Abstract
Many philosophers and environmentalists have advocated the development of a revolutionary new moral paradigm that treats natural objects as “morally considerable” in-themselves, independently of their relation to human beings. Often it is claimed that we need to develop a radically new theory of value to underpin this new paradigm. In this paper, I argue against this position and in favor of a more critical approach to environmental ethics. Such a critical approach, I believe, is not only more politically sound, but it is not open to the kinds of objections that afflict “biocentric moral theories” that depend on a conception of the intrinsic worth of nature. In the first sections of the paper, I develop a set of these criticism. In the last part of the paper, I turn to examine the advantages of a critical approach to environmental ethics.
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Roger Paden is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at George Mason University. He is the author of over forty scholarly articles and reviews in the fields of ethics, policy studies, and social and political philosophy.
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Paden, R. Moral metaphysics, moral revolutions, and environmental ethics. Agric Hum Values 7, 70–79 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01557312
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01557312