Brian G. Henning, Ph.D.

Professor of Philosophy & Environmental Studies

Dr. Brian G. Henning is the inaugural Director and founder of the Gonzaga Institute for Climate, Water, and the Environment. Originally from Boise, Idaho, Dr. Henning joined Gonzaga’s faculty in 2008 and is Professor of Philosophy and Professor...

Portrait of Brian Henning, Ph.D.

Contact Information

Education & Curriculum Vitae

Ph.D., Fordham University

M.Phil., Fordham University

M.A., Fordham University

B.A., summa cum laude, Seattle University

Courses Taught

PHIL 201: Philosophy of Human Nature

PHIL 301: Ethics

PHIL 458/ENVS 358: Environmental Ethics

PHIL 460/ENVS 350: Ethics of Global Climate Change

PHIL 577: Alfred North Whitehead (graduate seminar)


Dr. Brian G. Henning is the inaugural Director and founder of the Gonzaga Institute for Climate, Water, and the Environment. Originally from Boise, Idaho, Dr. Henning joined Gonzaga’s faculty in 2008 and is Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Environmental Studies. He earned a B.A. from Seattle University and an M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Fordham University. An award-winning author, Dr. Henning has written or edited 14 books and more than 35 articles and chapters, including Riders in the Storm: Ethics in an Age of Climate Change (Anselm 2015) and Climate Change Ethics and the Non-human World (Routledge 2020). His latest book, Value, Beauty, and Nature: The Philosophy of Organism and the Metaphysical Foundations of Environmental Ethics is forthcoming from SUNY press. He has delivered more than 150 talks to general and academic audiences in North America, Europe, and Asia. You can reach him at henning@gonzaga.edu.

Full CV found here. 

Books

Beauty, Value, & Nature: The Philosophy of Organism and the Metaphysical Foundations of Environmental Ethics (under contract, SUNY Press)

Riders in the Storm: Ethics in an Age of Climate Change (Anselm Academic 2015)

Genesis, Evolution, and the Search for a Reasoned Faith, co-authored with Mary Katherine Birge, Rodica Stoicoiu, and Ryan Taylor (Anselm Academic 2011)

The Ethics of Creativity: Beauty, Morality, and Nature in a Processive Cosmos (University of Pittsburgh Press 2005). (Awarded the John N. Findlay Book Prize by the Metaphysical Society of America for the best book in metaphysics from 2001-2006. Voted one of the “Top Ten Picks” for university press books by Foreword magazine in 2014.) Re-released in paperback 2014. 

Edited Volumes

The Essays and Articles of Alfred North Whitehead, 1917-1942 (under review, Edinburgh University Press)

The Essays and Articles of Alfred North Whitehead, 1886-1916 (under contract, Edinburgh University Press)

The Harvard Lectures, 1925–1927, General Metaphysical Problems of Science, The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Complete Works of Alfred North Whitehead, co-edited with Joseph Petek and George R. Lucas, Jr. (Edinburgh University Press 2021).

Climate Change Ethics and the Non-Human World (Routledge 2020).

Whitehead at Harvard, 1924–25 (Edinburgh University Press 2020). Re-released in paperback in 2021.

(Series Executive Editor) Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Complete Works of Alfred North Whitehead, The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead, 1924-25, Bogaard and Bell, eds. (Edinburgh University Press, 2017).

Thinking with Whitehead and the American Pragmatists: Experience and Reality, co-edited with William Myers and Joseph John (Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield 2015)

Being in America: Sixty Years of the Metaphysical Society, co-edited with David Kovacs (Rodopi 2014).

Beyond Mechanism: Putting Life Back Into Biology, co-edited with Adam Scarfe (Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield 2013). Re-released in paperback in 2015.

Beyond Metaphysics? Explorations in Alfred North Whitehead’s Late Thought, co-edited with Roland Faber and Clinton Combs (Rodopi 2010).

Articles & Chapters

“The Philosophy of Organism and Climate Change,” Process Studies (forthcoming)

“Green Development and the Land Ethic,” in 绿色发展与全球治理/全球治理研究丛书 (Green Development and Global Governance), Ou Yang Kang and Du Zhi Zhang, eds. (China Social Science Press 2019), 212-224.

“Preface: A Brief History of the Critical Edition of Whitehead,” in Whitehead at Harvard, 1924-25, Henning and Petek, eds. (Edinburgh University Press 2020), ix–xxi.

“Whitehead in Class: Do the Harvard-Radcliffe Course Notes Change How We Understand Whitehead’s Thought?” in Whitehead at Harvard, 1924-25, Henning and Petek, eds. (Edinburgh University Press 2020), 337–356.

