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Environmental EthicsFirst published Mon Jun 3, 2002; substantive revision Thu Jan 3, 2008

Environmental ethics is the discipline in philosophy that studies the moralrelationship of human beings to, and also the value and moral status of, theenvironment and its nonhuman contents. This entry covers: (1) the challenge ofenvironmental ethics to the anthropocentrism (i.e., human-centeredness) embeddedin traditional western ethical thinking; (2) the early development of the discipline inthe 1960s and 1970s; (3) the connection of deep ecology, feminist environmentalethics, and social ecology to politics; (4) the attempt to apply traditional ethicaltheories, including consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics, to supportcontemporary environmental concerns; and (5) the focus of environmental literatureon wilderness, and possible future developments of the discipline.

1. Introduction: The Challenge of Environmental Ethics2. The Early Development of Environmental Ethics3. Environmental Ethics and Politics

3.1 Deep Ecology3.2 Feminism and the Environment3.3 Disenchantment and the New Animism3.4 Social Ecology and Bioregionalism

4. Traditional Ethical Theories and Contemporary Environment Ethics5. Wilderness, the Built Environment, Poverty and Politics6. Pathologies of Environmental Crisis: Theories and Empirical ResearchBibliographyOther Internet ResourcesRelated Entries

1. Introduction: The Challenge of EnvironmentalEthicsSuppose that putting out natural fires, culling feral animals or destroying someindividual members of overpopulated indigenous species is necessary for theprotection of the integrity of a certain ecosystem. Will these actions be morally

permissible or even required? Is it morally acceptable for farmers in non-industrialcountries to practise slash and burn techniques to clear areas for agriculture?Consider a mining company which has performed open pit mining in somepreviously unspoiled area. Does the company have a moral obligation to restore thelandform and surface ecology? And what is the value of a humanly restoredenvironment compared with the originally natural environment? It is often said to bemorally wrong for human beings to pollute and destroy parts of the naturalenvironment and to consume a huge proportion of the planet's natural resources. Ifthat is wrong, is it simply because a sustainable environment is essential to (presentand future) human well-being? Or is such behaviour also wrong because the naturalenvironment and/or its various contents have certain values in their own right sothat these values ought to be respected and protected in any case? These are amongthe questions investigated by environmental ethics. Some of them are specificquestions faced by individuals in particular circumstances, while others are moreglobal questions faced by groups and communities. Yet others are more abstractquestions concerning the value and moral standing of the natural environment andits nonhuman components.

In the literature on environmental ethics the distinction between instrumental valueand intrinsic value (meaning “non-instrumental value”) has been of considerableimportance. The former is the value of things as means to further some other ends,whereas the latter is the value of things as ends in themselves regardless of whetherthey are also useful as means to other ends. For instance, certain fruits haveinstrumental value for bats who feed on them, since feeding on the fruits is a meansto survival for the bats. However, it is not widely agreed that fruits have value asends in themselves. We can likewise think of a person who teaches others as havinginstrumental value for those who want to acquire knowledge. Yet, in addition to anysuch value, it is normally said that a person, as a person, has intrinsic value, i.e.,value in his or her own right independently of his or her prospects for serving theends of others. For another example, a certain wild plant may have instrumentalvalue because it provides the ingredients for some medicine or as an aesthetic objectfor human observers. But if the plant also has some value in itself independently ofits prospects for furthering some other ends such as human health, or the pleasurefrom aesthetic experience, then the plant also has intrinsic value. Because theintrinsically valuable is that which is good as an end in itself, it is commonly agreedthat something's possession of intrinsic value generates a prima facie direct moralduty on the part of moral agents to protect it or at least refrain from damaging it (seeO'Neil 1992 and Jameson 2002 for detailed accounts of intrinsic value).

Many traditional western ethical perspectives, however, are anthropocentric orhuman-centered in that either they assign intrinsic value to human beings alone (i.e.,what we might call anthropocentric in a strong sense) or they assign a significantlygreater amount of intrinsic value to human beings than to any nonhuman things suchthat the protection or promotion of human interests or well-being at the expense of

nonhuman things turns out to be nearly always justified (i.e., what we might callanthropocentric in a weak sense). For example, Aristotle (Politics, Bk. 1, Ch. 8)maintains that “nature has made all things specifically for the sake of man” and thatthe value of nonhuman things in nature is merely instrumental. Generally,anthropocentric positions find it problematic to articulate what is wrong with thecruel treatment of nonhuman animals, except to the extent that such treatment maylead to bad consequences for human beings. Immanuel Kant (“Duties to Animalsand Spirits”, in Lectures on Ethics), for instance, suggests that cruelty towards a dogmight encourage a person to develop a character which would be desensitized tocruelty towards humans. From this standpoint, cruelty towards nonhuman animalswould be instrumentally, rather than intrinsically, wrong. Likewise,anthropocentrism often recognizes some non-intrinsic wrongness of anthropogenic(i.e. human-caused) environmental devastation. Such destruction might damage thewell-being of human beings now and in the future, since our well-being isessentially dependent on a sustainable environment (see Passmore 1974, Bookchin1990, Norton, Hutchins, Stevens, and Maple (eds.) 1995).

When environmental ethics emerged as a new sub-discipline of philosophy in theearly 1970s, it did so by posing a challenge to traditional anthropocentrism. In thefirst place, it questioned the assumed moral superiority of human beings to membersof other species on earth. In the second place, it investigated the possibility ofrational arguments for assigning intrinsic value to the natural environment and itsnonhuman contents.

It should be noted, however, that some theorists working in the field see no need todevelop new, non-anthropocentric theories. Instead, they advocate what may becalled enlightened anthropocentrism (or, perhaps more appropriately called,prudential anthropocentrism). Briefly, this is the view that all the moral duties wehave towards the environment are derived from our direct duties to its humaninhabitants. The practical purpose of environmental ethics, they maintain, is toprovide moral grounds for social policies aimed at protecting the earth'senvironment and remedying environmental degradation. Enlightenedanthropocentrism, they argue, is sufficient for that practical purpose, and perhapseven more effective in delivering pragmatic outcomes, in terms of policy-making,than non-anthropocentric theories given the theoretical burden on the latter toprovide sound arguments for its more radical view that the nonhuman environmenthas intrinsic value (cf. Norton 1991, de Shalit 1994, Light and Katz 1996).Furthermore, some prudential anthropocentrists may hold what might be calledcynical anthropocentrism, which says that we have a higher-level anthropocentricreason to be non-anthropocentric in our day-to-day thinking. Suppose that a day-to-day non-anthropocentrist tends to act more benignly towards the nonhumanenvironment on which human well-being depends. This would provide reason forencouraging non-anthropocentric thinking, even to those who find the idea of non-anthropocentric intrinsic value hard to swallow. In order for such a strategy to be

effective one may need to hide one's cynical anthropocentrism from others and evenfrom oneself.

2. The Early Development of Environmental EthicsAlthough nature was the focus of much nineteenth and twentieth centuryphilosophy, contemporary environmental ethics only emerged as an academicdiscipline in the 1970s. The questioning and rethinking of the relationship of humanbeings with the natural environment over the last thirty years reflected an alreadywidespread perception in the 1960s that the late twentieth century faced a“population time bomb” and a serious environmental crisis. Among the accessiblework that drew attention to a sense of crisis was Rachel Carson's Silent Spring(1963), which consisted of a number of essays earlier published in the New Yorkermagazine detailing how pesticides such as DDT, aldrin and deildrin concentratedthrough the food web. Commercial farming practices aimed at maximizing cropyields and profits, Carson speculates, are capable of impacting simultaneously onenvironmental and public health.

On the other hand, historian Lynn White jr., in a much-cited essay published in 1967(White 1967) on the historical roots of the environmental crisis, argues that the mainstrands of Judeo-Christian thinking had encouraged the overexploitation of natureby maintaining the superiority of humans over all other forms of life on earth, andby depicting all of nature as created for the use of humans. White's thesis is widelydiscussed in theology, history, and has been subject to some sociological testing aswell as being regularly discussed by philosophers (see Whitney 1993, Attfield2001). Central to the rationale for his thesis were the works of the Church Fathersand The Bible itself, supporting the anthropocentric perspective that humans are theonly things that matter on Earth. Consequently, they may utilize and consumeeverything else to their advantage without any injustice. For example, Genesis 1:27-8 states: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him;male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them,Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominionover fish of the sea, and over fowl of the air, and over every living thing that movethupon the earth.” Likewise, Thomas Aquinas (Summa Contra Gentiles, Bk. 3, Pt 2, Ch112) argued that nonhuman animals are “ordered to man's use”. According to White,the Judeo-Christian idea that humans are created in the image of the transcendentsupernatural God, who is radically separate from nature, also by extension radicallyseparates humans themselves from nature. This ideology further opened the way foruntrammelled exploitation of nature. Modern Western science itself, White argues,was “cast in the matrix of Christian theology” so that it too inherited the “orthodoxChristian arrogance toward nature” (White jr. 1967, 1207). Clearly, withouttechnology and science, the environmental extremes to which we are now exposedwould probably not be realized. White's thesis, however, is that given the modernform of science and technology, Judeo-Christianity itself provides the original deep-

seated drive to unlimited exploitation of nature. Nevertheless, White argued thatsome minority traditions within Christianity (e.g., the views of St. Francis) mightprovide an antidote to the “arrogance” of a mainstream tradition steeped inanthropocentrism.

