Abstract
I have been teaching a course in the Philosophy Department on environmental ethics for 15 years and a course in a Political Science Department on environmental political theory (“Politics, the Environment and Social Change”) for 35 years.
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Notes
- 1.
Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988, 123–124.
- 2.
Peter Singer, “All Animals Are Equal,” Philosophical Exchange, Vol. 5, No. 1, 103–116. All paginations to sources found in my collected edition of foundational readings within environmental ethics will be made to their reprinted versions in: Joel Jay Kassiola, ed. Environmental Ethics: Foundational Readings, Critical Responses, San Diego: Cognella Academic Publishing, 2021.
- 3.
The program is offered at Princeton University. The other disciplines participating in this unique academic program are: History, Classics, and Religion Departments.
- 4.
I envisioned and advocated for the creation of this subfield in one of the first books about this subject: The Death of Industrial Civilization: The Limits to Economic Growth and the Repoliticization of Advanced Industrial Society (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990). For more recent publications in this subfield that combines environmental political theory and the history of political thought, see, Peter F. Cannavo and Joseph H. Lane, Jr. eds. Engaging Nature: Environmentalism and the Political Theory Canon. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2014). For a more analytical, as opposed to historical, approach see, Steve Vanderheiden, Environmental Political Theory, Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2020.
- 5.
Nikolas Kompridis, “Disciplinary Variations on the Anthropocene: Temporality and Epistemic Authority: Response to Kyle Nichols and Bina Gogineni,” in: Akeel Bilgrami, ed. Nature and Value. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020), p. 67.
- 6.
For an introductory discussion of the nature of anthropocentrism, see, L. Goralnik and M.P. Nelson, “Anthropocentrism,” in: Ruth Chadwick, ed. Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, Second Edition, Vol. 1, San Diego: Academic Press, 2012, 145–155. For my own interpretation of anthropocentrism, see, Joel Jay Kassiola, “Zhang Zai’s Cosmology of Qi/qi and the Refutation of Arrogant Anthropocentrism: Confucian Green Theory Illustrated,” Environmental Values, Vol. 31, October 2022, 533–554.
- 7.
For a brief introduction to ethics, see, Lewis Vaughn, “Ethics and the Moral Life,” in his Beginning Ethics: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy. (New York: W.W. Norton, 2015), Chapter 1, 13–27; partially reprinted in Environmental Ethics, 21–27.
For the reference to Socrates, Vaughn writes: “These [moral] beliefs help guide our [human] actions, define our [human] values, and give us [humans] reasons for being the persons we are. Ethics [or moral philosophy, or the philosophical study of morality] addresses the powerful question that Socrates formulated twenty-four hundred years ago: How ought we [humans] live?” See Vaughn, reprint, 21.
For another discussion of the anthropocentric nature of traditional Western ethics, see, Louis P. Pojman, ed. Environmental Ethics: Readings in Theory and Application, Third Edition, (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2001), “What Is Ethics?” pp. 3–8, where the editor lists 5 human purposes of morality, including: 1) “to ameliorate human suffering;” and, 2) “to promote human flourishing;” 6.
- 8.
See path-breaking works by: Aldo Leopold, “The Land Ethic,” in his A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989 (1948)), pp. 201–226, reprint, 133–146. Lynn White, Jr. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis.” Science, Vol. 155, No. 3767, 1967, 1203–1207, reprint, 85–93. Peter Singer, “All Animals are Equal.” Philosophical Exchange, Vol. 5, No. 1, 1974, 103–116, reprint, 173–186.
Because of the massive response to White’s famous and influential essay (more on this unprecedented academic response later in the discussion), it is often considered to be the founding article for the subfield of environmental ethics. In addition, it was White’s essay and his claim of the historical detrimental influence of anthropocentric Christianity that also began the offshoot, dual disciplinary subfield of ecotheology. However, all three authors with their seminal essays have generated huge individual literatures and have been reprinted many times right up to today. They have inspired many followers including a large social movement (animal rights movement for Singer’s position of the moral equality between nonhuman animals and humans), and deserve recognition for their innovation and creativity. Perhaps all three thinkers should be thought of as co-founders of the field with their renowned works?
- 9.
See the above works by these three authors. The specific quotation from Leopold is taken from reprint, 134.
- 10.
