History of the Origins of Environmental Ethics Essay

In the introduction of Andrew Light and Holmes Rolston’s book , Environmental Ethics: An Anthology, the authors explain the basic concepts of ethics: more specifically environmental ethics, and how they apply to everyday life. The main concepts discussed include moral agents, moral patients, anthropocentrism, weak or broad anthropocentrism, indirectly morally considerable, and directly morally considerable. These concepts are the foundations to the environmental ethics that Light and Rolston wrote about; however, in regards to the short story written by J. Lanham titled: “Hope and Feathers: A crisis in birder identification,” the two terms most predominately relating to the text are moral patients and moral agents. Lanham, in this text, describes the epitome of what it means to be a good moral agent, as interpreted by Light and Rolston, where others failed.

In Paul Taylor’s essay, “The Ethics for Respect for Nature,” he argues that… In this paper I will first describe Taylor’s concept of “respect for nature.” I will then explain the part this attitude plays in rationally grounding a biocentric outlook on environmental ethics. Lastly, I will present Rosalind Hursthouse’s criticism of Taylor’s view, and state how Taylor might respond to this criticism.

Mark Fiege, the author of The Republic of Nature, was able to capture the past history through the lens of nature. Nature by definition is something so simple but so broad. We as the readers must analyze the history and the effects of nature of the United States, but we must first understand what Mark Fiege was able to see through the lens of nature, how he was able to define nature. We can see such effects in the chapters of Satan in the Land, King Cotton, and Nature’s Noblemen.

The tragedy of the commons was written by Garret Hardin. Hardin argued that unregulated exploitation would cause environmental depletion.

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise,” said by none other, Aldo Leopold. In A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, an American environmentalist, brought a new idea to the environmentalist’s table: “land ethic.” His idea of a land ethic is a moral responsibility of humans to the natural Earth. Leopold’s idea has been discussed since the publication by a wide variety of people, from the public to scholars. Since

erican life, was one of the first Americans to advocate for the preservation of nature as a national policy

Karl Jacoby. Crimes against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation. Berkley: University of California, 2001.

During the late 1960s, the environmental movement focused mostly on public health and industrial themes. During this time of initial modern development, it received little attention from the champions of the social movements of the times such as civil rights and women’s equality. Most of the emphasis on environmental matters in these early years came from environmentally driven sociologists such as Paul Goodman, Murray Boochkin, and Herbert Marcuse. Many were exhilarated to become the heads of ecologically based institutions that would fight against government and corporation ecological mistreatments. Often times they would research and issue articles that pointed out abuses that directly affected the common household such as Boochkin’s “The Problems of Chemicals in Foods.” This type of research pointed out new types of environmental issues that either did not exist or did not matter before World War II and just now became identified. These types of papers had a message that reached everybody not just select individuals like many of the previous issues such as water management, and land

Aldo Leopold is another American environmentalist who was dominant in the development of modern environmental ethics. Aldo was more for holistic ethics regarding land. According to him, “An ethic, ecologically, is a limitation on freedom action in the struggle for existence. An ethic, philosophically, is a differentiation of social from anti-social conduct.” He describes in his article that politics and economics are advanced symbioses in which free-for-all competition has been replaced by co-operative mechanism with an ethical content.” He thought that ethics direct individuals to cooperate with each other for the mutual benefit of all. Also he believes that community should be

White’s thesis in The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis states that in order to confront the expanding environmental crises, humans must begin to analyze and alter their treatment and attitudes towards nature. The slow destruction of the environment derives from the Western scientific and technological advancements made since the Medieval time period. “What people do about their ecology depends on what they think about themselves in relation to things around them” (RON p.7). Technology and science alone will not be able to save humans until we adjust the way of thinking and suppress the old ideas of humans power above nature. Instead, we need to learn how to think of ourselves as being

Ecological perspective is a useful framework in which to view the individual in context with their environment. According to Rogers (2013) ecological theory was originally developed by a psychologist, Urie Bronfenbrenner in 1979 (p. 42). A fundamental tenet of ecological theory is that people are actively involved with their environments and their perceptions of the environment “significantly affects their well-being” (p. 42).

Aldo Leopold is on the forefather of modern environmentalism. His book, A Sand County Almanac, is based on the notion of viewing land as a community and as a commodity. In the chapter “The Land Ethic”, Leopold invokes a rethinking of our relationships to our world and is based on the principle that ethics are “a process in ecological evolution” (238). Leopold describes the stages of ethic evolving and explains that the rules for socializing were originally defined for human beings. These rules are expanded upon in the next stage of “Ethical Sequence” (237-238), describing how humans interact toward their community. The third stage is the ethics between humans and the land. Upon analyzing “The Land Ethic” I have come to the conclusion that in order to have respect and ethic for land, or anything, one must make a personal connection.

“The Land Ethic” written by Aldo Leopold was critiqued by J. Baird Callicott. “The Land Ethic” in short explained the idea that humans are not superior to animals or species on earth, but humans should live on earth as simple members. (Leopold, 2013) Callicott found three things that lead to the confusion, contempt, and contempt of Leopold’s writings.

Another adjustment to the microscope, and we can examine Leopold's biocentric opinion of how environmental ethics should be governed. His approach enlarges the moral category to include soils, waters, plants and animals and claims our obligation is to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. Philosophers Devall and Sessions further define the biocentric view with the concept of deep ecology. Devall and Sessions argue that "the well-being and flourishing of human and non-human life have value in themselves. These values are independent of the usefulness of the non-human world for human purposes." (503)

DesJardins, J. R. (2013). Environmental ethics: An introduction to environmental philosophy (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.