Around the same time, the Stanford ecologist, Paul Ehrlich, published ThePopulation Bomb (1968), warning that the growth of human population threatenedthe viability of planetary life-support systems. The sense of environmental crisisstimulated by those and other popular works was intensified by NASA's productionand wide dissemination of a particularly potent image of earth from space taken atChristmas 1968 and featured in the Scientific American in September 1970. Here,plain to see, was a living, shining planet voyaging through space and shared by allof humanity, a precious vessel vulnerable to pollution and to the overuse of itslimited capacities. In 1972 a team of researchers at MIT led by Dennis Meadowspublished the Limits to Growth study, a work that summed up in many ways theemerging concerns of the previous decade and the sense of vulnerability triggeredby the view of the earth from space. In §10 of the commentary to the study, theresearchers wrote:

We affirm finally that any deliberate attempt to reach a rational andenduring state of equilibrium by planned measures, rather than bychance or catastrophe, must ultimately be founded on a basic change ofvalues and goals at individual, national and world levels.

The call for a “basic change of values” in connection to the environment (a call thatcould be interpreted in terms of either instrumental or intrinsic values) reflected aneed for the development of environmental ethics as a new sub-discipline ofphilosophy.

The new field emerged almost simultaneously in three countries -- the United States,Australia, and Norway. In the first two of these countries, direction and inspirationlargely came from the earlier twentieth century American literature of theenvironment. For instance, the Scottish emigrant John Muir (founder of the SierraClub and “father of American conservation”) and subsequently the forester AldoLeopold had advocated an appreciation and conservation of things “natural, wildand free”. Their concerns were motivated by a combination of ethical and aestheticresponses to nature as well as a rejection of crudely economic approaches to thevalue of natural objects (a historical survey of the confrontation between Muir'sreverentialism and the human-centred conservationism of Gifford Pinchot (one ofthe major influences on the development of the US Forest Service) is provided inNorton 1991; also see Cohen 1984 and Nash (ed) 1990). Leopold's A Sand CountyAlmanac (1949), in particular, advocated the adoption of a “land ethic”:

That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is

to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics. (vii-ix)

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, andbeauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.(224-5)

However, Leopold himself provided no systematic ethical theory or framework tosupport these ethical ideas concerning the environment. His views thereforepresented a challenge and opportunity for moral theorists: could some ethical theorybe devised to justify the injunction to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty ofthe biosphere?

The land ethic sketched by Leopold, attempting to extend our moral concern tocover the natural environment and its nonhuman contents, was drawn on explicitlyby the Australian philosopher Richard Routley (later Sylvan). According to Routley(1973 (cf. Routley and Routley 1980)), the anthropocentrism imbedded in what hecalled the “dominant western view”, or “the western superethic”, is in effect “humanchauvinism”. This view, he argued, is just another form of class chauvinism, whichis simply based on blind class “loyalty” or prejudice, and unjustifiably discriminatesagainst those outside the privileged class. Furthermore, in his “last man” (and “lastpeople”) arguments, Routley asked us to imagine the hypothetical situation in whichthe last person, surviving a world catastrophe, acted to ensure the elimination of allother living things and the destruction of all the landscapes after his demise. Fromthe human-chauvinistic (or absolutely anthropocentric) perspective, the last personwould do nothing morally wrong, since his or her destructive act in question wouldnot cause any damage to the interest and well-being of humans, who would by thenhave disappeared. Nevertheless, Routley points out that there is a moral intuitionthat the imagined last act would be morally wrong. An explanation for thisjudgment, he argued, is that those nonhuman objects in the environment, whosedestruction is ensured by the last person, have intrinsic value, a kind of valueindependent of their usefulness for humans. From his critique, Routley concludedthat the main approaches in traditional western moral thinking were unable to allowthe recognition that natural things have intrinsic value, and that the traditionrequired overhaul of a significant kind.

Leopold's idea that the “land” as a whole is an object of our moral concern alsostimulated writers to argue for certain moral obligations toward ecological wholes,such as species, communities, and ecosystems, not just their individual constituents.The U.S.-based theologian and environmental philosopher Holmes Rolston III, forinstance, argued that species protection was a moral duty (Rolston 1975). It wouldbe wrong, he maintained, to eliminate a rare butterfly species simply to increase themonetary value of specimens already held by collectors. Like Routley's “last man”arguments, Rolston's example is meant to draw attention to a kind of action thatseems morally dubious and yet is not clearly ruled out or condemned by traditional

anthropocentric ethical views. Species, Rolston went on to argue, are intrinsicallyvaluable and are usually more valuable than individual specimens, since the loss ofa species is a loss of genetic possibilities and the deliberate destruction of a specieswould show disrespect for the very biological processes which make possible theemergence of individual living things (also see Rolston 1989, Ch 10). Naturalprocesses deserve respect, according to Rolston's quasi-religious perspective,because they constitute a nature (or God) which is itself intrinsically valuable (orsacred).

Meanwhile, the work of Christopher Stone (a professor of law at the University ofSouthern California) had become widely discussed. Stone (1972) proposed that treesand other natural objects should have at least the same standing in law ascorporations. This suggestion was inspired by a particular case in which the SierraClub had mounted a challenge against the permit granted by the U.S. Forest Serviceto Walt Disney Enterprises for surveys preparatory to the development of theMineral King Valley, which was at the time a relatively remote game refuge, but notdesignated as a national park or protected wilderness area. The Disney proposal wasto develop a major resort complex serving 14000 visitors daily to be accessed by apurpose-built highway through Sequoia National Park. The Sierra Club, as a bodywith a general concern for wilderness conservation, challenged the development onthe grounds that the valley should be kept in its original state for its own sake.

Stone reasoned that if trees, forests and mountains could be given standing in lawthen they could be represented in their own right in the courts by groups such as theSierra Club. Moreover, like any other legal person, these natural things couldbecome beneficiaries of compensation if it could be shown that they had sufferedcompensatable injury through human activity. When the case went to the U.S.Supreme Court, it was determined by a narrow majority that the Sierra Club did notmeet the condition for bringing a case to court, for the Club was unable andunwilling to prove the likelihood of injury to the interest of the Club or its members.In a dissenting minority judgment, however, justices Douglas, Blackmun andBrennan mentioned Stone's argument: his proposal to give legal standing to naturalthings, they said, would allow conservation interests, community needs and businessinterests to be represented, debated and settled in court.

Reacting to Stone's proposal, Joel Feinberg (1974) raised a serious problem. Onlyitems that have interests, Feinberg argued, can be regarded as having legal standingand, likewise, moral standing. For it is interests which are capable of beingrepresented in legal proceedings and moral debates. This same point would alsoseem to apply to political debates. For instance, the movement for “animalliberation”, which also emerged strongly in the 1970s, can be thought of as apolitical movement aimed at representing the previously neglected interests of someanimals (see Regan and Singer (eds.) 1976, Clark 1977, and also the entry on themoral status of animals). Granted that some animals have interests that can be

represented in this way, would it also make sense to speak of trees, forests, rivers,barnacles, or termites as having interests of a morally relevant kind? This issue washotly contested in the years that followed. Meanwhile, John Passmore (1974)argued, like White, that the Judeo-Christian tradition of thought about nature,despite being predominantly “despotic”, contained resources for regarding humansas “stewards” or “perfectors” of God's creation. Skeptical of the prospects for anyradically new ethic, Passmore cautioned that traditions of thought could not beabruptly overhauled. Any change in attitudes to our natural surroundings whichstood the chance of widespread acceptance, he argued, would have to resonate andhave some continuities with the very tradition which had legitimized our destructivepractices. In sum, then, Leopold's land ethic, the historical analyses of White andPassmore, the pioneering work of Routley, Stone and Rolston, and the warnings ofscientists, had by the late 1970s focused the attention of philosophers and politicaltheorists firmly on the environment.

The confluence of ethical, political and legal debates about the environment, theemergence of philosophies to underpin animal rights activism and the puzzles overwhether an environmental ethic would be something new rather than a modificationor extension of existing ethical theories were reflected in wider social and politicalmovements. The rise of environmental or “green” parties in Europe in the 1980s wasaccompanied by almost immediate schisms between groups known as “realists”versus “fundamentalists” (see Dobson 1992). The “realists” stood for reformenvironmentalism, working with business and government to soften the impact ofpollution and resource depletion especially on fragile ecosystems or endangeredspecies. The “fundies” argued for radical change, the setting of stringent newpriorities, and even the overthrow of capitalism and liberal individualism, whichwere taken as the major ideological causes of anthropogenic environmentaldevastation. (Not that collectivist or communist countries do better in terms of theirenvironmental record (see Dominick 1998).)

