Ignorance, Environmental Philosophy, and Academia

This book argues that environmental crisis exposes limits of institutional knowledge. Institutions frame environmental problems through risk, uncertainty, evidence, and management. However, some forms of destruction cannot be identified as stable objects of knowledge, calculation, or responsibility. Watanabe calls this limit radical ignorance: not a lack of information, but the point at which conditions for identifying harm, assigning responsibility, and making justified decisions fail.Drawing on environmental philosophy, epistemology, phenomenology, systems theory, Buddhism, and ethics, Watanabe examines how academia acknowledges uncertainty yet excludes what cannot become an admissible object of knowledge. He reconsiders precaution, progress, responsibility, and ethical response, arguing that ignorance is not merely something to overcome but a limit requiring environmental ethics to rethink knowledge, action, and responsibility.