This paper introduces a normative environmental ethic for animate organisms and species based on a phenomenology of corporeal movement (Sheets-Johnstone 2011) that avoids the anthropocentrism-nonanthropocentrism divide (Norton 1987) and the split between individualism and species oriented approaches that is symptomatic for environmental ethics and ESE research that integrate normative environmental ethics (Kronlid & Öhman 2012, Kopnina 2013, 2014). The paper takes corporeal movement as entry point in an ethic for animate organisms and groups and reflects upon consequences of such an ethic for understanding moral meaning making and implications for ESE and ESE research. It criticizes anthropocentric (Marietta 1995), biocentric (Taylor 1986) and ecocentric (Callicott 1989) normative ethics from the notion of movement as ”primal animateness” that “defines our aliveness.” (Sheets-Johnstone 2011, 117. My Italics) and asks how corporeal experiences, i. e. ”living in the world and making sense of it.” (Sheets-Johnstone 2011, 117, see also Nynäs 2008, Kronlid 2014) may further our understanding of environmental moral meaning making. The paper is situated within an analytic space between materiality and discourse in ESE research. Whereas Scandinavian ESE research have a tendency towards discourse analyses of environmental moral meaning making (Hansson 2014), the paper uses a phenomenology of corporeal self-movements and movement as a ”real thing”, i. e. the rhythm of bodily movements and moorings precedes the notion of ”I move”. (Sheets-Johnstone 2011) Accordingly, the paper presents a normative argument that a corporeal ethic can bridge the anthropocentrism-nonanthropocentrism divide and be included as a normative element in a theory of environmental (mobile) moral meaning making. The paper uses conceptual analysis of existing relevant research and is intended to be published in a special issue of Environmental Education Research that focuses on tensions between discourse and materiality.

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