Underlying these political disagreements was the distinction between “shallow” and“deep” environmental movements, a distinction introduced in the early 1970s byanother major influence on contemporary environmental ethics, the Norwegianphilosopher and climber Arne Næss. Since the work of Næss has been significant inenvironmental politics, the discussion of his position is given in a separate sectionbelow.

3. Environmental Ethics and Politics3.1 Deep Ecology

“Deep ecology” was born in Scandinavia, the result of discussions between Næssand his colleagues Sigmund Kvaløy and Nils Faarlund (see Næss 1973 and 1989;also see Witoszek and Brennan (eds.) 1999 for a historical survey and commentary

on the development of deep ecology). All three shared a passion for the greatmountains. On a visit to the Himalayas, they became impressed with aspects of“Sherpa culture” particularly when they found that their Sherpa guides regardedcertain mountains as sacred and accordingly would not venture onto them.Subsequently, Næss formulated a position which extended the reverence the threeNorwegians and the Sherpas felt for mountains to other natural things in general.

The “shallow ecology movement”, as Næss (1973) calls it, is the “fight againstpollution and resource depletion”, the central objective of which is “the health andaffluence of people in the developed countries.” The “deep ecology movement”, incontrast, endorses “biospheric egalitarianism”, the view that all living things arealike in having value in their own right, independent of their usefulness to others.The deep ecologist respects this intrinsic value, taking care, for example, whenwalking on the mountainside not to cause unnecessary damage to the plants.

Inspired by Spinoza's metaphysics, another key feature of Næss's deep ecology isthe rejection of atomistic individualism. The idea that a human being is such anindividual possessing a separate essence, Næss argues, radically separates thehuman self from the rest of the world. To make such a separation not only leads toselfishness towards other people, but also induces human selfishness towardsnature. As a counter to egoism at both the individual and species level, Næssproposes the adoption of an alternative relational “total-field image” of the world.According to this relationalism, organisms (human or otherwise) are best understoodas “knots” in the biospherical net. The identity of a living thing is essentiallyconstituted by its relations to other things in the world, especially its ecologicalrelations to other living things. If people conceptualise themselves and the world inrelational terms, the deep ecologists argue, then people will take better care ofnature and the world in general.

As developed by Næss and others, the position also came to focus on the possibilityof the identification of the human ego with nature. The idea is, briefly, that byidentifying with nature I can enlarge the boundaries of the self beyond my skin. Mylarger -- ecological -- Self (the capital “S” emphasizes that I am something largerthan my body and consciousness), deserves respect as well. To respect and to carefor my Self is also to respect and to care for the natural environment, which isactually part of me and with which I should identify. “Self-realization”, in otherwords, is the reconnection of the shriveled human individual with the wider naturalenvironment. Næss maintains that the deep satisfaction that we receive fromidentification with nature and close partnership with other forms of life in naturecontributes significantly to our life quality. (One clear historical antecedent to thiskind of nature spiritualism is the romanticism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau asexpressed in his last work, the Reveries of the Solitary Walker)

When Næss's view crossed the Atlantic, it was sometimes merged with ideas

emerging from Leopold's land ethic (see Devall and Sessions 1985; also seeSessions (ed) 1995). But Næss -- wary of the apparent totalitarian politicalimplications of Leopold's position that individual interests and well-being should besubordinated to the holistic good of the earth's biotic community (see section 4below) -- has always taken care to distance himself from advocating any sort of“land ethic”. (See Anker 1999 for cautions on interpreting Næss's relationalism as anendorsement of the kind of holism displayed in the land ethic, cf, Grey 1993). Somecritics have argued that Næss's deep ecology is no more than an extended social-democratic version of utilitarianism, which counts human interests in the samecalculation alongside the interests of all natural things (e.g., trees, wolves, bears,rivers, forests and mountains) in the natural environment (see Witoszek 1997).However, Næss failed to explain in any detail how to make sense of the idea thatoysters or barnacles, termites or bacteria could have interests of any morallyrelevant sort at all. Without an account of this, Næss's early “biosphericegalitarianism” -- that all living things whatsoever had a similar right to live andflourish -- was an indeterminate principle in practical terms. It also remains unclearin what sense rivers, mountains and forests can be regarded as possessors of anykind of interests. This is an issue on which Næss has always remained elusive.

Biospheric egalitarianism was modified in the 1980s to the weaker claim that theflourishing of both human and non-human life have value in themselves. At thesame time, Næss declared that his own favoured ecological philosophy -- “EcosophyT”, as he called it after his Tvergastein mountain cabin -- was only one of severalpossible foundations for an environmental ethic. Deep ecology ceased to be aspecific doctrine, but instead became a “platform”, of eight simple points, on whichNæss hoped all deep green thinkers could agree. The platform was conceived asestablishing a middle ground, between underlying philosophical orientations,whether Christian, Buddhist, Daoist, process philosophy, or whatever, and thepractical principles for action in specific situations, principles generated from theunderlying philosophies. Thus the deep ecological movement became explicitlypluralist (see Brennan 1999; c.f. Light 1996).

While Næss's Ecosophy T sees human Self-realization as a solution to theenvironmental crises resulting from human selfishness and exploitation of nature,some of the followers of the deep ecology platform in the United States andAustralia further argue that the expansion of the human self to include nonhumannature is supported by the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, which issaid to have dissolved the boundaries between the observer and the observed (seeFox 1984, 1990, and Devall and Sessions 1985; cf. Callicott 1985). These"relationalist" developments of deep ecology are, however, criticized by somefeminist theorists. The idea of nature as part of oneself, one might argue, couldjustify the continued exploitation of nature instead. For one is presumably moreentitled to treat oneself in whatever ways one likes than to treat another independentagent in whatever ways one likes. According to some feminist critics, the deep

ecological theory of the “expanded self” is in effect a disguised form of humancolonialism, unable to give nature its due as a genuine “other” independent ofhuman interest and purposes (see Plumwood 1993, Ch. 7, 1999, and Warren 1999).

Meanwhile, some third-world critics have accused deep ecology of being elitist inits attempts to preserve wilderness experiences for only a select group ofeconomically and socio-politically well-off people. The Indian writer RamachandraGuha (1989, 1999) for instance, depicts the activities of many western-basedconservation groups as a new form of cultural imperialism, aimed at securingconverts to conservationism (cf. Bookchin 1987 and Brennan 1998a). “Greenmissionaries”, as Guha calls them, represent a movement aimed at furtherdispossessing the world's poor and indigenous people. “Putting deep ecology in itsplace,” he writes, “is to recognize that the trends it derides as “shallow” ecologymight in fact be varieties of environmentalism that are more apposite, morerepresentative and more popular in the countries of the South.” Although Næsshimself repudiates suggestions that deep ecology is committed to any imperialism(see Witoszek and Brennan (eds.) 1999, Ch. 36-7 and 41), Guha's criticism raisesimportant questions about the application of deep ecological principles in differentsocial, economic and cultural contexts. Finally, in other critiques, deep ecology isportrayed as having an inconsistent utopian vision (see Anker and Witoszek 1998).

3.2 Feminism and the Environment

Broadly speaking, a feminist issue is any that contributes in some way tounderstanding the oppression of women. Feminist theories attempt to analyzewomen's oppression, its causes and consequences, and suggest strategies anddirections for women's liberation. By the mid 1970s, feminist writers had raised theissue of whether patriarchal modes of thinking encouraged not only widespreadinferiorizing and colonizing of women, but also of people of colour, animals andnature. Sheila Collins (1974), for instance, argued that male-dominated culture orpatriarchy is supported by four interlocking pillars: sexism, racism, classexploitation, and ecological destruction.

Emphasizing the importance of feminism to the environmental movement andvarious other liberation movements, some writers, such as Ynestra King (1989a and1989b), argue that the domination of women by men is historically the original formof domination in human society, from which all other hierarchies -- of rank, class,and political power -- flow. For instance, human exploitation of nature may be seenas a manifestation and extension of the oppression of women, in that it is the resultof associating nature with the female, which had been already inferiorized andoppressed by the male-dominating culture. But within the plurality of feministpositions, other writers, such as Val Plumwood (1993), understand the oppression ofwomen as only one of the many parallel forms of oppression sharing and supportedby a common ideological structure, in which one party (the colonizer, whether male,

white or human) uses a number of conceptual and rhetorical devices to privilege itsinterests over that of the other party (the colonized: whether female, people ofcolour, or animals). Facilitated by a common structure, seemingly diverse forms ofoppression can mutually reinforce each other (Warren 1987, 1990, 1994, Cheney1989, and Plumwood 1993).

