ABSTRACT
To interpret the Stoic injunction to the would-be sage to "live a life according to nature" would be to attribute both too much and too little to the ancient Stoic. This chapter suggests that people must define the human good in terms compatible with the good for non-human nature. While this sort of reconciliation of values may require we jettison the notion of nature's "intrinsic value", nothing else would seem to be lost to those who adopt a strong form of environmentalism including a defense of wildness and wilderness. The chapter then suggests that the anthropocentricism of nature associated with the Hellenistic philosophers is an essentially ethical idea. The idea of environmental sustainability suffers from an overabundance of definitions that some commentators have been moved to near despair about the very usefulness of the concept. Much of the economic case in favor of recycling depends on the prices that the market is willing to pay for recycled commodities.
