"Rivers are as various in their forms as forest trees. The Mississippi is like an oak with enormous branches. ...The Hudson is like a pine or poplar~~mainly trunk. From New York to Albany there is only an inconsiderable limb or two and but few gnarls. ...There are some crooked places it is true, but on the whole the Hudson presents a fine symmetrical shaft that would be hard to match in any river of the world."~~~John Burroughs, 1880
Welcome to The Hudson River website. This project is brought to you by the philosophy students of The College of Mount Saint Vincent in collaboration with the Philosophy Department and the Institute for Applied Philosophy, Dr. Elizabeth Beirne, Director.
This website is the end product of a class on environmental philosophy entitled "The Hudson River" in which various ethical issues and dilemmas concerning the river were explored and formally debated. Topics included, but were not limited to, whether the river's non-human species have a right to survive and whether it is ethical to develop the river's waterfront.
It was decided by the students that individual class projects could be combined to produce a website that would be informative and could be easily revised over time by future philosophy students of the college. This site is the result of that decision.