Not all feminist theorists would call that common underlying oppressive structure“androcentric” or “patriarchal”. But it is generally agreed that core features of thestructure include “dualism”, hierarchical thinking, and the “logic of domination”,which are typical of, if not essential to, male-chauvinism. These patterns of thinkingand conceptualizing the world, many feminist theorists argue, also nourish andsustain other forms of chauvinism, including, human-chauvinism (i.e.,anthropocentrism), which is responsible for much human exploitation of, anddestructiveness towards, nature. The dualistic way of thinking, for instance, sees theworld in polar opposite terms, such as male/female, masculinity/femininity,reason/emotion, freedom/necessity, active/passive, mind/body, pure/soiled,white/coloured, civilized/primitive, transcendent/immanent, human/animal,culture/nature. Furthermore, under dualism all the first items in these contrastingpairs are assimilated with each other, and all the second items are likewise linkedwith each other. For example, the male is seen to be associated with the rational,active, creative, Cartesian human mind, and civilized, orderly, transcendent culture;whereas the female is regarded as tied to the emotional, passive, determined animalbody, and primitive, disorderly, immanent nature. These interlocking dualisms arenot just descriptive dichotomies, according to the feminists, but involve aprescriptive privileging of one side of the opposed items over the other. Dualismconfers superiority to everything on the male side, but inferiority to everything onthe female side. The “logic of domination” then dictates that those on the superiorside (e.g., men, rational beings, humans) are morally entitled to dominate and utilizethose on the inferior side (e.g., women, beings lacking in rationality, nonhumans) asmere means.

The problem with dualistic and hierarchical modes of thinking, however, is not justthat that they are epistemically unreliable. It is not just that the dominating partyoften falsely sees the dominated party as lacking (or possessing) the allegedlysuperior (or inferior) qualities, or that the dominated party often internalizes falsestereotypes of itself given by its oppressors, or that stereotypical thinking oftenoverlooks salient and important differences among individuals. More important,according to feminist analyses, the very premise of prescriptive dualism -- thevaluing of attributes of one polarized side and the devaluing of those of the other,the idea that domination and oppression can be justified by appealing to attributeslike masculinity, rationality, being civilized or developed, etc. -- is itselfproblematic.

Feminism represents a radical challenge for environmental thinking, politics, and

traditional social ethical perspectives. It promises to link environmental questionswith wider social problems concerning various kinds of discrimination andexploitation, and fundamental investigations of human psychology. However,whether there are conceptual, causal or merely contingent connections among thedifferent forms of oppression and liberation remains a contested issue (see Green1994). The term “ecofeminism” (first coined by Françoise d'Eaubonne in 1974) or“ecological feminism” was for a time generally applied to any view that combinesenvironmental advocacy with feminist analysis. However, because of the varietiesof, and disagreements among, feminist theories, the label may be too wide to beinformative and has generally fallen from use.

3.3 Disenchantment and the New Animism

An often overlooked source of ecological ideas is the work of the neo-MarxistFrankfurt School of critical theory founded by Max Horkheimer and TheodoreAdorno (Horkheimer and Adorno 1969). While classical Marxists regard nature as aresource to be transformed by human labour and utilized for human purposes,Horkheimer and Adorno saw Marx himself as representative of the problem of“human alienation”. At the root of this alienation, they argue, is a narrow positivistconception of rationality -- which sees rationality as an instrument for pursuingprogress, power and technological control, and takes observation, measurement andthe application of purely quantitative methods to be capable of solving all problems.Such a positivistic view of science combines determinism with optimism. Naturalprocesses as well as human activities are seen to be predictable and manipulable.Nature (and, likewise, human nature) is no longer mysterious, uncontrollable, orfearsome. Instead, it is reduced to an object strictly governed by natural laws, whichtherefore can be studied, known, and employed to our benefit. By promisinglimitless knowledge and power, the positivism of science and technology not onlyremoves our fear of nature, the critical theorists argue, but also destroys our sense ofawe and wonder towards it. That is to say, positivism “disenchants” nature -- alongwith everything that can be studied by the sciences, whether natural, social orhuman.

The progress in knowledge and material well-being may not be a bad thing in itself,where the consumption and control of nature is a necessary part of human life.However, the critical theorists argue that the positivistic disenchantment of naturalthings (and, likewise, of human beings -- because they too can be studied andmanipulated by science) disrupts our relationship with them, encouraging theundesirable attitude that they are nothing more than things to be probed, consumedand dominated. According to the critical theorists, the oppression of “outer nature”(i.e., the natural environment) through science and technology is bought at a veryhigh price: the project of domination requires the suppression of our own “innernature” (i.e., human nature) – e.g., human creativity, autonomy, and the manifoldneeds, vulnerabilities and longings at the centre of human life. To remedy such an

alienation, the project of Horkheimer and Adorno is to replace the narrowpositivistic and instrumentalist model of rationality with a more humanistic one, inwhich the values of the aesthetic, moral, sensuous and expressive aspects of humanlife play a central part. Thus, their aim is not to give up our rational faculties orpowers of analysis and logic. Rather, the ambition is to arrive at a dialecticalsynthesis between Romanticism and Enlightenment, to return to anti-deterministicvalues of freedom, spontaneity and creativity.

In his later work, Adorno advocates a re-enchanting aesthetic attitude of “sensuousimmediacy” towards nature. Not only do we stop seeing nature as primarily, orsimply, an object of consumption, we are also able to be directly and spontaneouslyacquainted with nature without interventions from our rational faculties. Accordingto Adorno, works of art, like natural things, always involve an “excess”, somethingmore than their mere materiality and exchange value (see Vogel 1996, ch. 4.4 for adetailed discussion of Adorno's views on art, labour and domination). The re-enchantment of the world through aesthetic experience, he argues, is also at thesame time a re-enchantment of human lives and purposes. Adorno's work remainslargely unexplored in mainstream environmental philosophy, although the idea ofapplying critical theory (embracing techniques of deconstruction, psychoanalysisand radical social criticism) to both environmental issues and the writings of variousethical and political theorists has spawned an emerging field of "ecocritique" or"eco-criticism" (Vogel 1996, Luke 1997, van Wyk 1997, Dryzek 1997).

Some students of Adorno's work have recently argued that his account of the role of“sensuous immediacy” can be understood as an attempt to defend a “legitimateanthropomorphism” that comes close to a weak form of animism (Bernstein 2001,196). Others, more radical, have claimed to take inspiration from his notion of “non-identity”, which, they argue, can be used as the basis for a deconstruction of thenotion of nature and perhaps even its elimination from eco-critical writing. Forexample, Timothy Morton argues that “putting something called Nature on apedestal and admiring it from afar does for the environment what patriarchy does forthe figure of Woman. It is a paradoxical act of sadistic admiration” (Morton 2007,5), and that “in the name of all that we value in the idea of ‘nature’, [ecocritique]thoroughly examines how nature is set up as a transcendental, unified, independentcategory. Ecocritique does not think that it is paradoxical to say, in the name ofecology itself: ‘down with nature!’ ” (ibid., 13).

It remains to be seen, however, whether the radical attempt to purge the concept ofnature from eco-critical work meets with success. Likewise, it is unclear whether thedialectic project on which Horkheimer and Adorno embarked is coherent, andwhether Adorno, in particular, has a consistent understanding of “nature” and“rationality” (see Eckersley 1992 and Vogel 1996, for a review of the FrankfurtSchool's thinking about nature).

On the other hand, the new animists have been much inspired by the serious way inwhich some indigenous peoples placate and interact with animals, plants andinanimate things through ritual, ceremony and other practices. According to the newanimists, the replacement of traditional animism (the view that personalized soulsare found in animals, plants, and other material objects) by a form of disenchantingpositivism directly leads to an anthropocentric perspective, which is accountable formuch human destructiveness towards nature. In a disenchanted world, there is nomeaningful order of things or events outside the human domain, and there is nosource of sacredness or dread of the sort felt by those who regard the natural worldas peopled by divinities or demons (Stone 2006). When a forest is no longer sacred,there are no spirits to be placated and no mysterious risks associated with clear-felling it. A disenchanted nature is no longer alive. It commands no respect,reverence or love. It is nothing but a giant machine, to be mastered to serve humanpurposes. The new animists argue for reconceptualizing the boundary betweenpersons and non-persons. For them, “living nature” comprises not only humans,animals and plants, but also mountains, forests, rivers, deserts, and even planets.

Whether the notion that a mountain or a tree is to be regarded as a person is takenliterally or not, the attempt to engage with the surrounding world as if it consists ofother persons might possibly provide the basis for a respectful attitude to nature (seeHarvey 2005 for a popular account of the new animism). If disenchantment is asource of environmental problems and destruction, then the new animism can beregarded as attempting to re-enchant, and help to save, nature. More poetically,David Abram has argued that a phenomenological approach of the kind taken byMerleau-Ponty can reveal to us that we are part of the “common flesh” of the world,that we are in a sense the world thinking itself (Abram 1995).

