Paper short abstract:

If Aldo Leopold’s “The Land Ethic” laid the foundation for environmental ethics, his “Round River: A Parable” can be shown to provide the basis for a fertile hydrosocial imaginary, according to which to be human is to navigate the circular flow of nature's “Round River”.

Paper long abstract:

Leopold's "The Land Ethic" is widely thought to have laid the basis for environmental ethics. His lesser known, "Round River: A Parable", can provide the basis for an environmental ontology and poetics. According to Leopold, a bioregion can be conceived as a "Round River", that is, a circular flow of matter and energy. He concludes: "Ecology is destined to become the lore of Round River, a belated attempt to convert our collective knowledge of biotic materials into a collective wisdom of biotic navigation." These remarks mark a break with scientific ecology. Not only is knowledge to be "converted" into lore and wisdom, but the very concept of the "Round River" is explicitly recognized as a parable. Leopold extends the parable into the realm of the human: just as in "The Land Ethic" ethics is extended beyond politics and economics to the land, so politics and economics are interpreted here as "techniques" for navigating the "Round River". Such navigation cannot be interpreted in purely cybernetic terms: it is not simply a question of correcting deviations from a fixed linear goal (retroactive self-regulation), for self-regulation can only take place within nature's dynamic circular flow (recursive self-production). The paper will argue that the "Round River" not only provides an image of the basic ontology of nature qua "physis" or self-production (cf. Edgar Morin), but also shows how water's circular flow can provide the basis for a "hydrosocial imaginary" capable of enabling human societies to develop "techniques" that respect their ontological foundations.