Let's talk environmental ethics.

This ethic does not pertain to just the largest environmental crisis, which is called by media as global warming, but is actually just the environmental crisis of our planet becoming uninhabitable -- both naturally and, out of the goodness of our hearts, man-made. This ethic applies to environment; plants, animals, ecosystems, species, and everything contained in the biotic community that we too are a part of.

The Land Ethic was proposed by Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac (which is a great read for anyone), a naturalist and one of the three Gods of (the other two are Jon Muir and the famous Henry David Thoreau) environmental philosophy, which was the start for the environmental movement started in the late 60's with Jon Muir. /history

I'll start with a little info about Aldo's perspective in A Sand County Almanac:

Aldo Leopold’s “Land Ethic” is the proposition of the necessity in changing “the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It [the land ethic] implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such. (Leopold 204)”

Such a change refers to the inadequacy and evident dangers of the Western worldview, which holds that nature is instrumental . a tool for mankind’s exploitation and unquestioned, unhindered use . to a more holistic worldview, one which enlarges the “boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land. (Leopold 204)” But is such an ethic, even now, 50 years after its proposition, possible?


But the Land Ethic's biggest proponent for the last 30 years has been J Baird Callicott, a leading environmental philosopher and, fortunate for me, my professor. Over the last 30 years, Callicott has been improving the Land Ethic, emphasizing a communitarian ethic.

The land ethic, proposed by Leopold and Callicott, is holistic in its communitarian foundation. We are members of a biotic community that includes species, ecosystems, landscapes, animals, plants, and all things within the biotic sphere. The land ethic focuses on whole species, not their individual members as an individualistic ethic might. “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.”

The land ethic, misinterpreted, may lead to the problem of ecofacism by requiring that an individual is to be sacrificed for the “greater good.” It would imply the submergence of the individual person in the glorification of the collectivity, race, tribe, or nation. It has a fascist emphasis on the whole over the individual. Callicott defends against this charge emphasizing that the land ethic is a communitarian ethic; that we are not simply members of the biotic community, but members of other communities as well, such as a family, school, or work community. A holistic ethic is not a substitute for other ethics, but an accretion to it . that “the duties attendant upon citizenship in the biotic community (to preserve its integrity, stability, and beauty) do not cancel or replace the duties attendant on membership in the human global village (to respect human rights) (Callicott 125).”

To solve some of these problems of how to act, Callicott devised Second Order Principles. Callicott’s second order principle one (SOP-1) states that obligations generated by membership in more venerable and intimate communities take precedence over those generated in more recently emerged and impersonal communities. That is, small-scale communities come first. Our family duties, therefore, take precedence over our neighborly duties; if your child is hungry and the neighbor’s child is too, but you’ve only enough to feed one of them, your child takes precedence over the neighbor’s child, who should be fed by its own parent, and your child goes to sleep with a full belly that night. The second second-order principle (SOP-2) states that stronger interests generate duties that take precedence over duties generated by weaker interests. To use your child and the neighbor’s child again, while duties to your own family take precedence, it would be ethically questionable to shower your child in Christmas presents while the neighbor’s child is, as before, starving. While your family’s interests come first, the neighbor child’s basic need for food for survival or good health is of greater importance than, say, giving your own child 8 gifts instead of 10.


The philosophy of the 21st century is Continental Philosophy, which includes phenomenology and when applied environmentally, ecophenomenology (what I practice).

An ontology is an account for something . phenomenologically speaking, an ontology is an account for what is or what is being. An ontological issue in Continental environmental philosophy would be, as Jean-Luc Nancy conceived, not just being but being-with; we are a part of nature and are connected and thus re-evaluates our relationship with nature and the world around us. An awareness of this interconnectedness comes with new ethical concerns.
The most basic difference between the Anglo-American and Continental approach to ethics is that instead of grounding ethics in value theory, Continental environmental philosophers are more inclined to provide an analysis of vernacular concepts such as respect and care, or style of life. In the Anglo-American approach, ethics is founded on what one might call the axiom of sameness; they seek comprehensive ethical categories that can be applied to humans and nonhuman beings, such as sentience.

The most significant difference between the relationship to the natural sciences in analytic philosophy and Continental philosophy is that analytic philosophy provides a philosophical defense of scientific truth and the scientific method via a positivist epistemology, while Continental philosophy is seen as more skeptical of the sences, especially in so far as they replace the world of everyday life experience with a skein of theoretical abstractions. Continental philosophy’s focus on meaning . the relationship between perceiving and perceived, knower and known . is distinctly different from analytic philosophy’s “problem solver” approach that concentrates on conceptual clarification through analytical distinctions.


So what I'm getting at here is that an environmental ethic needs to be an acknowledgement of not just the environment as if you were outside of it, but the biotic community you're a part (and a small part) of, in which you affect and create the environment. A communitarian ethic works in human civilization and can senseably work if we allow our ethics to evolve to include other members of the biotic community.

We already do this with our pets. Callicott uses Midgley’s concept of “mixed communities” to include domestic animals in a communitarian ethic. The communitarian foundation is that there are connections between humans, ethics, and the land ethic. As members of a community, we hold certain duties or obligations to the community; and since domestic animals are members of a mixed community with humans, sometimes so much so that they are considered “part of the family,” we have certain duties and obligations towards domestic animals as well.



J Baird Callicott, "Holistic Environmental Ethics and the Problem of Ecofascism"
J Baird Callicott, "Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Back Together Again"
Irene J. Klaver, "Introduction"



And yes. Long post.

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