In her recent work, Freya Mathews has tried to articulate a version of animism orpanpsychism that captures ways in which the world (not just nature) contains manykinds of consciousness and sentience. For her, there is an underlying unity of mindand matter in that the world is a “self-realizing” system containing a multiplicity ofother such systems (cf. Næss). According to Mathews, we are meshed incommunication, and potential communication, with the “One” (the greater cosmicself) and its many lesser selves (Mathews 2003, 45 - 60). Materialism (the monistictheory that the world consists purely of matter), she argues, is self-defeating byencouraging a form of “collective solipsism” that treats the world either asunknowable or as a social-construction (Mathews 2005, 12). Mathews also takesinspiration from her interpretation of the core Daoist idea of wuwei as “letting be”and bringing about change through “effortless action”. The focus in environmentalmanagement, development and commerce should be on “synergy” with what isalready in place rather than on demolition, replacement and disruption. Instead ofbulldozing away old suburbs and derelict factories, the synergistic panpsychist seesthese artefacts as themselves part of the living cosmos, hence part of what is to berespected. Likewise, instead of trying to eliminate feral or exotic plants and animals,

and restore environments to some imagined pristine state, ways should be found—wherever possible—to promote synergies between the newcomers and the oldernative populations in ways that maintain ecological flows and promote the furtherunfolding and developing of ecological processes (Mathews 2004). Panpsychism,Mathews argues, frees us from the “ideological grid of capitalism”, can reduce ourdesire for consumer novelties, and can allow us and the world to grow old togetherwith grace and dignity.

In summary, if disenchantment is a source of environmentally destructive oruncaring attitudes, then both the aesthetic and the animist/panpsychist re-enchantment of the world are intended to offer an antidote to such attitudes, andperhaps also inspirations for new forms of managing and designing forsustainability.

3.4 Social Ecology and Bioregionalism

Apart from feminist-environmentalist theories and Næss's deep ecology, MurrayBookchin's “social ecology” has also claimed to be radical, subversive, orcountercultural (see Bookchin 1980, 1987, 1990). Bookchin's version of criticaltheory takes the “outer” physical world as constituting what he calls “first nature”,from which culture or “second nature” has evolved. Environmentalism, on his view,is a social movement, and the problems it confronts are social problems. WhileBookchin is prepared, like Horkheimer and Adorno, to regard (first) nature as anaesthetic and sensuous marvel, he regards our intervention in it as necessary. Hesuggests that we can choose to put ourselves at the service of natural evolution, tohelp maintain complexity and diversity, diminish suffering and reduce pollution.Bookchin's social ecology recommends that we use our gifts of sociability,communication and intelligence as if we were “nature rendered conscious”, insteadof turning them against the very source and origin from which such gifts derive.Exploitation of nature should be replaced by a richer form of life devoted to nature'spreservation.

John Clark has argued that social ecology is heir to a historical, communitariantradition of thought that includes not only the anarchist Peter Kropotkin, but also thenineteenth century socialist geographer Elisée Reclus, the eccentric Scottish thinkerPatrick Geddes and the latter's disciple, Lewis Mumford (Clark 1998). RamachandraGuha has described Mumford as “the pioneer American social ecologist” (Guha1996, 210). Mumford adopted a regionalist perspective, arguing that strong regionalcentres of culture are the basis of “active and securely grounded local life”(Mumford 1944, 403). Like the pessimists in critical theory, Mumford was worriedabout the emergence under industrialised capitalism of a “megamachine”, one thatwould oppress and dominate human creativity and freedom, and one that -- despitebeing a human product -- operates in a way that is out of our control. WhileBookchin is more of a technological optimist than Mumford, both writers have

inspired a regional turn in environmental thinking. Bioregionalism givesregionalism an environmental twist. This is the view that natural features shouldprovide the defining conditions for places of community, and that secure andsatisfying local lives are led by those who know a place, have learned its lore andwho adapt their lifestyle to its affordances by developing its potential withinecological limits. Such a life, the bioregionalists argue, will enable people to enjoythe fruits of self-liberation and self-development (see the essays in List 1993, andthe book-length treatment in Thayer 2003, for an introduction to bioregionalthought).

However, critics have asked why natural features should significant in defining theplaces in which communities are to be built, and have puzzled over exactly whichnatural features these should be -- geological, ecological, climatic, hydrological, andso on (see Brennan 1998b). If relatively small, bioregional communities are to behome to flourishing human societies, then a question also arises over the nature ofthe laws and punishments that will prevail in them, and also of their integration intolarger regional and global political and economic groupings. For anarchists andother critics of the predominant social order, a return to self-governing and self-sufficient regional communities is often depicted as liberating and refreshing. Butfor the skeptics, the worry remains that the bioregional vision is politically over-optimistic and is open to the establishment of illiberal, stifling and undemocraticcommunities. Further, given its emphasis on local self-sufficiency and the virtue oflife in small communities, a question arises over whether bioregionalism is workablein an overcrowded planet.

Deep ecology, feminism, and social ecology have had a considerable impact on thedevelopment of political positions in regard to the environment. Feminist analyseshave often been welcomed for the psychological insight they bring to several social,moral and political problems. There is, however, considerable unease about theimplications of critical theory, social ecology and some varieties of deep ecologyand animism. Some recent writers have argued, for example, that critical theory isbound to be ethically anthropocentric, with nature as no more than a “socialconstruction” whose value ultimately depends on human determinations (see Vogel1996). Others have argued that the demands of “deep” green theorists and activistscannot be accommodated within contemporary theories of liberal politics and socialjustice (see Ferry 1998). A further suggestion is that there is a need to reassesstraditional theories such as virtue ethics, which has its origins in ancient Greekphilosophy (see the following section) within the context of a form of stewardshipsimilar to that earlier endorsed by Passmore (see Barry 1999). If this last claim iscorrect, then the radical activist need not, after all, look for philosophical support inradical, or countercultural, theories of the sort deep ecology, feminism,bioregionalism and social ecology claim to be.

4. Traditional Ethical Theories and ContemporaryEnvironment EthicsAlthough environmental ethicists often try to distance themselves from theanthropocentrism embedded in traditional ethical views (Passmore 1974, Norton1991 are exceptions), they also quite often draw their theoretical resources fromtraditional ethical systems and theories. Consider the following two basic moralquestions: (1) What kinds of thing are intrinsically valuable, good or bad? (2) Whatmakes an action right or wrong?

Consequentialist ethical theories consider intrinsic “value” / “disvalue” or“goodness” / “badness” to be more fundamental moral notions than “rightness” /“wrongness”, and maintain that whether an action is right/wrong is determined bywhether its consequences are good/bad. From this perspective, answers to question(2) are informed by answers to question (1). For instance, utilitarianism, a paradigmcase of consequentialism, regards pleasure (or, more broadly construed, thesatisfaction of interest, desire, and/or preference) as the only intrinsic value in theworld, whereas pain (or the frustration of desire, interest, and/or preference) theonly intrinsic disvalue, and maintains that right actions are those that would producethe greatest balance of pleasure over pain.

As the utilitarian focus is the balance of pleasure and pain as such, the question of towhom a pleasure or pain belongs is irrelevant to the calculation and assessment ofthe rightness or wrongness of actions. Hence, the eighteenth century utilitarianJeremy Bentham (1789), and now Peter Singer (1993), have argued that the interestsof all the sentient beings (i.e., beings who are capable of experiencing pleasure orpain) -- including nonhuman ones -- affected by an action should be taken equallyinto consideration in assessing the action. Furthermore, rather like Routley (seesection 2 above), Singer argues that the anthropocentric privileging of members ofthe species Homo sapiens is arbitrary, and that it is a kind of “speciesism” asunjustifiable as sexism and racism. Singer regards the animal liberation movementas comparable to the liberation movements of women and people of colour. Unlikethe environmental philosophers who attribute intrinsic value to the naturalenvironment and its inhabitants, Singer and utilitarians in general attribute intrinsicvalue to the experience of pleasure or interest satisfaction as such, not to the beingswho have the experience. Similarly, for the utilitarian, non-sentient objects in theenvironment such as plant species, rivers, mountains, and landscapes, all of whichare the objects of moral concern for environmentalists, are of no intrinsic but at mostinstrumental value to the satisfaction of sentient beings (see Singer 1993, Ch. 10).Furthermore, because right actions, for the utilitarian, are those that maximize theoverall balance of interest satisfaction over frustration, practices such as whale-hunting and the killing of an elephant for ivory, which cause suffering to nonhumananimals, might turn out to be right after all: such practices might produce

considerable amounts of interest-satisfaction for human beings, which, on theutilitarian calculation, outweigh the nonhuman interest-frustration involved. As theresult of all the above considerations, it is unclear to what extent a utilitarian ethiccan also be an environmental ethic. This point may not so readily apply to a widerconsequentialist approach, which attributes intrinsic value not only to pleasure orsatisfaction, but also to various objects and processes in the natural environment.

