Environmental Justice, Tradition, and John Muir

The question of what to do with exemplary figures when their works contain morally offensive elements provides an opportunity to reflect on the role these figures have in their moral tradition’s historical formation, as well as their role in that tradition’s maintenance and continuation today. This article considers these roles in the case of John Muir, whose legacy has received new scrutiny since George Floyd’s murder and the reckoning on racial injustice it effected in American society, including the urgency it has lent to the imperative of environmental justice. Once we grant that moral traditions like American environmentalism are responsible for shaping habits of belief and action today, the work to chart a path beyond the intolerable elements in a figure like Muir’s thinking becomes less about declaring our autonomy from their influence and more about considering how the traditions that locate us in history might be improved, even transformed.