Abstract

Postmodern ecophilosophers argue that the wilderness idea, specifically the Euro-American conception of pristine nature derived from Muir and inscribed in the 1964 Wilderness Act, is ethnocentric, elitist, androcentric, and unjust. Although the value of existing wilderness areas is not questioned, the background assumptions and policy implications of the received wilderness concept are. This essay first reviews several postmodern critiques of and alternatives to the wilderness idea, and then examines the responses of two leading ecotheologians, Larry Rasmussen and Sallie McFague, to postmodern themes in contemporary ecophilosophy. It concludes by outlining what it might mean for a Christian environmental ethic to go wild.