“Snowfall Impact Study for Spokane, Washington” with Levi Keeseker, David Camp, and Erik Budsberg. In The Spokane Climate Vulnerability and Resilience Assessment,” edited by Nathan Gilles, Katherine Hegewisch, Ann Mooney, and Meghan Dalton. Corvallis, Oregon: The Pacific Northwest Climate Impacts Research Consortium (CIRC), College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, 2019.

“Logos, Pathos, and the Absent Presence of the Persons We Eat,” with Hope Philea Henning, in Feeling Animal Death, edited by Brianne Donaldson and Ashley King (Rowman and Littlefield International 2019), 215–227.

“General Introduction,” with George R. Lucas, Jr., The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead, 1924-25, Bogaard and Bell, eds. (Edinburgh University Press, 2017): vii-xii.

“Moral Vegetarianism: A Whiteheadian Response to Andrew F. Smith,” Process Studies 45.2 (2016): 236-249.

“From the Anthropocene to the Ecozoic: Philosophy and Global Climate Change,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 40.1 (2016): 284–295.

“Towards 2050: The Projected Costs and Possible Alternatives to Industrial Livestock Production,” in The Future of Meat without Animals, Brianne Donaldson and Christopher Carter, eds. Rowman & Littlefield International (2016), 7–34.

“Unearthing the Process Roots of Environment Ethics: Whitehead, Leopold, and the Land Ethic,” Balkan Journal of Philosophy 8.1 (2016): 3-12.

“Recovering the Adventure of Ideas: In Defense of Metaphysics as Revisable, Systematic, Speculative Philosophy,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 29.4 (2015): 437-456.

"The Ethics of Food, Fuel, and Feed” Daedalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 144.4 (2015): 90–98.

“Stewardship and the Roots of the Ecological Crisis: Reflections on Laudato Si’,” in For Our Common Home: Process-Relational Responses to Laudato Si’. John B. Cobb, Jr. and Ignacio Castuera, eds. (Process Century Press 2015). 41–51. (Translated into Italian and published in Voyages 5 (2016) as “La Stewardship e le radici della crisi ecologica” http://voyagesjournal.org/la-stewardship-e-le-radici-della-crisi-ecologica/.)

“Philosophy in the Age Fascism: Reflections on the Presidential Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 1931-1940,” in Historical Essays in Twentieth Century American Philosophy, vol. 11 of the American Philosophical Association Presidential Addresses, 11 vols., General Editor Richard Hull. Charlottesville, Virginia: Philosophy Documentation Center 2015.

“Creative Love: Eros and Agape in Whitehead and Peirce,” in Thinking with Whitehead and the American Pragmatists. Eds. Henning, Myers, and John (Lexington Books 2015), 149–164.

“Hierarchy without Anthroparchy,” in Beyond the Bifurcation of Nature: A Common World for Animals and the Environment. Ed. Brianne Donaldson (Cambridge Scholars Press 2014), 106–116.

“Following Lucretius’ Dart,” in Thinking About It, eds. Sarah Demeuse and Manuela Moscoso, (Archive Books 2014), 89-101.

“Sustainability and Other Ecological Mistakes: In Defense of Moral Ideals” in Beyond Superlatives: Regenerating Whitehead's Philosophy of Experience, eds. Faber, Hustwit, and Phelps (Cambridge Scholars Press 2014), 76–89.

“Animals, Ethics, and Process Thought: Hierarchy without Anthroparchy (A Response to Combs, Donaldson, and Sinclair),” Process Studies 42.2 (2013): 221-239.

“Of Termites and Men: On the Ontology of Collective Individuals,” in Beyond Mechanism: Putting Life Back Into Biology, eds. Henning and Scarfe (Lexington Books 2013). 233-248.

“The Ontology of Collective Individuals and the Process Turn,” Proceedings of Eco-Sophia Symposium 2011: Eighth International Whitehead Conference, (2011): 63-71.

“Standing in Livestock’s ‘Long Shadow’: The Ethics of Eating Meat on a Small Planet,” Ethics & the Environment 16.2 (2011): 63-94.

“From Exception to Exemplification: Understanding the Debate Over Darwin” in Genesis, Evolution, and the Search for a Reasoned Faith (Anselm Academic 2011). 73-98.

“The Robbery of Life and The Ethics of Eating Animals,” Creative Transformation 19:3-4 (2010).

“Introduction: Whitehead’s Other Copernican Turn,” with Roland Faber in Beyond Metaphysics? Explorations in Alfred North Whitehead’s Late Thought (New York/Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010).

