«It was literally a fender bender of the plane variety,» said Christians Peppard, a professor of
environmental ethics at Fordham University.
First, in these views nature has only instrumental value and this conflicts with the strong moral intuitions that we now hold from
environmental ethics.
A process theology of nature, in which every occasion of experience has some power of self - determination, is one of the best options for
environmental ethics today.
A Whiteheadian
environmental ethic is, as Birch and Cobb put it, an «ethic of life» that intends to be responsive to the God who is «Life» itself (LL chs.
«The Search for
an Environmental Ethic,» 306.
This use of Whitehead is illustrative of the fact that
an environmental ethic, like a Christian faith perspective, will inevitably rely on a vision of reality of one sort or another, thus acknowledged or not.
Taking Leopold's land ethic as paradigmatic for
environmental ethics as such, Callicott insists that «
environmental ethics locates ultimate value in the «biotic community» and assigns differential moral value to the constitutive individuals relative to that standard» (AL 337).
Jenkins proposes to supersede the common argument in
environmental ethics between those whose emphasis is on human welfare («anthropocentrism») and those concerned to give the natural world independent moral standing («non-anthropocentrism» he usually calls it, though «ecocentrism» or «biocentrism» will do).
Recognizing that the concerns of animal rightists pertain for the most part to animals subjected to human captivity, Birch and Cobb demonstrate that these concerns can be combined with those of the land ethicist into a single
environmental ethic.
Recently many environmental philosophers in the West have come to agree.6 One of the most influential among them is J. Baird Callicott, professor of philosophy and natural resources at the University of Wisconsin, author of numerous influential works on
environmental ethics and foremost interpreter of the pioneer of Western environmental philosophy, Aldo Leopold.
They believe that
environmental ethics, rightly understood, points to an alternative discipline and an alternative way of thinking in its own right: one that recognizes without equivocation the radical interconnectedness, and the equal value, of all beings.
But the general emphasis of a Whiteheadian
environmental ethic is on life rather than death.
They differ from those environmental philosophers who see
environmental ethics as a subdiscipline of traditional philosophy.
For one, there are excellent works at the interface of
environmental ethics and public policy, such as K. S. Schrader - Frechette's Nuclear Power and Public Policy (Boston: D. Reidel, 1980), and her
Environmental Ethics (Pacific Grove, CA: Boxwood Press, 1981).
From Whitehead» s vision of reality as informing and informed by insights from biology, Birch and Cobb develop a distinctively «process»
environmental ethic.
In the third I discuss the philosophy of Whitehead and
its environmental ethic as developed by Birch and Cobb as a potential resource for resolving this conflict.
Furthermore, there are other visions of reality from which to learn: visions that, like Whitehead's perspective, can serve as philosophical underpinnings for a responsible
environmental ethic.
In the case of the deep ecologists, Christians can recognize that in many instances a Christian
environmental ethic — often called stewardship — has been shallow rather than deep.
6William Blackstone argues for Schweitzer's role as mentor in the animal liberation movement in «The Search for
an Environmental Ethic,» in Matters of Life and Death: New Introductory Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed.
That popular college text sees Calvinism as the pump - primer for industrialized pillaging, and it lauds the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau as the freethinking architects of
environmental ethics.
Ignorant and greedy masses, without
environmental ethics or social supervision, can destroy our land nearly as quickly as corporate machines.
Here we can not settle the question of what rightly or wrongly belongs within the purview of
environmental ethics understood as a sub-discipline within philosophy.
It lays the foundation for a deep
environmental ethic, a Creation ethic.
f course, I know that a large part of the objection to the encyclical is its central concern with
environmental ethics.
Derr has been thinking and writing about
environmental ethics for many years, and his essay alone makes the book well worth the price.
To make such a leap of logic is to commit the other glaring error often made by proponents of animal rights and
environmental ethics: they fail to see that the rights endowed to animals are not identical with the rights of human beings.
