Misplaced Pages

Alan Brian Carter (born 1952) is Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow.

Life and work

Carter earned a BA at the University of Kent at Canterbury, a MA at the University of Sussex and a DPhil at St Cross College at the University of Oxford. Carter's first academic position was lecturer in political theory at University College Dublin. He then became head of the Philosophy Department at Heythrop College, University of London. Subsequently, he was professor of philosophy and environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He has been a visiting professor at the University of British Columbia and at the University of Bucharest. For a number of years Carter was joint editor of the Journal of Applied Philosophy.

He works principally in political philosophy, moral philosophy, and environmental philosophy. Carter has published on a wide range of topics: within political philosophy he has written on political obligation, equality, and property rights; within environmental philosophy he has written on the moral status of both nonhuman animals and ecosystems; within applied ethics he has written on problems regarding future persons and world hunger; within political theory he has written on theories of the state and Third World underdevelopment; and within anarchism and Marxism Carter has written on their respective theories of history. He is currently developing an environmentalist moral theory that is, normatively, value pluralist and, metaethically, projectivist, topics he has previously written about in moral theory.

Some of Carter's work in environmental philosophy is discussed critically by Robin Attfield. Carter's state-primacy theory has been discussed by Robyn Eckersley and criticized by John Barry. and, most fully, by Simon Hailwood. Carter has responded by arguing that his critics fail to take sufficiently into account the problems the military causes in modern societies: "it is telling how little attention green liberal critics of the state-primacy theory have paid to the role of the military and to its highly distorting effects. Failing to examine in any detail military requirements within ostensibly 'liberal democracies', whether existing or imagined, is more like simply ignoring an argument rather than answering it."

Carter was one of the founder members of the London-based Anarchist Research Group. Colin Ward has described Carter, with Murray Bookchin, as one of the leading eco-anarchist thinkers.

Outside of academia, Carter is a former Chair of the World Development Movement Scotland and a former Board Member of Friends of the Earth Scotland. He is also a former Board Member and a former Trustee of Friends of the Earth.

Publications

Carter's publications include over 50 articles in academic journals and he is the author of 3 books:

• A Radical Green Political Theory. New York: Routledge. 1999. ISBN 978-0-415-20309-8. (1999)
• The Philosophical Foundations of Property Rights. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester, Wheatsheaf. 1989. ISBN 978-0-7450-0518-8. (1988)
• Marx: a Radical Critique. Prentice Hall / Harvester Wheatsheaf. 1988. ISBN 978-0-7450-0488-4. (1987)

Selected articles

• "A Solution to the Purported Non-Transitivity of Normative Evaluation," Journal of Philosophy 112, 1 (2015): 23-45
• "A distinction within egalitarianism," Journal of Philosophy 108, 10 (2011): 535–54
• "Anarchism: some theoretical foundations," Journal of Political Ideologies 16, 3 (2011): 245-264
• "Beyond primacy: Marxism, anarchism and radical green political theory," Environmental Politics 19, 6 (2010): 951-972
• "The problem of political compliance in Rawls's theories of justice: Parts I and II," The Journal of Moral Philosophy 3, 1 (2006): 7–21 and 3, 2 (2006): 135–157
• "A defense of egalitarianism," Philosophical Studies 131, 2 (2006): 269–302
• "Some Theoretical Foundations for Radical Green Politics," Environmental Values 13, 3 (2004): 305–28
• "Saving nature and feeding people," Environmental Ethics 26, 4 (2004): 339–60
• "Value-pluralist egalitarianism," Journal of Philosophy 99, 11 (2002): 577–99
• "Can we harm future people?" Environmental Values 10, 4 (2001): 429–454
• "Humean nature," Environmental Values 9, 1 (2000): 3–37
• "Analytical anarchism: some conceptual foundations," Political Theory 28, 2 (2000): 230–53
• "In defense of radical disobedience," The Journal of Applied Philosophy 15, 1 (1998): 29–47
• "Towards a green political theory" in Andrew Dobson and Paul Lucardie (eds.), The Politics of Nature: Explorations in Green Political Theory (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 39–62

See also

• Anarchism in the United Kingdom

Citations

1. "University of Glasgow :: Philosophy :: Our staff". Archived from the original on 16 October 2009. Retrieved 6 November 2007.
2. See for example Attfield, R., Environmental Ethics: An Overview for the Twenty-First Century. Polity-Blackwell (2003).
3. Eckersley, R. The Green State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty. MIT Press (2004).
4. Barry, J. Rethinking Green Politics: Nature, Virtue and Progress. Sage (1999)
5. Hailwood, S. How to be a Green Liberal: Nature, Value and Liberal Philosophy. Acumen (2004).
6. Carter, A. "Beyond primacy: Marxism, anarchism and radical green political theory," Environmental Politics 19, 6 (2010): 951-972, here at 971n.
7. Goodway, D. (ed.), For Anarchism: History, Theory, and Practice. Routledge (1989).
8. Ward, C. Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press (2004).

