Embracing compassion for a more practical moral framework for human-nature relationships (original) (raw)

Normative Implications of Ecophenomenology. Towards a Deep Anthropo-Related Environmental Ethics

Environmental Values, 2024

Corporeality of human beings should be taken seriously and be included in their self-understanding as the ‘nature we are ourselves’. Such an ecophenomenological account has important normative implications. Firstly, I argue that the instrumental value of nature can be particularly well justified based on an ecophenomenological approach. Secondly, sentience is inseparable from corporeality. Therefore, insofar as it is a concern of the ecophenomenological approach to take corporeality and its implications seriously, sentient beings deserve direct moral consideration. Thirdly, it can strengthen the so-far underestimated category of eudaimonic values of nature, which can be best developed through an ecophenomenological reconstruction. Taken together, ecophenomenology is vital for environmental ethics and helps us to leave behind its widespread ‘centrism’. Ecophenomenology should therefore, both methodically and philosophically, be included into the discussion of environmental ethical problems.

Environmental Ethics: Anthropocentrism, Biocentrism, and Ecocentrism

In Search of Moral Equilibrium and Wisdom, 2021

Sustainable practices such as conservation, protected species, renewable energies, green technologies, reforestation, eco-friendly, and fair treatments of non-human species, among others, have dominated research and debates in environmental ethics. The preceding approaches seek to address various environmental concerns that range from deforestation, climate change, global warming, drought, mining, famine, overpopulation, over-fishing, oil drilling, pollution, ozone depletion, green gases, carbon emission, and nuclear waste. In addition to discussing those concerns, this chapter will highlight various perspectives on environmental ethics, which feature biocentrism, utilitarianism, interdependence between humans and nature, and shared substance with nature. Overall, as the title suggests, the tensions in discourses on environmental ethics tend to, more often than not, revolve around human needs and the care of nature and other living organisms. Notably, answers to questions about human responsibilities and obligation toward non-human species and the environment have been as contested as they are divergent.

Role of Ethics in Nature-Human Relationship: a Pragmatic Inquiry

Problemy Ekorozwoju, 2024

Primitive people, in their initial struggle for existence, must have found Nature to be a formidable force to reckon with. Our ancestors eked out their means of survival from the abundant bounties of the ancient world with the meager tools at their disposal and sometimes tried to placate Nature by worshipping her. The earth was a rich mother and the needs of the early people were few. With time the ever increasing demands of humankind were matched by their growing power to wreak destruction and havoc. They destroyed forests and dug into the earth with unrestricted abandon in the quest of greater wealth and enjoyment, slaughtered every type of life for food and even for the mere pleasure of killing. Human beings remain the only predator that kills the young adults of a species, damaging the reproductive capital of the latter. Philosophers have argued against the wanton destruction of the earth's resources. That these warnings have been largely ignored is apparent in the danger signs that have started to raise a question mark on the future of life on this planet. Therefore, these ethical theories are needed to be analyzing in a pragmatic point of view of their applications. The tendency of the theories is to concentrate on the former and take the latter for granted. This creates a gap between knowledge and application of environmental ethics. There must be some aspects other than worldviews that affects human behavior. We proceed with a pragmatic theory of ethics which takes into account the practical aspects and strengthen it further with a psychological probe into the aspects responsible for creating the gap.

Ethics and the Earth : The Use and Limits of Moral Philosophy for Environmental Ethics

2008

This essay examines the foundations of contemporary environmental ethics vis-à-vis classic paradigms of modern moral philosophy by contrasting in particular the “ocular-phenomenological” and the “rational-discursive” modes—the former emerging from the work of Schopenhauer, Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch, the latter by way of Kant, John Rawls, and Jürgen Habermas. This essay argues that, while the rational-communicative approach seems best fitted for success within the broader field of social ethics, it is in fact the phenomenological viewpoint which is ultimately more sympathetic with the modern environmental movement, and which is also coincident with religious ethics of attention and compassion, particularly those of East Asian traditions. If environmental issues are to be taken seriously, the framework of conventional moral theory (which tends towards the Kantian sort) needs to be expanded to admit the non-human, relinquishing the latent language of instrumentality and control that...

