism, Japanese Confucianism, and Zen. He is also interested in Greek thought through Plato, modern philosophy, and 19th and 20th century philosophy, such as American transcendentalism, existentialism, early analytic philosophy, notably Wittgenstein, etc. He has published book chapters, articles, and reviews in Chinese philosophy in Philosophy East and West, Asian Philosophy, China Review International, etc., and on Samuel Beckett, Thorstein Veblen, Thomas Gray, Henry David Thoreau, and other kindred spirits. He is currently involved in “humanities for the environment” projects.