See Paul W. Taylor, “The Ethics of Respect for Nature.” Environmental Ethics, Vol. 3, 1981, 197–218, reprint, 199–215. See section on “The Denial of Human Superiority,” reprint, 208–214.
- 11.
Taylor, “The Ethics of Respect for Nature,” reprint, 204–206.
- 12.
Leopold, “The Land Ethic,” reprint, 134.
- 13.
Leopold, “The Land Ethic,” reprint, 134–136.
- 14.
See White, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” reprint, 89–90. For a detailed Biblical exegesis of the specific chapters in Genesis, 1–3 that detail this story involving Adam and Eve and the historically important verse, Genesis 1:28 and how it should be interpreted in assessing White’s textual interpretation, see, Peter Harrison, “Subduing the Earth: Genesis 1, Early Modern Science, and the Exploitation of Nature,” Journal of Religion, Vol. 79, No. 1, 86–109, reprint, 95–114.
- 15.
See, White, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” reprint, 90.
- 16.
See, Singer, “All Animals are Equal,” reprint, 177. He borrowed this crucial idea for his zoocentric position from the nineteenth century British philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, see, reprint, 177.
- 17.
See, Taylor, “The Ethics of Respect for Nature,” reprint, 204.
- 18.
See, Leopold, “The Land Ethic,” reprint, 134–136, 140–143, for his concepts of: “community,” and “the land pyramid.”.
- 19.
On the Western intellectual tradition of human ethical superiority and resulting rightful domination of nature, see, William Leiss, The Domination of Nature, Boston, Beacon Press, 1974. Also, see, Paul Wapner, Living through the End of Nature: The Future of American Environmentalism, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2010, Chapter 4, “The Dream of Mastery,” 79–105.
I shall discuss current philosophical defenses of hegemonic anthropocentrism later in the essay, but for now, I shall merely cite notable exceptions to this taken-for-granted anthropocentric cultural assumption that is rarely explicitly articulated, much less argued for with supporting evidence. We will not make environmental or moral progress until this assumed doubtless position is made explicit and the subject of reflection and debate, as I hope to stimulate with this chapter.
For the few examples of explicit contemporary defenders of anthropocentrism, I was able to find the following: Andrew Light, “Taking Environmental Ethics Public,” in David Schmidtz and Elizabeth Willott, eds. Environmental Ethics: What Really Matters, What Really Works. Second Edition. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012, 654–664. Anthony Weston, “Before Environmental Ethics.” Environmental Ethics, Vol. 14, No. 4, 1992, 321–338. William F. Baxter, “People or Penguins,” in Lewis Vaughn, ed. Doing Ethics: Moral Reasoning, Theory, and Contemporary Issues. Fifth Edition. (New York: W.W. Norton, 2019), 442–446. And, Carl Cohen, “The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research,” in Vaughn, Doing Ethics, 407–413.
- 20.
Leopold, “The Land Ethic,” reprint, 134.
- 21.
White, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” reprint, 92.
- 22.
Taylor, “The Ethics of Respect for Nature,” reprint, 208 (the first emphasis is mine, the second emphasis is in original). Of course, plants can photosynthesize which humans cannot.
- 23.
Taylor, “The Ethics of Respect for Nature,” reprint, 208.
- 24.
See my, “Zhang Zai’s Cosmology of Qi/qi and the Refutation of Arrogant Anthropocentrism.”.
- 25.
See, Wing-Tsit Chan’s classic work which he translated and compiled the sources: A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), and the chapter on Zhang Zai (Chang Tsai) that includes translated works by Zhang as well as commentary by Chan. See Chapter 30, “Chang Tsai’s Philosophy of Material Force,” 495–517. On the various meanings of “ch’i,” see, Appendix “On Translating Certain Chinese Philosophical Terms,” 784.
On the traditional concepts of “yin/yang,” see, Robin R. Wang, Yinyang: The Way of Heaven and Earth in Chinese Thought and Culture, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
- 26.
Tu Wei-Ming, “The Continuity of Being: Chinese Visions of Nature,” in, Tu Wei-Ming, Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 41–42.
- 27.
Light, “Taking Environmental Ethics Public,” 657, 660.
- 28.
Weston, “Before Environmental Ethics,” 324.
- 29.
Baxter, “People or Penguins,” 443.
- 30.
Cohen, “The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research,” 410.