Instead, I find increasingly within the animal rights movement and within discussions of
environmental ethics (although less so there) a perspective that illustrates just how alienated from the rest of nature the human species has become.
This means that revelation and
environmental ethics are not merely compatible, but that they are mutually complementary.
And a convergence on the issue of planetary
environmental ethics is very promising for the future.
Specifically, he recommended that mainstream Christianity endorse a «Franciscan world view» and «panpsychism» in order to deliberately reconstruct a contemporary Western
environmental ethic (S 155: 1206 - 1207).
She is the author of The Attentive Heart: Conversations with Trees (Ballantine, 1993) and is currently working on a book on Buddhist
environmental ethics.
She is currently working on an anthology concerning approaches to environmental problems with a biologist and has published an article on Whitehead's metaphysical system as a foundation for
environmental ethics in
Environmental Ethics 8/3.
Because of its inability to find intrinsic value in the universe, scientific materialism fails as the adequate basis for any serious
environmental ethic.
As the basis for
an environmental ethic we would need a cosmology that attributes intrinsic value to life, mind, and the cosmos as a whole.
Thus to the extent that
an environmental ethic would have to grow out of at least some appreciation and reverence for the mystery of nature, modern ideals of clear and exhaustive explanation can easily prove deleterious if they overrun their legitimate epistemological margins.
As far as
an environmental ethic is concerned, the still dominantly materialist orientation of contemporary science is unable to provide the cosmic vision essential for lasting commitment to the preservation of the earth's life systems.
This materialist grounding of
an environmental ethic on a purely naturalistic and cosmically tragic foundation challenges us to rethink theologically the issue of cosmic purpose in a scientifically compatible and environmentally fruitful way.
This seems to be a key question for spirituality and
environmental ethics today.
There is no need here to elaborate further on the negative consequences of scientism for
environmental ethics.
10 Certain recent discussions of
environmental ethics, dealing with «respect for nature» (where nature is not necessarily limited to the realm of living things), reflect some affinities with Hall's ideas on «deference» and seem to pose a challenge to my suggestion that the pursuit of power over nature should be criticized primarily in terms of its negative effects on human values and experiences.
«It retains a lot of that in practices that revolve around a notion of respecting the dignity of the human person and a strong
environmental ethic that grew out of the religious responsibility,» says Yale's Malloch.
However, this writer believes that as abortion is a bell - weather issue regarding one's views on the sanctity of life, so trapping helps us refine our positions regarding
environmental ethics and policy.
Process thinkers have offered a theology of nature — a topic sadly neglected in neo-orthodoxy, existentialism, and most other twentieth - century schools of Christian thought — and it would strongly support
an environmental ethic.28
It is present in the pontificate of Pope Francis as well, providing the theological coherence to his appeal for an authentic
environmental ethics, and in his approaches to the challenges of poverty and economic injustice.
Taylor, Paul W. (1986) Respect fur Nature: A theory of
environmental ethics Princeton.
Education: Bachelor of arts in
environmental ethics and philosophy from the University of Toronto and a nutritional culinary management diploma from George Brown College
In a lot of
our environmental ethics classes, we were talking about monocrops and how animal agriculture is potentially really harmful for the planet.
Research is clearly substantiating that an affinity to and love of nature, along with a positive
environmental ethic, grow out of children's regular contact with and play in the natural world (Bunting 1985; Chawla 1988; Wilson 1993; Pyle 1993; Chipeniuk 1994; Sobel 1996, 2002 & 2004; Hart 1997; Moore & Wong 1997; Kals et al. 1999; Moore & Cosco 2000; Lianne 2001; Kellert 2002; Bixler et al. 2002; Kals & Ittner 2003; Phenice & Griffore 2003; Schultz et al. 2004).
This is the time for young people to gain
an environmental ethic that will last a lifetime.
Therein lies the fundamental of
environmental ethics and sustainable redevelopment, for the latter was the way of succession long before Clements and Tansley came into scholarly conflict over the nature of climax.