Abstract
Even without direct negative impacts, wild nature, with death, diseases, predation etc., can seem discomforting to humans. Why should humans, therefore, care for nature if it is full of seemingly evil elements? This has been identified as a potential problem for developing the motivation to protect the natural environment, and one proposition to overcome this threat has been an ethical theory developed by, i.a., Holmes Rolston, who proposes to look at ecological transactions from a systemic perspective at which all such exchanges acquire a productive, rather than destructive, function. However, such approach, though seemingly efficacious in removing human anxieties, effaces a whole domain of experience connected to the individual perspective on the world. An alternative is proposed, which offers a more tragic and ambivalent perspective of nature and of the place of an individual in it. While in such a perspective it is difficult to build an ethics of respect for nature based on values, it is showed that both meaning and aesthetic appreciation are much more tolerant of ambivalence and the tragic. In fact, in the latter frameworks, such qualities can lead to a development of a more nuanced and profound forms of appreciation of nature.
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- 1.
For an in-depth discussion of the controversy and interesting philosophical ideas on the issue see Klaver et al. (2002).
- 2.
But see e.g. Keulartz (2003) and Holland (2011) who both point out the strong Christian motives underneath Rolston’s ideas. This should not be surprising, given that Rolston is an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church. Still, many of his ideas, even those relating to theodicy, can be intelligible in a secular worldview and no strong commitment to Christian beliefs seems necessary to embrace his philosophy.
- 3.
For an extensive study of this subject that includes not just a summary of all the existing attempts to address the problem of evil in environmentalism, but also an insightful discussion of the relationship between theological and ecological theodicies, see Kowalsky (2006).
- 4.
Kowalsky (2006) notes that Rolston hardly ever speaks about ‘evil’ in nature, and instead uses the term ‘disvalues’, at least in the works that are directed towards the environmental community.
- 5.
Another interesting direction to pursue would be to seek inspiration in communitarian political theory. In communitarian writings of MacIntyre (e.g. 1981), Sandel (1982), Taylor (e.g. 1989), Etzioni (2014a; 2014b; 2014c), and others we can find not just a focus on the importance of community, the common good, and the role that community plays in individual development, but also close attention to the appropriate kinds of relations existing between individuals and the community to which they belong. I will return to this point briefly in the next chapter. However, in this book I will not give a thorough analysis, since this would require first a general reflection on the applicability of these ideas to environmental issues raised by concern with animals and environments. Such preliminary work would take us too far from the topic at hand, though it remains an interesting and potentially promising direction to pursue.
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Tokarski, M. (2019). Individual Sacrifices and the Flourishing of Ecosystems. In: Hermeneutics of Human-Animal Relations in the Wake of Rewilding. The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics, vol 30. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18971-6_7
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