Compassion as a Practical and Evolved Ethic for Conservation

The ethical position underpinning decisionmaking is an important concern for conservation biologists when setting priorities for interventions. The recent debate on how best to protect nature has centered on contrasting intrinsic and aesthetic values against utilitarian and economic values, driven by an inevitable global rise in conservation conflicts. These discussions have primarily been targeted at species and ecosystems for success, without explicitly expressing concern for the intrinsic value and welfare of individual animals. In part, this is because animal welfare has historically been thought of as an impediment to conservation. However, practical implementations of conservation that provide good welfare outcomes for individuals are no longer conceptually challenging; they have become reality. This reality, included under the auspices of "compassionate conservation, " reflects an evolved ethic for sharing space with nature and is a major step forward for conservation.

Contributions to Anthropocosmic Environmental Ethics

Th is essay is an articulation of various contributions to anthropocosmic environmental ethics—an approach to environmental ethics emerging within the study of religion and ecology. In an anthropocosmic approach to environmental ethics, humans are intimately intertwined with the environment. Rather than placing value on a particular center (e.g., anthropocentric, biocentric, ecocentric) and thus excluding and marginalizing something of peripheral value, an anthropocos-mic approach to ethics seeks to facilitate the mutual implication of humanity and the natural world, thereby affirming the interconnectedness and mutual constitution of central and peripheral value. Although the adjective " anthropocosmic " may seem obscure or vague, an examination of the genealogy of the term, beginning with its appearance in the works of Mircea Eliade, discloses numerous resources that have important contributions to make to the development of viable environmental ethics.

Getting Right with Nature: Anthropocentrism, Ecocentrism, and Theocentrism

Organization & Environment, 2005

We are uneasy with nature. The past century has witnessed unprecedented economic growth and prosperity. It has witnessed also unprecedented depredations upon nature. Today there is debate between two moral postures to reconcile these developments. One takes a human-centered, or anthropocentric, view of our relationship to nature, to emphasize the value of securing the resources we need for further development. The other takes an environmentcentered, or ecocentric, view of our relationship to nature, to emphasize the value of conserving her integrity and beauty. This paper explores tensions underling these two views and finds that neither view adequately reconciles us to nature. This paper offers an alternative, theocentric, view of our relationship to nature that reconciles in God our value for resources and our value for nature. This alternative view is founded upon the Catholic Christianity that preceded the Protestant Reformation and the Cartesian metaphysic; one which establishes a divine order of man and nature apart from human egoism and intentions. This paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of this theocentric view for environmental policy and practice.

Compassionate Conservation - making the case

This article reviews Marc Bekoff’s book Ignoring Nature No More, and discusses the various human priorities which influence cruelty, harm and compassion towards wild nature and the animal kingdom.

Anthropocentrism and Nature - An Attempt at Reconciliation

Due to the manifold ecological problems associated with exponentially growing human populations and their collective interactions with Earth’s various ecosystems, many environmentalists have lamented that nature is being destroyed by humanity. The theoretical framework which presumably accounts for our species’ destructiveness is pejoratively referred to as anthropocentrism, the view that humans are the sole bearers of intrinsic value on our planet, whereas all nonhuman aspects of the biosphere, whether biotic or abiotic, are of merely instrumental value to the satisfaction of human interests. I argue, however, that environmental thinkers’ critiques of anthropocentrism are ultimately misplaced. Humanity’s ecological predicament is not the result of overvaluing humanity as such but of permitting institutionalized forms of ethical egoism to underlie policies that narrowly focus on the short-term, frivolous interests of current individuals at the expense of the vital interests of future generations.