- 31.
Light, “Taking Environmental Ethics Public,” 659.
- 32.
See my inclusion of the thought of Francis Bacon, the seventeenth century, British philosopher and founder of the modern scientific method as evidence for this claim about modernity and anthropocentrism. See, Kassiola, Environmental Ethics, Chapter 3A, “Francis Bacon: Quotations from Various Works,” 59–61.
Also on this topic of anthropocentrism’s relation to modernity, see, Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. (New York: HarperCollins, 1983), especially, Chapter 7, “Dominion Over Nature,” 164–191; partially reprinted, 63–71.
- 33.
For a succinct discussion of the current environmental crisis, including the crossing of several planetary boundaries, see, Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics: 7 Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist. (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2017), Appendix: “The Doughnut and Its Data,” 254–258.
- 34.
White, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” reprint, 89–90 for the quotations in this paragraph.
- 35.
A trio of researchers report on the immense significance of the White essay as follows: “It [White’s “Roots” article] became one of the journal’s [Science] most cited articles (by 2016, 924 citations in the Web of Science’s core collection and 4600 citations in Google’s Scholar’s collection).” See, Bron Taylor, Gretel Van Wieren, and Bernard Daley Zaleha, “Lynn White, Jr. and the Greening-of-Religion Hypothesis.” Conservation Biology. Vol. 30, No. 5, 2016, 1001. The data base reference is from 1002 of this work.
- 36.
White, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” reprint, 90.
- 37.
See, Paul J. Crutzen and E. F. Stoermer, “The ‘Anthropocene’,” International Geosphere Biosphere Program Global Change Newsletter, Vol. 41, 2000, 16–18, reprint, 317–319. For a discussion of what this proposed concept of the “Anthropocene” means for our understanding of modernity and our contemporary, environmental political circumstances see, Clive Hamilton, Christophe Bonneuil and Francois Gemenne, eds. The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis: Rethinking Modernity in a New Epoch, Oxford: Routledge, 2015.
- 38.
Crutzen and Stoermer, “The ‘Anthropocene’,” reprint, 318.
- 39.
Crutzen and Stoermer, “The ‘Anthropocene’,” reprint, 317.
- 40.
See, Christine J. Cuomo, “Against the Idea of an Anthropocene Epoch: Ethical, Political, and Scientific Concerns”. Biogeosystem Technique, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2017, pp. 4–8, reprint, 321–326. This quotation is found on 322.
- 41.
Cuomo, “Against the Idea of an Anthropocene Epoch,” reprint, 324 (my emphasis).
- 42.
See Vaughn’s discussion of “the dominance of moral norms” in his description of ethics; Vaughn, reprint, 27. He defines “ethics” “as the philosophical study of morality,” and “morality” as the “beliefs concerning right and wrong, good and bad—beliefs that can include judgments, values, rules, principles, and theories,” reprint, 21.
- 43.
Vaughn, “Beginning Ethics,” reprint, 27.
- 44.
For other examples of such environmental political theory works beside the previously cited Death of Industrial Civilization, see my edited volume, Explorations in Environmental Political Theory: Thinking About What We Value, Oxford: Rouledge, 2015; Cannavo and Lane, Engaging Nature, and Vanderheiden, Environmental Political Theory.
- 45.
On the concept of “moral progress” see, Peter Singer, The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011; 1981 edition with a new Preface and Afterword.
- 46.
Singer, The Expanding Circle, 114, 119. For Singer, a libertarian movement (like ending discrimination against African-Americans, women and other minorities) “demands an expansion of our moral horizons;” see his, “All Animals are Equal,” reprint, 173.
- 47.
White, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” reprint, 92.
- 48.
White, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” reprint, 93.
- 49.
White, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” reprint, 93.
- 50.
For Singer’s definition of “speciesism,” see his, “All Animals Are Equal,” reprint, 178, where he says: “... the speciesist allows the interests of his own species to override the greater interests of members of other species... Most human beings are speciesists”.
References
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Kassiola, J.J. (2023). The Environmental Political Role of Counter-Hegemonic Environmental Ethics: Replacing Human Supremacist Ethics and Connecting Environmental Politics, Environmental Political Theory and Environmental Sciences. In: Jay Kassiola, J., Luke, T.W. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Environmental Politics and Theory. Environmental Politics and Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14346-5_9
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