In Nature Ethics: An Ecofeminist Perspective, Marti Kheel explores the underlying worldview of nature ethics, offering an alternative ecofeminist perspective. She focuses on four prominent representatives of holist philosophy: two early conservationists (Theodore Roosevelt and Aldo Leopold) and two contemporary philosophers (Holmes Rolston III, and transpersonal ecologist Warwick Fox). Kheel argues that in directing their moral allegiance to abstract constructs (e.g. species, the ecosystem, or the transpersonal Self) these influential nature theorists represent a masculinist orientation that devalues concern for individual animals. Seeking to heal the divisions among the seemingly disparate movements and philosophies of feminism, animal advocacy, environmental ethics, and holistic health, Kheel proposes an ecofeminist philosophy that underscores the importance of empathy and care for individual beings as well as larger wholes.

"This precise focus and the rigorous way in which she challenges ecophilosophies by scrutinising their attitudes towards individual animals brings the author’s inherent logic out into the open by applying it to individual action. Thus she is able to confront holist philosophers with an ethics of nature from an ecofeminist perspective. I have high regard for the transparency and the truly dialogical spirit in which Kheel carefully, and in a very accommodating way, puts forward her criticism and invites the reader to follow her line of argument, with its clear structure and precise naming of her standpoint and assumptions. Her challenging core thesis that the treatment of individual animals should be the benchmark for any nature ethic and her revelation of the underlying masculinist identity that permeates current concepts make the book a gainful read for feminist scholars, environmental philosophers at the graduate level, as well as activists interested in better understanding the traditions they bring forward." - Agriculture and Human Values