“Re-centering Process Thought: Recovering Beauty in A. N. Whitehead’s Late Thought” in Beyond Metaphysics? Explorations in Alfred North Whitehead’s Late Thought (Rodopi, 2010).

“Swarms, Schools, Flocks, and Colonies: Exploring the Ontology of Collective Individuals,” The Global Spiral 10:3 (2009) http://www.metanexus.net/magazine/tabid/68/id/10866/Default.aspx.

“Trusting in the ‘Efficacy of Beauty’: A Kalocentric Approach to Moral Philosophy,” Ethics & the Environment 14.1 (2009): 101-28.

“From Despot to Steward: The Greening of Catholic Social Teaching,” in The Heart of Catholic Social Teaching: Its Origins and Contemporary Significance, Ed. David Matzko McCarthy (Brazos Press, 2009).

"Process and Morality,” in Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought. Vol. 1. Eds. Michel Weber and William Desmond (Ontos Verlag, 2008).

"Is There an Ethics of Creativity?” in Chromatikon II: Yearbook of Philosophy in Process, Eds. Michel Weber and Diane D'Epremesnil (Presses universitaires de Louvain, 2006). Also in Whiteheadian Ethics, Eds. Theodore Walker and Mihaly Toth (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008).

“Morality in the Making,” Science and Theology News 6.10 (June 2006): 31-33.

“Saving Whitehead’s Universe of Value: An ‘Ecstatic’ Challenge to the Classical Interpretation,” International Philosophical Quarterly 45 (2005): 447-466.

“Getting Substance to Go All the Way: Norris Clarke’s Neo-Thomism and the Process Turn,” The Modern Schoolman 81 (2004): 215-225. (peer reviewed)

“On the Possibility of a Whiteheadian Aesthetics of Morals,” Process Studies 31 (2002): 97-114.

“On the Way to an Ethics of Creativity,” International Journal for Field-Being 2.3 (2002).

Reviews

Review of The Event Universe: The Revisionary Metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead by Leemon McHenry (Edinburgh University Press 2016) in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/70867-the-event-universe-the-revisionary-metaphysics-of-alfred-north-whitehead/

Review of The Lure of Whitehead by Nicholas Gaskill and A. J. Nocek (eds). (University of Minnesota Press, 2014) in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/58033-the-lure-of-whitehead/.

Review of The Dimensions of Consequentialism: Ethics, Equality, and Risk by Martin Peterson (Cambridge UP, 2013) in Ethics, April (2015): 900–905.

Review of Betting the Earth: How We Can Still Win the Biggest Gamble of All Time by John Charles Kunich (Parkhurst Brothers Publishers, 2010) in Ethics & the Environment 17(1) (2012): 87-93.

Review of The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering by Michael J. Sandel (Belknap Harvard Press, 2007) in The Pluralist 6.2 (2011): 110-114.

Review of Ecological Ethics and the Human Soul: Aquinas, Whitehead, and the Metaphysics of Value by Francisco J. Benzoni (University of Notre Dame Press, 2007) in Process Studies 38.2 (2009): 412-415.

Review of Goodness and Justice: A Consequentialist Moral Theory by Joseph Mendola (Cambridge University Press, 2006) in The Review of Metaphysics 61:3 (2008): 648-650.

Review of Alfred North Whitehead and Yi Yulgok: Toward a Process-Confucian Spirituality in Korea by Chung Soon Lee (University Press of America, 2006) in Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy Newsletter. 106 (2007). 72-74.

Review of Consenting to God and Nature: Toward a Theocentric, Naturalistic, Theological Ethics by Byron C. Bangert (Pickwick Publications, 2006) in Process Studies 36:2 (2007). 345-348.

Review of Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy by Nadia Urbinati (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006) in The Review of Metaphysics 61:1 (2007). 164-166.

Review of Radical Axiology: A First Philosophy of Value by Hugh P. McDonald (New York: Rodopi, 2004) in the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy Newsletter 101 (2005).

Review of Environmental Ethics: An Overview for the Twenty-First Century by Robin Attfield (Cambridge: Polity, 2003) in International Philosophical Quarterly 44:4 (2004). 583-584.

Review of Environmental Justice: Creating Equality, Reclaiming Democracy by Kristin Shrader-Frechette (New York: Oxford UP, 2002) in International Philosophical Quarterly 44:2 (2004). 273-275.

Review of Making Morality: Pragmatist Reconstruction in Ethical Theory by Todd Lekan in the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy Newsletter 96 (2003).