Environmental Ethics and the Need for Theory Etyka środowiskowa i potrzeba teorii (original) (raw)
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Environmental Ethics and the Need for Theory
Studia Ecologiae et Bioethicae, 2023
Environmental ethics calls into question whether moral obligations invariably arise within relationships and communities, and whether wrong can only be done if some identifiable party is harmed. The aim of this paper is to appraise these assumptions, to argue for negative answers, and to draw appropriate conclusions about the scope of moral standing (or moral considerability). Its findings include the conclusions that our moral obligations (or responsibilities) extend to people and non-human creatures of the foreseeable future, as far as the impacts of present actions and policies can themselves be foreseen, that moral standing attaches to the possible people and other living creatures of the future, and (with Derek Parfit) that ethics is to some degree impersonal, being concerned with future quality of life for whoever lives in future centuries, whether they are currently identifiable or not. This in turn requires sustainable forms of social practice and of the human population. Another conclusion is that these findings are compatible with the approach of stewardship which the author has defended elsewhere, since stewardship need neither be anthropocentric nor managerial, and precludes current and future human agents treating the natural world as we please.
Environmental Ethics and Responsibility
ethic@ - An international Journal for Moral Philosophy
This paper resumes a previous discussion on Environmental Ethics and Irreversibility, which was presented in 2005. There I first faced the problem. Now I would like to reevaluate the issue. Was my paper "catastrophist"? Or was it, instead, realistic? Which are today the main issues confronting Environmental Ethics? Plainly speaking, what can we really do? These are some of the questions I would like to bring in to the debate with my colleagues and the public. In other words, instead of focusing in the aspect of "irreversibility", I prefer here to focus on the "responsibility" of agents and institutions. It rescues the so-called "Principle of Responsibility", by Hans Jonas. There is also some debate with Karl-Otto Apel and Habermas. If, on one hand, there are irreversible damages to nature, as the extinction of species and even of natural locations, as rivers and other natural accidents, there are, on the other hand, many actions that can and must be taken in order to preserve or deter the grave consequences of the environmental degradation. In this paper, I try to discuss some of the problems and propose some solutions, but the more important thing is to call everyone-individuals, groups, or institutionsto responsibility face the Earth, the Human and not-human beings, and mainly the future generations.
Modern ethics is now facing a challenging critique of the frameworks it is based on. Modern ethics seems incapable in guiding us away from the present situation in which we are threatening both ourselves and many species and systems on the planet. In the present paper I argue, that also environmental ethics adhering to frameworks of modern ethics has failed in taking the moral relevance of our relations with the natural world seriously. The crucial problem seems to originate in modern conception of moral agency that makes moral agents exceptional and isolated from their natural and social relations. I introduce here two criticisms against the idea of exceptional human moral agency, one asserted by constructionist feminism and another asserted by naturalist socio-biology. I argue that in their chastened forms these criticisms have a common aim of moving toward a relational view of moral agency. If I am right, it could offer a new insight for environmental ethics.
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...
Theoretical and Practical Aspects of Environmental Ethics of their Manifestation in Society
The article analyzes the features, values, the need for environmental ethics and the moral content of natural rights in the global environment of the modern era. Environmental ethics reflects the essence and concepts of environmental and moral perception, describes the features of the era of environmental ethics and globalization. The norms and practical significance of the main criteria of environmental ethics are widely covered. The emphasis is on the theoretical and practical aspects of biodiversity and seeks to combine these aspects with concepts of responsibility. Today it is important to pay attention to ethical issues in solving environmental problems. It is important to explain the common interests and requirements of social responsibility as an object of study of environmental ethics.
Western Environmental Ethics: An Overview
Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 2005
kathie jenni WESTERN ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS: AN OVERVIEW Although Western philosophers have considered humans' relationship to nature since ancient times, environmental ethics as a systematic discipline has emerged only in recent decades. In the early stages of the environmental movement, problems such as pollution, species extinctions, and the destruction of wilderness arose as concerns for anthropocentric, or human-centered, ethics. Philosophical discussions applied traditional ethical principles and theories to these problems, and "applied ethics" expanded to include those analyses. At the same time, some thinkers extended anthropocentric ethics by addressing our potential obligations to future generations of human beingshumans who do not yet exist. Problems such as resource conservation and toxic waste disposal were examined in light of responsibilities to future humans. Environmental ethics took a new turn when philosophers began to argue for nonanthropocentric ethics, which grants direct moral importance to natural objects besides humans. Animal rights philosophers took the lead in arguing for the moral standing of nonhuman animals, but they were soon followed by others who argued that we should extend moral standing to all living things, or even to all natural objects. These philosophers proposed extensions in the scope of application of Western moral principles and concepts. A more radical development came when the moral focus on individuals was challenged by thinkers who argued for holistic ethics: the expansion of moral responsibilities to collections, communities, or wholes. In these theories, entities such as species and ecosystems were accorded moral standing in place of, or in addition to, the individuals that constituted those wholes. Holistic theories challenged not only traditional conceptions of ethics, but also assumptions in metaphysics, epistemology, and political philosophy. Recently, environmental ethics has taken other new forms, from ecofeminism and the study of environmental racism, which connect KATHIE JENNI, professor, Department of Philosophy,
Dropping dead ends and tying loose ones in Environmental Ethics
2020
Environmental ethics has a palette of theories concerning values involved in the relationship between humans, future humans and the non-human world. We shall examine some of these and find many of them flawed. In the process we shall attempt to refute the argument of the last man on earth, the argument from marginal people and the so-called Parfit’s paradox. Regarding the source of moral protective obligations, we conclude that there is no naturalistic inherent value and that there is for humans only in their contractual commitment to rules. However, animals will not be excluded from morally relevant consideration, since there is a back door for compassion in any ethics that ground negative duties. This back door gives a strain of contiguity between caring and upholding rights. The relationship between these calls for a distinction between the near and dear and the far and many. It also raises the question of the limits of human responsibility for suffering, which brings us to consider Peter Wessel Zappfe’s pessimistic diagnosis of the human condition.
The Debate over Anthropocentrism in Polish Environmental Ethics
Environmental Ethics in V4 Countries. Proceedings of Scientific Studies / Environmentálna Etika v Krajinách V4. Zborník vedeckých štúdií, 2016
The debate over anthropocentrism is crucial in the research for causes of environmental crisis. Most researchers perceive anthropocentrism negatively, as it leads to justification of human behaviour that endangers the environment. This situation resulted in the emergence of strong claims for a different and more adequate attitude towards nature. An environmental ethics appeared as a reply to these requirements. Tadeusz Ślipko (Christian environmental ethics) and Zdzisława Piątek (biocentric environmental ethics) are the main Polish thinkers who provide some ideas to deal with ecological problems. Nonetheless, the types of environmental ethics which the two theorists are in favour of are contradictory. They both have some points in common and provide valuable solutions. The purpose of this paper is to discuss these points and to investigate if these two attitudes could be combined into one environmental ethic in order to find better solutions for morality, and by means of this solve environmental problems.