The ecologist Aldo Leopold, one of the fathers of the modern environmental movement, argues for a “land ethic”, an ethic that expands from normative philosophy to include the ‘natural’ as well as the human. It calls for a respect for life, not only human life, but all life, from the tinniest organism to the largest whale. In short, a land ethic changes the role of the Homo Sapiens from conqueror of the land community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow members and also respect for the community as such, for animals and plants have as much right as humans to live satisfying lives.
All living creatures and the ecosystems that support them, it is advocated, are not instrumentally but intrinsically valuable. That is, they have value in and of themselves, quite apart from the value that human beings may place on them. It is a biocentric, or life-centred approach that places other species and ecosystems at the same level with the human world. But what are the bases of these moral and philosophical precepts?
As long ago as the third century BC, Epicurus argued that just as human can experience pleasure or pain, so can animals. More recently, Peter Singer and Tom Regan have turned this argument into reasons for moral constraint in our behaviour towards animals. Regan argues that humans and some animals can similarly be regarded as –‘subjects of a life’, and that if this is the reason why we regard humans as morally considerable, it would be inconsistent to deny (some) animals similar consideration too.
On the other hand, Peter Singer, argues for the necessity of non-human animals to be included under our umbrella of moral consideration based on the premise that animal species are also sentient beings.
To answer what makes an animal morally significant, however, why men believe the human life supremely valuable and why human beings accord their own interests equal and special consideration, must first be addressed. “[T]he doctrine of the sanctity of human life” and “the principle of equal consideration of interests” are two ideas which explain why a human life is valuable and why all men are equal, respectively; but, they also may be applied with ease to others than the human species. At a most basic level, an aspect of the debate over the extension of equal consideration of interests to non-human animals focuses on the issue of pain. Animals like rodents can feel physical pain, and more complex beings can experience emotional pain.
The ability to suffer is the threshold of consciousness, and with consciousness of the self as distinct from others come personal interest. Then, it can be concluded that since, by the principle of equal consideration of interests, we grant equal moral standing to members of our own species based on the equality of everyone’s personal interests, it follows that other species which can be said to have personal interests should be afforded the same moral consideration.
Like equal consideration of interests, the principle of the sanctity of human life can be extended to include some non-Homo Sapiens. The social sophistication that appears to set man apart from all other animals is really no more than a product of cognitive and emotional complexities, the elements of which man shares with other mammals (primates in particular). Many such animals display some of the same characteristics, which define man’s life as special – such as social habits, communicative skills, and an ability to plan for one’s own, or another’s benefit.
Both Regan or Singer, however, fail to include other parts of the ecosystem, such as ‘low-order’ animals, like insects for example, or plants and micro-organisms. Further ecological ethic, seeks less restrictive attributes for non-human entities than either a degree of mental complexity or sentience.
Lawrence Jonhson, for instance, argues that organisms and collections of organisms have well-being needs, and therefore an interest in having them met. This ‘well-being interest’ is the attribute, which accords moral significance to those entities said to posses it. This applies to the whole environment and grants moral consideration to species and ecosystems as well as human beings. It therefore can be said to cover Aldo Leopold’s statements of a ‘land ethic’, for “all ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in that community, but his ethics prompt him also to co-operate …The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.”
An ecologist ethic, can be in the final analysis religious or spiritual, resting as it does on the virtues of humility and respect. It entails humility in the face of our individual mortality and our collective status not as solitary dwellers on or masters of our planet, but as one species and generation among many. It also requires that we respect life in all its forms and the conditions, both animate and inanimate that sustain and nurture it. And finally, such an ethic entails that we cherish and care for other people and other species, not only in our own time, but in the generations and ages to come. Men have an obligation to leave to future generations a habitation instead of ruin.
These and other ecological claims have drawn the attention of many individuals who have associated with the ecological movement, this constituting its main strength. The appeal of Ecologism is growing, and more and more people are starting to support the idea that it is not only necessary but also vital to protect ‘nature’. The emergence of ‘Green’ parties is a vivid example of the growing support for Ecologism. Others, moved by the atrocities committed against animals (not as much vegetation) prefer to indulge and participate in direct action. Some, such as Greenpeace activists, have even interposed their bodies between whalers’ power harpoons and their prey. They have also confronted hunters in search of baby seals and tracked down and publicly exposed those who illegally dump toxic waste.
A number of ecologists have, however, dwelt on the difficulties of sustaining a value in nature or an intrinsic value position. While the extension of the ethical domain from humans to (some) animals finds itself with more ease nowadays than it once did, it is still hard to back a position that holds that all nature, a non-sentient nature and not just some animals have intrinsic value.