Deontological ethical theories, in contrast, maintain that whether an action is rightor wrong is for the most part independent of whether its consequences are good orbad. From the deontologist perspective, there are several distinct moral rules orduties (e.g., “not to kill or otherwise harm the innocent”, “not to lie”, “to respect therights of others”, “to keep promises”), the observance/violation of which isintrinsically right/wrong; i.e., right/wrong in itself regardless of consequences.When asked to justify an alleged moral rule, duty or its corresponding right,deontologists may appeal to the intrinsic value of those beings to whom it applies.For instance, “animal rights” advocate Tom Regan (1983) argues that those animalswith intrinsic value (or what he calls “inherent value”) have the moral right torespectful treatment, which then generates a general moral duty on our part not totreat them as mere means to other ends. We have, in particular, a prima facie moralduty not to harm them. Regan maintains that certain practices (such as sport orcommercial hunting, and experimentation on animals) violate the moral right ofintrinsically valuable animals to respectful treatment. Such practices, he argues, areintrinsically wrong regardless of whether or not some better consequences ever flowfrom them. Exactly which animals have intrinsic value and therefore the moral rightto respectful treatment? Regan's answer is: those that meet the criterion of being the“subject-of-a-life”. To be such a subject is a sufficient (though not necessary)condition for having intrinsic value, and to be a subject-of-a-life involves, amongother things, having sense-perceptions, beliefs, desires, motives, memory, a sense ofthe future, and a psychological identity over time.

Some authors have extended concern for individual well-being further, arguing forthe intrinsic value of organisms achieving their own good, whether those organismsare capable of consciousness or not. Paul Taylor's version of this view (1981 and1986), which we might call biocentrism, is a deontological example. He argues thateach individual living thing in nature -- whether it is an animal, a plant, or a micro-organism -- is a “teleological-center-of-life” having a good or well-being of its ownwhich can be enhanced or damaged, and that all individuals who are teleological-centers-of life have equal intrinsic value (or what he calls “inherent worth”) whichentitles them to moral respect. Furthermore, Taylor maintains that the intrinsic valueof wild living things generates a prima facie moral duty on our part to preserve orpromote their goods as ends in themselves, and that any practices which treat thosebeings as mere means and thus display a lack of respect for them are intrinsicallywrong. A more recent and biologically detailed defence of the idea that living thingshave representations and goals and hence have moral worth is found in Agar 2001.

Unlike Taylor's egalitarian and deontological biocentrism, Robin Attfield (1987)argues for a hierarchical view that while all beings having a good of their own haveintrinsic value, some of them (e.g., persons) have intrinsic value to a greater extent.Attfield also endorses a form of consequentialism which takes into consideration,and attempts to balance, the many and possibly conflicting goods of different livingthings (also see Varner 1998 for a more recent defense of biocentric individualismwith affinities to both consequentialist and deontological approaches). However,some critics have pointed out that the notion of biological good or well-being isonly descriptive not prescriptive (see Williams 1992 and O'Neill 1993, Ch. 2). Forinstance, the fact that HIV has a good of its own does not mean that we ought toassign any positive moral weight to the realization of that good.

Note that the ethics of animal liberation or animal rights and biocentrism are bothindividualistic in that their various moral concerns are directed towards individualsonly -- not ecological wholes such as species, populations, biotic communities, andecosystems. None of these is sentient, a subject-of-a-life, or a teleological-center-of-life, but the preservation of these collective entities is a major concern for manyenvironmentalists. Moreover, the goals of animal liberationists, such as thereduction of animal suffering and death, may conflict with the goals ofenvironmentalists. For example, the preservation of the integrity of an ecosystemmay require the culling of feral animals or of some indigenous populations thatthreaten to destroy fragile habitats. So there are disputes about whether the ethics ofanimal liberation is a proper branch of environmental ethics (see Callicott 1980,1988, Sagoff 1984, Jamieson 1998, Crisp 1998 and Varner 2000).

Criticizing the individualistic approach in general for failing to accommodateconservation concerns for ecological wholes, J. Baird Callicott (1980) hasadvocated a version of land-ethical holism which takes Leopold's statement “A thingis right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the bioticcommunity. It is wrong when it tends otherwise” to be the supreme deontologicalprinciple. In this theory, the earth's biotic community per se is the sole locus ofintrinsic value, whereas the value of its individual members is merely instrumentaland dependent on their contribution to the “integrity, stability, and beauty” of thelarger community. A straightforward implication of this version of the land ethic isthat an individual member of the biotic community ought to be sacrificed wheneverthat is needed for the protection of the holistic good of the community. For instance,Callicott maintains that if culling a white-tailed deer is necessary for the protectionof the holistic biotic good, then it is a land-ethical requirement to do so. But, to beconsistent, the same point also applies to human individuals because they are alsomembers of the biotic community. Not surprisingly, the misanthropy implied byCallicott's land-ethical holism has been widely criticized and regarded as a reductioof the position (see Aiken (1984), Kheel (1985), Ferré (1996), and Shrader-Frechette(1996)). Tom Regan (1983, p.362), for example, has condemned the holistic landethic's disregard of the rights of the individual as “environmental fascism”. Under

the pressure from the charge of ecofascism and misanthropy, Callicott (1989 Ch. 5,and 1999, Ch. 4) has later revised his position and now maintains that the bioticcommunity (indeed, any community to which we belong) as well as its individualmembers (indeed, any individual who shares with us membership in some commoncommunity) all have intrinsic value. The controversy surrounding Callicott'soriginal position, however, has inspired efforts in environment ethics to investigatepossibilities of attributing intrinsic value to ecological wholes, not just theirindividual constituent parts (see Lo 2001 for an overview and critique of Callicott'schanging position over the last two decades; also see Ouderkirk and Hill (eds.) 2002for debates between Callicott and others concerning the metaethical andmetaphysical foundations for the land ethic and also its historical antecedents).Following in Callicott's footsteps, and inspired by Næss's relational account ofvalue, Warwick Fox in his most recent work has championed a theory of “responsivecohesion” which apparently gives supreme moral priority to the maintenance ofecosystems and the biophysical world (Fox 2007). It remains to be seen if thisposition will escape the charges of misanthropy and totalitarianism laid againstearlier holistic and relational theories of value.

Individual natural entities (whether sentient or not, living or not), Andrew Brennan(1984) argues, are not designed by anyone to fulfill any purpose and therefore lack“intrinsic function” (i.e., the function of a thing that constitutes part of its essence oridentity conditions). This, he proposes, is a reason for thinking that individualnatural entities should not be treated as mere instruments, and thus a reason forassigning them intrinsic value. Furthermore, he argues that the same moral pointapplies to the case of natural ecosystems, to the extent that they lack intrinsicfunction. In the light of Brennan's proposal, Eric Katz (1991 and 1997) argues thatall natural entities, whether individuals or wholes, have intrinsic value in virtue oftheir ontological independence from human purpose, activity, and interest, andmaintains the deontological principle that nature as a whole is an “autonomoussubject” which deserves moral respect and must not be treated as a mere means tohuman ends. Carrying the project of attributing intrinsic value to nature to itsultimate form, Robert Elliot (1997) argues that naturalness itself is a property invirtue of possessing which all natural things, events, and states of affairs, attainintrinsic value. Furthermore, Elliot argues that even a consequentialist, who inprinciple allows the possibility of trading off intrinsic value from naturalness forintrinsic value from other sources, could no longer justify such kind of trade-off inreality. This is because the reduction of intrinsic value due to the depletion ofnaturalness on earth, according to him, has reached such a level that any furtherreduction of it could not be compensated by any amount of intrinsic value generatedin other ways, no matter how great it is.

