Rhetorical Landscapes as Epistemic: Revisiting Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac

This essay examines the rhetorical impetus toward environmental human agency in Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac (SCA). In identifying a foundation for this agency, Leopold relies on the epistemological function of rhetoric in an effort to bring to light the epistemic potential in reading the landscape. In this fashion, Leopold offers a way of knowing the environment through natural observations. The author identifies the unfolding epistemological revelations found in the three primary sections of SCA. Leopold describes these epistemological revelations gleaned from reading the landscape as “shifts.” The first shift, in Part I of SCA, offers the audience lessons through Leopold's own example in reading the text of the landscape. The second shift, described in Part II, describes his epistemological revelations acquired through his reading of the landscape. The final section of the book situates these epistemological revelations in one of the most influential concepts found in environmental ethics, the land ethic. Through these three iterations, Leopold not only instructs his readers in the rhetorical possibilities found in reading landscapes but also offers scholars of environmental rhetoric a unique understanding of analyzing landscapes as epistemological rhetoric.     

从内在价值理论看环境伦理的定位

环境伦理的定位应该遵循人的自我意识的原则,而不应该遵循生物的自然价值的原则.因为只有人才是一种理性的目的性存在.也只有人才可以设定环境伦理的目标,使自身成为实现这一目标的主体.人是一种在精神的目标中实现了自身目的的存在者,同样,人也只是在环境伦理的关系中成就了一种保护自然的价值意识.