Stephen M. Gardiner is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Program on Values in Society at the University of Washington, Seattle. He specializes in ethics, political philosophy and environmental ethics. He also has interests in ancient philosophy, bioethics, and the philosophy of economics. He received his PhD. in Philosophy from Cornell University in 1999 for a dissertation on Aristotelian virtue ethics, supervised by Terence Irwin. He also has an M.A. from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a B.A. from Oxford University in Politics, Philosophy and Economics.

Steve is the editor of Virtue Ethics, Old and New (Cornell, 2005), and the coordinating co-editor (with Dale Jamieson, Simon Caney and Henry Shue) of Climate Ethics (Oxford, forthcoming). His manuscript A Perfect Moral Storm: Climate Change, Intergenerational Ethics and the Global Environmental Tragedy is also currently under contract at Oxford. In 2007, he organized the interdisciplinary conference Ethics and Climate Change at the University of Washington.

Research
Steve's current research focuses on future generations, global environmental problems (especially climate change), and Aristotelian virtue ethics. (FOR DOWNLOADS and formal publication list, click HERE)

(a) Future Generations
On future generations, his work has focused on articulating the central problem they pose for ethics and political theory. In ‘The Real Tragedy of the Commons' (Philosophy and Public Affairs, 2001) he offers a critical analysis of Garrett Hardin's application of the Tragedy of the Commons metaphor to world population, and (rejecting it) suggests that the more relevant tragedy is intergenerational and emerges most clearly in the climate change problem. In ‘The Pure Intergenerational Problem' (Monist, 2003), he offers an account of what he believes to be the central problem of distinctively intergenerational ethics and defends this account against some initial objections. In ‘A Contract on Future Generations?' (2009), Steve considers how this and related problems plague contractarian and contractualist approaches in the intergenerational setting. In ‘Rawls and Climate Change: Does Rawlsian Political Philosophy Pass the Global Test?' (forthcoming), he argues that though many elements of Rawls' approach might be invoked to deal with global environmental problems, none actually provides a straightforward solution, and attempts to revise Rawls in the right direction tend to produce new, and potentially rival, theories.

(b) Global Environmental Problems
On global environmental problems, Steve has contributed in several areas. As well as being a co-editor of Climate Ethics (Oxford, forthcoming), he is the author of a number of articles on ethics and climate change. ‘Ethics and Global Climate Change' (Ethics, 2004) provides an opinionated survey of the literature and issues. ‘A Perfect Moral Storm' (Environmental Values, 2006) describes the challenge climate change poses to our ability to act ethically, and ‘The Global Warming Tragedy' (Ethics and International Affairs, 2004) discusses how some of these problems are manifest in the geopolitics of climate change. In ‘Why Do Future Generations Need Protection?' (2006), Steve considers why future generations need protection from some standard economic approaches to problems involving the further future. In ‘Saved By Disaster? Abrupt Climate Change, Political Inertia and the Possibility of an Intergenerational Arms Race' (Journal of Social Philosophy, 2009), he assesses whether the possibility of catastrophic abrupt events in the next few decades makes a crucial difference to our analysis of the climate problem. His most recent article - ‘Is "Arming the Future" with Geoengineering Really the Lesser Evil?' (forthcoming) - considers Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen's proposal for intentionally manipulating the climate system in order to ward off climate catastrophe.

In addition to the work on climate change, Steve has published an influential article on the notion of precaution in environmental law (‘A Core Precautionary Principle', Journal of Political Philosophy, 2006), and contributed to the debate about how the principles governing nuclear protection regulations should be interpreted (‘Why We Need More than Justification in the Ethics of Nuclear Protection', 2008).

(c) Virtue Ethics
On virtue ethics, Steve's work has focused on the relevance of the ancients for contemporary discussion. This is the central theme of his edited collection Virtue Ethics, Old and New (Cornell, 2005). But it also emerges in his other work. In ‘Aristotle's Basic and Nonbasic Virtues' (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 2001), Steve argues that Aristotle accepted the reciprocity of the virtues for only a core group of basic virtues (not for all of them, as usually thought). ‘Seneca's Virtuous Moral Rules' (2005) explores Seneca's attempt to reconcile a concern for the normative priority of the virtuous person with a complex system of moral rules (something some contemporary writers view as impossible). ‘Aristotle, Egoism and the Virtuous Person's Point of View' (2001) assesses the challenge facing the (standard) egoist interpretation of Aristotle's virtue ethics.

A number of Steve's papers have been reprinted in college textbooks and other collections. His work has been cited by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007), and the U.K. government's Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change (2006), and his paper on precaution was recently listed by the Journal of Political Philosophy as one of its three most cited articles of 2005-2007. In recent years, he has presented his research at conferences and workshops in the United States, the United Kingdom, Norway, France, Belgium, Germany, Australia and New Zealand. He has also been interviewed by the Sunday Times (of London), the Seattle Times, the Washington Post, National Public Radio, and the Weather Channel.

Currently, Steve is finishing work on his forthcoming book on the moral challenge posed by climate change, and continuing to pursue his interests in future generations and virtue ethics. As a side-project, he is also writing about Socrates' pessimistic approach to politics.

Teaching
Steve regularly teaches courses on ethical theory, political philosophy, global justice, and environmental ethics. Some of these are cross-listed between Philosophy, the Program on the Environment, and the Evans School of Public Affairs. In Spring 2009, he is co-teaching a course on ethics and climate change with Mike Wallace (UW, Atmospheric Sciences), an international authority on atmospheric science. This course is generously supported by the Simpson Center for the Humanities through its Danz Lecture Series. In 2009-10, he will be teaching advanced courses on global justice, virtue ethics, and future generations, as well as a large lecture introduction to ethical theory.