As the notion of “natural” is understood in terms of the lack of human contrivanceand is often opposed to the notion of “artifactual”, one much contested issue isabout the value of those parts of nature that have been interfered with by human

artifice -- for instance, previously degraded natural environments which have beenhumanly restored. Based on the premise that the properties of being naturallyevolved and having a natural continuity with the remote past are “value adding”(i.e., adding intrinsic value to those things which possess those two properties),Elliot argues that even a perfectly restored environment would necessarily lackthose two value-adding properties and therefore be less valuable than the originallyundegraded natural environment. Katz, on the other hand, argues that a restorednature is really just an artifact designed and created for the satisfaction of humanends, and that the value of restored environments is merely instrumental. However,some critics have pointed out that advocates of moral dualism between the naturaland the artifactual run the risk of diminishing the value of human life and culture,and fail to recognize that the natural environments interfered with by humans maystill have morally relevant qualities other than pure naturalness (see Lo 1999). Twoother issues central to this debate are that the key concept “natural” seemsambiguous in many different ways (see Hume 1751, App. 3, and Brennan 1988, Ch.6, Elliot 1997, Ch. 4), and that those who argue that human interference reduces theintrinsic value of nature seem to have simply assumed the crucial premise thatnaturalness is a source of intrinsic value. Some thinkers maintain that the natural, orthe “wild” construed as that which “is not humanized” (Hettinger and Throop 1999,p. 12) or to some degree “not under human control” (ibid., p. 13) is intrinsicallyvaluable. Yet, as Bernard Williams points out (Williams 1992), we may,paradoxically, need to use our technological powers to retain a sense of somethingnot being in our power. The retention of wild areas may thus involve planetary andecological management to maintain, or even “imprison” such areas (Birch 1990),raising a question over the extent to which national parks and wilderness areas arefree from our control. An important message underlying the debate, perhaps, is thateven if ecological restoration is achievable, it might have been better to have leftnature intact in the first place.

As an alternative to consequentialism and deontology both of which consider “thin”concepts such as “goodness” and “rightness” as essential to morality, virtue ethicsproposes to understand morality -- and assess the ethical quality of actions -- interms of “thick” concepts such as “kindness”, “honesty”, “sincerity” and “justice”.As virtue ethics speaks quite a different language from the other two kinds of ethicaltheory, its theoretical focus is not so much on what kinds of things are good/bad, orwhat makes an action right/wrong. Indeed, the richness of the language of virtues,and the emphasis on moral character, is sometimes cited as a reason for exploring avirtues-based approach to the complex and always-changing questions ofsustainability and environmental care (Sandler 2007). One question central to virtueethics is what the moral reasons are for acting one way or another. For instance,from the perspective of virtue ethics, kindness and loyalty would be moral reasonsfor helping a friend in hardship. These are quite different from the deontologist'sreason (that the action is demanded by a moral rule) or the consequentialist reason(that the action will lead to a better over-all balance of good over evil in the world).

From the perspective of virtue ethics, the motivation and justification of actions areboth inseparable from the character traits of the acting agent. Furthermore, unlikedeontology or consequentialism the moral focus of which is other people or states ofthe world, one central issue for virtue ethics is how to live a flourishing human life,this being a central concern of the moral agent himself or herself. “Livingvirtuously” is Aristotle's recipe for flourishing. Versions of virtue ethics advocatingvirtues such as “benevolence”, “piety”, “filiality”, and “courage”, have also beenheld by thinkers in the Chinese Confucian tradition. The connection betweenmorality and psychology is another core subject of investigation for virtue ethics. Itis sometimes suggested that human virtues, which constitute an important aspect ofa flourishing human life, must be compatible with human needs and desires, andperhaps also sensitive to individual affection and temperaments. As its central focusis human flourishing as such, virtue ethics may seem unavoidably anthropocentricand unable to support a genuine moral concern for the nonhuman environment. Butjust as Aristotle has argued that a flourishing human life requires friendships andone can have genuine friendships only if one genuinely values, loves, respects, andcares for one's friends for their own sake, not merely for the benefits that they maybring to oneself, some have argued that a flourishing human life requires the moralcapacities to value, love, respect, and care for the nonhuman natural world as an endin itself (see O'Neill 1992, O'Neill 1993, Barry 1999).

5. Wilderness, the Built Environment, Poverty andPoliticsDespite the variety of positions in environmental ethics developed over the lastthirty years, they have focused mainly on issues concerned with wilderness and thereasons for its preservation (see Callicott and Nelson 1998 for a collection of essayson the ideas and moral significance of wilderness). The importance of wildernessexperience to the human psyche has been emphasized by many environmentalphilosophers. Næss, for instance, urges us to ensure we spend time dwelling insituations of intrinsic value, whereas Rolston seeks “re-creation” of the human soulby meditating in the wilderness. Likewise, the critical theorists believe that aestheticappreciation of nature has the power to re-enchant human life.

By contrast, relatively little attention has been paid to the built environment,although this is the one in which most people spend most of their time. In post-warBritain, for example, cheaply constructed new housing developments were oftenpoor replacements for traditional communities. They have been associated withlower amounts of social interaction and increased crime compared with the earliersituation. The destruction of highly functional high-density traditional housing,indeed, might be compared with the destruction of highly diverse ecosystems andbiotic communities. Likewise, the loss of the world's huge diversity of naturallanguages has been mourned by many, not just professionals with an interest inlinguistics. Urban and linguistic environments are just two of the many “places”

inhabited by humans. Some philosophical theories about natural environments andobjects have potential to be extended to cover built environments and non-naturalobjects of several sorts (see King 2000, Light 2001, Palmer 2003, while Fox 2007aims to include both built and natural environments in the scope of a single ethicaltheory). Certainly there are many parallels between natural and artificial domains:for example, many of the conceptual problems involved in discussing the restorationof natural objects also appear in the parallel context of restoring human-madeobjects.

The focus on the value of wilderness and the importance of its preservation hasoverlooked another important problem – namely that lifestyles in which enthusiasmsfor nature rambles, woodland meditations or mountaineering can be indulgeddemand a standard of living that is far beyond the dreams of most of the world’spopulation. Moreover, mass access to wild places would likely destroy the veryvalues held in high esteem by the “natural aristocrats”, a term used by Hugh Stretton(1976) to characterize the environmentalists “driven chiefly by love of thewilderness”. Thus, a new range of moral and political problems open up, includingthe environmental cost of tourist access to wilderness areas, and ways in whichlimited access could be arranged to areas of natural beauty and diversity, whilemaintaining the individual freedoms central to liberal democracies.

Lovers of wilderness sometimes consider the high human populations in somedeveloping countries as a key problem underlying the environmental crisis. Rolston(1996), for instance, claims that (some) humans are a kind of planetary “cancer”. Hemaintains that while “feeding people always seems humane, ... when we face up towhat is really going on, by just feeding people, without attention to the larger socialresults, we could be feeding a kind of cancer.” This remark is meant to justify theview that saving nature should, in some circumstances, have a higher priority thanfeeding people. But such a view has been criticized for seeming to reveal a degree ofmisanthropy, directed at those human beings least able to protect and defendthemselves (see Attfield 1998, Brennan 1998a). The empirical basis of Rolston'sclaims has been queried by work showing that poor people are often extremely goodenvironmental managers (Martinez-Alier 2002). Guha's worries about the elitist and“missionary” tendencies of some kinds of deep green environmentalism in certainrich western countries can be quite readily extended to theorists such as Rolston(Guha 1999). Can such an apparently elitist sort of wilderness ethics ever bedemocratised? How can the psychically-reviving power of the wild becomeavailable to those living in the slums of Calcutta or Sao Paolo? These questions sofar lack convincing answers.

Furthermore, the economic conditions which support the kind of enjoyment ofwilderness by Stretton's “natural aristocrats”, and more generally the lifestyles ofmany people in the affluent countries, seem implicated in the destruction andpollution which has provoked the environmental turn in the first place. For those in

the richer countries, for instance, engaging in outdoor recreations usually involvesthe motor car. Car dependency, however, is at the heart of many environmentalproblems, a key factor in urban pollution, while at the same time central to theeconomic and military activities of many nations and corporations, for examplesecuring and exploiting oil reserves. In an increasingly crowded industrialisedworld, the answers to such problems are pressing. Any adequate study of thisintertwined set of problems must involve interdisciplinary collaboration amongphilosophers and theorists in the social as well as the natural sciences.

Connections between environmental destruction, unequal resource consumption,poverty and the global economic order have been discussed by political scientists,development theorists, geographers and economists as well as by philosophers.Links between economics and environmental ethics are particularly wellestablished. Work by Mark Sagoff (1988), for instance, has played a major part inbringing the two fields together. He argues that “as citizens rather than consumers”people are concerned about values, which cannot plausibly be reduced to mereordered preferences or quantified in monetary terms (also see Shrader-Frechette1987, O'Neill 1993, and Brennan 1995). The potentially misleading appeal toeconomic reason used to justify the expansion of the corporate sector has also comeunder critical scrutiny by globalisation theorists (see Korten 1999). These critiquesdo not aim to eliminate economics from environmental thinking; rather, they resistany reductive, and strongly anthropocentric, tendency to believe that all social andenvironmental problems are fundamentally or essentially economic.