External links

• Alan Carter's webpage at Academia.edu

v t e Anarchism
Concepts	Anarchy Anarchist Black Cross Anarchist criminology Anationalism Anti-authoritarianism Anti-capitalism Anti-militarism Affinity group Autonomous social center Black bloc Classless society Class struggle Consensus decision-making Conscientious objector Critique of work Decentralization Deep ecology Direct action Free love Freethought Horizontalidad Individualism Law Mutual aid Participatory politics Permanent autonomous zone Prefigurative politics Proletarian internationalism Propaganda of the deed Refusal of work Revolution Rewilding Sabotage Security culture Self-ownership Social ecology Sociocracy Somatherapy Spontaneous order Squatting Temporary autonomous zone Union of egoists Voluntary association Workers' council
Issues	Animal rights Capitalism Education Love and sex Nationalism Religion Violence
Schools of thought	Classical Individualist Egoist Illegalist Naturist Philosophical Mutualist Social Collectivist Communist Magonist Post-classical Feminist Green Primitivist Social ecology Independence Insurrectionary Pacifist Religious Christian Buddhist Jewish Without adjectives Contemporary Black Free-market Postcolonial Post-anarchist Post-left Queer
Types of federation	Affinity group Anarcho-syndicalism Platformism Synthesis anarchism Union of egoists
Economics	Communization Cooperative Cost the limit of price Decentralized planned economy Free association General strike Gift economy Give-away shop Labour voucher Market socialism Mutual bank Mutual credit Social ownership Wage slavery Workers' self-management
Culture	A las Barricadas Anarchist bookfair Anarcho-punk Arts DIY ethic Escuela Moderna Films Freeganism Infoshop Independent Media Center The Internationale Jewish anarchism Lifestylism May Day "No gods, no masters" Popular education "Property is theft!" Radical cheerleading Radical environmentalism Self-managed social center Symbolism
History	French Revolution Revolutions of 1848 Spanish Regional Federation of the IWA Paris Commune Hague Congress Cantonal rebellion Haymarket affair International Conference of Rome Trial of the Thirty International Conference of Rome Ferrer movement Strandzha Commune Congress of Amsterdam Tragic Week High Treason Incident Manifesto of the Sixteen German Revolution of 1918–1919 Bavarian Soviet Republic 1919 United States bombings Biennio Rosso Kronstadt rebellion Makhnovshchina Amakasu Incident Alt Llobregat insurrection Anarchist insurrection of January 1933 Anarchist insurrection of December 1933 Spanish Revolution of 1936 Barcelona May Days Red inverted triangle Labadie Collection Provo May 1968 Kate Sharpley Library Carnival Against Capital 1999 Seattle WTO protests Really Really Free Market Occupy movement
People	Alston Armand Ba Bakunin Berkman Bonanno Bookchin Bourdin Chomsky Cleyre Day Durruti Ellul Ervin Faure Fauset MacDonald Ferrer Feyerabend Giovanni Godwin Goldman González Prada Graeber Guillaume He-Yin Kanno Kōtoku Kropotkin Landauer Liu Magón Makhno Maksimov Malatesta Mett Michel Most Parsons Pi i Margall Pouget Proudhon Raichō Reclus Rocker Santillán Spooner Stirner Thoreau Tolstoy Tucker Volin Ward Warren Yarchuk Zerzan
Lists	Anarcho-punk bands Books Fictional characters Films Jewish anarchists Musicians Periodicals
By region	Africa Albania Algeria Andorra Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bangladesh Belarus Belgium Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Brazil Bulgaria Canada Chile China Colombia Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Dominican Republic East Timor Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Estonia Finland France French Guiana Georgia Germany Greece Guatemala Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Ireland Israel Italy Japan Korea Latvia Malaysia Mexico Monaco Mongolia Morocco Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Nigeria Norway Panama Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Romania Russia Serbia Singapore South Africa Spain Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tunisia Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom United States Uruguay Venezuela Vietnam
Related topics	Anti-corporatism Anti-consumerism Anti-fascism Anti-globalization Anti-statism Anti-war movement Autarchism Autonomism Communism Definition of anarchism and libertarianism Dual Power Labour movement Left communism Left-libertarianism Libertarianism Libertarian socialism Marxism Relationship between Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Stirner Situationist International Socialism Spontaneous order
Anarchism portal Category Outline

• 1952 births
• Living people
• 21st-century British philosophers
• Academics of Heythrop College
• Academics of the University of Glasgow
• Alumni of the University of Kent
• Alumni of St Cross College, Oxford
• Alumni of the University of Sussex
• Anarchist theorists
• English anarchists
• English philosophers
• English political philosophers
• Environmental ethicists
• Green anarchists
• Scholars of Marxism
• Academic staff of the University of British Columbia
• People educated at Monkwearmouth School