The most fundamental weaknesses of Ecologism as an ethic lie in the fact that it collides with the current mode of ethical discourse: rights, duties, rational actors, the capacity for pain and suffering. The current mode of discourse demands that ecologists present reasons why the natural world should not be interfered with. Most ecological ethics tend to disqualify arguments that the non-human world should be preserved only because it is functional for various human enterprises. It is this demand for a non-anthropocentric ethics that has caused so much difficulty, because it leads to confrontation with the issue of intrinsic value: an ethic is needed that recognises the intrinsic value of all aspects of the non-human world. But what would this intrinsic value look like?
According to John O’Neill, first an object has intrinsic value if it is an end in itself as opposed to a means to some other end; second “[I]ntrinsic value is used to refer to the value an object has solely in virtue of its intrinsic properties”; and third “[I]ntrinsic value is used as a synonym for ‘objective value’, i.e. the value that an object possesses independently of the valuation of valuers.” As far as the issue of objective value is concerned, Ecologism has found it somewhat difficult to counterattack the subjectivist’s objection that value is a quality invested in objects by human beings, that objects do not posses value in their own right, rather we confer it upon them.
Another weakness of Ecologism is that there are several factions within the ecological movement, which even though most agree in the importance of preserving the environment, they disagree in the fundamentals of their ethics as well as the ways of implementing it. While “shallow” ecologists put human beings at the centre of concern and view environmental problems in instrumental terms, “deep” ecologists attribute intrinsic value to the natural world. Others, that are said to subscribe to a “garden” view of Ecologism, hold that human beings are part of nature and that part of their nature and their need is to cultivate the earth. Such cultivation must be done carefully and reverently, but it must be done if human well being is to be advanced. They allege that “humans are animals too, with their own species-specific needs and their own ways of living in and transforming nature.” According to Wendell Berry, “people cannot live apart from nature; that is the first principle of the conservationists. And yet, people cannot live in nature without changing it. But this is true of all creatures; they depend upon nature, and they change it. What we call nature is, in a sense, the sum of the changes made by various creatures and natural forces in their intricate actions upon each other and upon their places.” On the other hand, those ecologists that defend a “wilderness” point of view argue that “a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”(Aldo Leopold, 1949)
Furthermore, Ecologism is undermined by the idea that such an ethics can only be successful if a more profound and general shift toward an ecological consciousness develops. For an ecological ethic to fully succeed, individuals have to develop a conscience that not only prevents them from damaging the environment, but actually acting in favour of its preservation and well being. It is a consciousness that has to become part of their every-day lives and activities. This does not imply the necessity of protest and violent acts of reprehension against those who do not comply, but the education of the public, through speeches and more importantly, through schools. On a private level, education should begin within the household. Parents should also teach their youngsters not to pollute the streets and lakes, separate the waste and not to torture their pets. On a more national level, governments would also have to commit more vigorously by employing new and more meaningful legislation and enforcing them.
In conclusion, the evolution of Ecologism as an ethic is an intellectual and emotional process. The mechanism of operation is the same for any ethic, namely social approbation for right actions and social disapproval for wrong actions.
Bibliography
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Ball, Terence & Dagger, Richard “Ideals and Ideologies, A Reader”, Third Edition, Longman, 1999; Chapter 58, Leopold, Aldo “The Land Ethic”; Chapter 59, Berry, Wendell “Getting Along with Nature”; Chapter 60, Foreman, Dave “Putting the Earth First”; Chapter 61, Kelly, Petra “Thinking Green!”
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Ball, Terence & Dagger, Richard “Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal”, Third Edition, Longman, 1999; Chapter 8, “Liberation Ideologies and the Politics of Identity”; Chapter 9, ““Green” Politics: Ecology as Ideology”
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Goodin, Robert E. & Pettit, Philip “A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy”, Blackwell, 1993; Chapter 24, Passmore, John “Environmentalism”
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Krieger, Joel “The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World”, Oxford University Press”, 1993; “Environmentalism”
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O’Neill, J. “Ecology, Policy and Politics: Human Well-Being and the Natural World”, Routledge, 1993
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Singer, Peter “Practical Ethics”, Second Edition, Cambridge University Press, 1997; Chapter 3, “Equality for Animals?”; Chapter 5, “Taking Life: Animals”
IR3013
Modern Ideologies
Tutor: Dr. G. Slomp
Ana Martiningui
“Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Ecologism as a new ethic.”
Ball, Terence & Dagger, Richard “Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal”, Third Edition, Longman, 199, p. 251
Leopold, Aldo “The Land Ethic”, in Ball, Terence & Dagger, Richard “Ideals and Ideologies, A Reader”, Third Edition, Longman, 1999, p.433
Singer, Peter “Practical Ethics”, Second Edition, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p.56
op. cit, Leopold Aldo “The Land Ethic”, in Ball, Terence & Dagger, Richard “Ideals and Ideologies, A Reader”, 1999, p.433
O’Neill, J. “Ecology, Policy and Politics: Human Well-Being and the Natural World”, Routledge, 1993, p.9
op. cit., Ball, Terence & Dagger, Richard “Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal”, 1999, p.256
