After Agrarian Virtue
34 Pages Posted: 16 Sep 2019 Last revised: 2 Jul 2020
Date Written: September 7, 2019
Abstract
What constitutes agrarian virtue? Across human or even geological history, agrarian virtue subsists in the sustained production of food, fiber, and fuel without the exhaustion of finite resources or the undue disruption of evolutionary processes on which human survival depends. Contemporary agricultural law, however, often emphasizes the expressive self-actualization of food preferences. This natural sublimation of economic independence from producers to consumers epitomizes agrarian vice. Restoration of agrarian virtue demands not telos (τέλος) in its purposive sense, but rather acceptance of kyklos (κύκλος), or cyclicality in its full economic and ecological sense.
Keywords: virtue, vice, philosophy, agricultural law, food law, Alasdair McIntyre, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Anthropocene, genetically modified organisms, CRISPR/Cas9, T.S. Eliot
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