Other interdisciplinary approaches link environmental ethics with biology, policystudies, public administration, political theory, cultural history, post-colonial theory,literature, geography, and human ecology (for some examples, see Norton, Hutchins,Stevens, Maple 1995, Shrader-Frechette 1984, Gruen and Jamieson (eds.) 1994,Karliner 1997, Diesendorf and Hamilton 1997, Schmidtz and Willott 2002). Many ofthe more recent assessments of issues concerned with biodiversity, ecosystemhealth, poverty, environmental justice and sustainability look at both human andenvironmental issues, eschewing in the process commitment either to a purelyanthropocentric or purely ecocentric perspective (see Hayward and O'Neill 1997,and Dobson 1999 for collections of essays looking at the links betweensustainability, justice, welfare and the distribution of environmental goods). Thefuture development of environmental ethics depend on these, and otherinterdisciplinary synergies, as much as on its anchorage within philosophy.

6. Pathologies of Environmental Crisis: Theories andEmpirical ResearchPart of environmental philosophy's project since its inception is the diagnosis of theorigins of our present-day environmental extremities. The best known of these isprobably Lynn White's theory. As seen in section 2 above, White argues that Judæo-

Christian monotheism, because of its essentially anthropocentric attitude towardsnature, is the ideological source of the modern environmental crisis. At the heart ofhis philosophical cum cultural-historical analysis seems to be a simple structure:

W1. Christianity leads to anthropocentrism.W2. Anthropocentrism leads to environmentally damaging behaviours.W3. So, Christianity is the origin of environmental crisis.

The second premise of White's argument also seems to have a central place in anumber of rival diagnoses. In fact, the structure of the major theories in the field isregularly of this sort: (1) X leads to anthropocentrism, (2) anthropocentrism leads toenvironmentally damaging behaviours; therefore (3) X is the origin ofenvironmental crisis. Three other well-known cases have already been discussed(section 3 above), namely: ecofeminism (which identifies X with those patterns ofthought that are characteristically patriarchal), deep ecology (which takes X to beatomistic individualism), and the new animism (which regards the disenchantmentof nature as the X-factor).

The four theories all seem to have one view in common: that anthropocentrism is atthe heart of the problem of environmental destructiveness. If anthropocentrism isthe problem, then perhaps non-anthropocentrism is the solution. At this point, it maybe helpful to separate two theses of non-anthropocentrism, ones that are notnormally distinguished in the literature:

The evaluative thesis (of non-anthropocentrism) is the claim that naturalnonhuman things have intrinsic value, i.e., value in their own rightindependent of any use they have for others.

The psycho-behavioural thesis (of non-anthropocentrism) is the claimthat people who believe in the evaluative thesis of non-anthropocentrismare more likely to behave environmentally (i.e., behave in beneficialways, or at least not in harmful ways, towards the environment) thanthose who do not.

Much of the last three decades of environmental ethics has been spent analysing,clarifying and examining the evaluative thesis of non-anthropocentrism, which hasnow achieved a nearly canonical status within the discipline. By contrast, thepsycho-behavioural thesis is seldom discussed, but is part of the tacit background ofenvironmental ethics. When it does get explicit mention this is often in theintroductions or prefaces of books, or in reference works – for example, when it issaid that deep ecology's “greatest influence … may be through the diverse forms ofenvironmental activism that it inspires” (Taylor and Zimmerman 2005, compareRolston 1988, xii, Sessions 1995, xx-xxi, and Sylvan and Bennett 1994, 4-5). If thepsycho-behavioural thesis is true, then it is important in two ways: (1) it provides a

rationale for both the diagnosis and solution of environmental problems, and (2) itgives practical justification to the discipline of environmental ethics itself(conceived as the mission to secure converts to the evaluative thesis of non-anthropocentrism). Conversely, if the psycho-behavioural thesis turns out to befalse, then—since the thesis is the common tacit assumption of all four theories—not only the discipline itself, but also the four major diagnostic theories of the originof the environmental predicament will be seriously undermined .

Central to the psycho-behavioural thesis is a problematic assumption: that if peoplebelieve they have a moral duty to respect nature or believe that natural things areintrinsically valuable, then they really will act in more environmental-friendly ways.This empirical question cannot be answered by purely a priori philosophicalreasoning. In fact, the other core premises in the four major philosophical theorieson the origin of environmental crisis are also empirical claims about social andcultural reality. To be credible, they must be able to stand up to empirical testing.For example, are people who think in dualistic and hierarchical ways (as describedby feminists) in fact more likely to have anthropocentric attitudes and more likely toact harmfully towards the environment? Are people who believe in animism (aspanpsychists argue) in fact less likely to have anthropocentric attitudes and also lesslikely to harm the environment? What about people who adopt some relational orholistic view of the world, as advocated by deep ecologists? How do they act towardnature compared to those who adopt a more individualistic and atomisticworldview? These questions about the relations among various belief systems andbehaviours look no different in kind from the sorts of questions that social scientistsregularly ask.

Of the major philosophical theories on the origin of environmental crisis, LynnWhite's is the only one to have been empirically tested by social scientists. The netresult of these studies so far has been “inconclusive”, especially when education,sex, age and social class are also factored in (Shaiko 1987, Greeley 1993, Woodrumand Hoban 1994, Eckberg and Blocker 1996, Boyd 1999). Moreover, like theirphilosophical counterparts, environmental sociologists often take the psycho-behavioural thesis of non-anthropocentrism for granted. Some of the best-knownand most widely used survey instruments in the field are also problematic. RileyDunlap and collaborators developed many years ago the “New EnvironmentalParadigm” (NEP) scale, to measure pro-environmental attitudes (Dunlap and vanLiere 1978). That scale, and its later revisions (see Dunlap et al. 2000), isproblematic precisely because it explicitly uses indicators of beliefs inanthropocentrism to measure the presence of un-environmental attitudes, thusassuming in advance that anthropocentric beliefs are harmful to the environment.But whether that is so should be settled by empirical investigation rather than by anact of a priori stipulation in survey design.

Despite the fact that there is a striking common underlying structure between

White's theory and the other major theories discussed above, no sociological studiesso far have been done on the other theories, nor on the common underlying psycho-behavioural thesis of non-anthropocentrism and its effects. This presents anopportunity for interdisciplinary collaborations among philosophers and socialscientists. Many tools and methods well established in the social sciences canjustifiably be adapted for use in research on environmental philosophy, giving thesubject an empirical or even experimental turn. Such work may stimulate new ideasabout the origins of our environmental pathologies, and for testing the extent towhich belief systems and worldviews actually drive attitudes and behaviours. Aslong as empirical facts are relevant to philosophical and ethical thought, adoption ofsocial science methods will be a means of keeping our theorising in touch with themotivations and behaviours of the people we are trying to describe and influence.

Similar points about the role of empirical investigations can also be made abouttheorizing over a range of other problems, including drought, the preservation ofbiodiversity, and climate change. While it has become commonplace to refer to thepresent era as “the age of terror”, there is increasing agreement across the entireglobe that the world is facing chronic and unprecedented environmental problems,many of them of human origin. Indeed, the United States military, responding to analbeit speculative report on abrupt climate change prepared for the Pentagon by theGlobal Business Network (see Schwartz and Randall 2003, in the Other InternetResources section below), have declared that the problems of adjustment to climatechange constitute a far more severe threat to national and international security thandoes terrorism itself. Drought, changing weather patterns, the expected burden ofcaring for environmental refugees, the effects of consumerism, and the healthdecline associated with various forms of pollution are continuing and majorproblems for human beings themselves (see Shue 2001, Sagoff 2001, Thompson2001), and raise crucial issues about environmental justice (see Shrader-Frechette2002). At the same time, the continuing destruction of natural environments and thewidespread loss of both plant and animal species poses increasing problems forother forms of life on the planet. In facing these problems, there will likely be greatopportunities for co-operation and synergy between philosophers and both naturaland social scientists.

Like many other important and interesting questions, no single discipline couldclaim sole ownership of those just raised about the origins of modern environmentalcrisis and the quandaries we now face, the relation between environmental problemsand social injustice, and the vexed question of how human beings should relate tothe natural environment in their pursuit of happiness and well-being. The moveaway from armchair speculation to link up with a wider community of inquiry maybe inevitable not only in environmental ethics but in all areas of practicalphilosophy.

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Other Internet ResourcesThe International Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE)International Association for Environmental Philosophy (IAEP)Center for Environmental PhilosophyCentre for Applied Ethics

Related Entriesaesthetics: environmental | animals, moral status of | communitarianism |consequentialism | critical theory | ecology | ecology: biodiversity | ethics: virtue |feminist (interventions): ethics | globalization | justice: intergenerational | metaethics| panpsychism | respect | value: intrinsic vs. extrinsic

Acknowledgments

The authors are deeply grateful to the following people who gave generously oftheir time and advice to help shape the final structure of this entry: Clare Palmer,Mauro Grün, Lori Gruen, Gary Varner, William Throop, Patrick O'Donnell, ThomasHeyd, and Edward N. Zalta. Also, thanks to Dale Jamieson for comments on theversion revised and updated in January 2008.

Copyright © 2008 by Andrew Brennan <A.Brennan@latrobe.edu.au>

Yeuk-Sze Lo <n.lo@latrobe.edu.au>