Paul B. Thompson & Kirill O. Thompson 
Agricultural Ethics in East Asian Perspective 
A Transpacific Dialogue

This book brings together agricultural ethics scholars from the US, Japan and Taiwan to discuss crucial issues in agricultural ethics and sustainability ethics in comparative context. Agricultural ethics and sustainability ethics are wide-ranging and closely linked to environmental ethics, bioethics, virtue ethics, animal welfare, soil conservation, not to mention rural traditions and lifestyles. Six of the chapters cover historical traditions and values in Europe, the US and East Asia. Four of the chapters cover the role of virtue ethics in the analysis of agrarian and environmental ethics, agricultural biotechnology, food ethics, and alternative agriculture, respectively. Finally, two of the chapters cover field efforts of agricultural ethics involving preserving agricultural heritage and building consensus for sustainable farming, respectively. Although the papers are divided into three groups, their contents are interconnected and mutually informative.

Table of Content

1. Seminal East Asian Backgrounds and Thinkers.- 2 Virtue Ethics and Agrarian Ethical Concerns.- 3 Local Care, Global Concerns.- Appendix 1 Consensus Building Revisited: Lessons from and Experiences in Japan.- Appendix 2 A Japanese Approach to Consensus Building and its Relevance to Australia.

About the author

Kirill Thompson – b. Northfield, Minnesota. Received advanced degrees from the University of Hawaii. Teaches in the Foreign Languages and Literatures Department & serves as Assoc. Dean for Humanities at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences (IHS) of NTU. Currently a short-term visiting research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Research (IAR) of Nagoya University. Thompson is broadly interested in the humanities.  Specialized in the philosophy of Zhu Xi and Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism, he also investigates early Chinese philosophy, e.g., Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, Sophism, such later traditions as Buddhism, Japanese Confucianism, and Zen. He is also interested in Greek thought through Plato, modern philosophy, and 19th and 20th century philosophy, such as American transcendentalism, existentialism, early analytic philosophy, notably Wittgenstein, etc.  He has published book chapters, articles, and reviews in Chinese philosophy in 
Philosophy East and West, Asian Philosophy, China Review 
International, etc., and on Samuel Beckett, Thorstein Veblen, Thomas Gray, Henry David Thoreau, and other kindred spirits. He is currently involved in “humanities for the environment” projects.




Professor Paul B. Thompson holds the W.K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics at Michigan State University, where he serves on the faculty in the departments of Philosophy, Community Sustainability and Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and has held posts at Texas A&M University and Purdue University. Thompson’s research and teaching has focused on ethical and philosophical topics in food and agriculture. He is the author or co-author of over two hundred articles in refereed journals or scholarly books. His book 
From Field to Fork: Food Ethics for Everyone was published by Oxford University Press in 2015. It won the “Book of the Year” award for 2015 from the North American Society for Social Philosophy.  His book 
The Spirit of the Soil: Agriculture and Environmental Ethics was released in a revised and updated second edition in 2017.