A sequel to Callicott's pioneering work, In Defense of the Land Ethic, Beyond the Land Ethic engages a wide spectrum of topics central to the field, including the troubled relationship of environmental philosophy to current mainstream academic philosophy; the relationship of recent developments in evolutionary and ecological sciences to the Leopold land ethic long championed by the author; the perennial debates in environmental ethics about the ontological status of intrinsic value and the necessity of moral pluralism; the metaphysical implications of ecology and the New Physics as manifest in agriculture, medicine, and industrial technology; and the philosophical dimensions of conservation biology and "clinical ecology."

J. Baird Callicott is Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies at the University of North Texas and is the current President of the International Society for Environmental Ethics. He is the author of many books, including In Defense of the Land Ethic, also published by SUNY Press.