Being a scholar is a moral issue rather than an epistemological issue. This paper is a theoretical and conceptual foray into the role of research ethics when engaging EE/ESD research. Throughout this paper we argue that one of the key issues with contemporary (and past) EE/ESD research is our shared failure as scholars to be engaged in what we will label a researchers social responsibility (RSR). The article responds to a need for greater diligence among researchers when it comes to engaging concepts of the morally real as moral-agent-scholars.  Drawing on ethical theories developed by Baumann, Levinas and Løgstrup and on concepts of the Real as found by the speculative realism movement and neo-lacanian psychoanalysis the paper emphasizes the importance of constantly questioning how and why we do research and that a greater interest to concepts of the real could facilitate such a moral interest (Bauman, 1993; Levi Bryant, 2011; Levinas, 1979; Løgstrup, 1997; Žižek, 2011). In addition, the paper argues that state of the art research ethics is ruled by a principle of separation. The principle of separation states builds an instrumental approach to research ethics, effectively separating the scholar, the research practice, the consequences of scholarly practice and the values and ideals against which research practice is being judged (Kronlid 2008). In stead, we argue that EE and ESD research should be saturated by an organic approach to research ethics in which the scholarly practice itself is seen as a constitutive circumstance for establishing informed inclusive reflections and decisions about the particular local, global and intergenerational moral challenges that is of specific importance to our field. This leads to a tentative effort towards establishing a realist manifesto for EE/ESD research.

Whereas it is a core scholarly ambition to sniff out gaps in knowledge that should be addressed, and to spend great efforts on reflecting upon different topics that are of great relevance for the field that the researchers for different reasons have chosen not to focus on, this is not the route we are taking in this paper. Instead we wish to turn the searchlight to ourselves as moral-agents-scholars and ask the moral question - how dare “we” do research?

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