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1 Kant and the Environment: Previous Approaches

In Chaps. 8 and 9, I have illustrated how Kantianism for Animals can provide helpful resources to animal ethicists. I have focused on two important issues of animal ethics, the issues of animal use and meat eating. However, the framework’s applications are by no means restricted to these topics. In this chapter, I hope to illustrate how Kantianism for Animals can also turn Kant into an interesting, if provocative, interlocutor for environmental ethicists.

In previous debates, Kantians have tried to show that Kant’s ‘indirect duty’ view regarding the environment can produce conclusions similar to those of holistic approaches that assign an inherent moral value to the environment as such, or to ecosystems and species (Altman 2011, 49; see also Lucht 2007; Svoboda 2012, 2014, 2015; Biasetti 2015; Vereb 2019). This is a response to the view Kantians expect environmental ethicists to take, namely that Kant’s approach to anything non-human is “ruthlessly exploitative” (Wood 1998, 189). The argument at issue, roughly speaking, is that Kant’s approach is not so exploitative after all, particularly if we consider the demands of our duties to self.

Contrary to virtually all contributions on the topic, I hold that this strategy is insufficient to show that traditional Kantianism is not objectionably exploitative towards the environment. Based on cultivation duties alone, it is very hard to argue for environmental protections and against the destruction of the environment. The duty Kant and Kantians emphasise most is the duty to cultivate our capacity for aesthetic appreciation. But the existence of this duty does not imply, for instance, that we shouldn’t slash-and-burn patches of rainforest to expand industrial feedlots. Only that we should not do it with a lust for wanton destruction. The Kantian contributions to environmental ethics that are enthusiastic about the potential of cultivation duties—while they explore a worthwhile and interesting philosophical move—have generally underestimated the problems posed by Kant’s anthropocentrism. Worse yet, by merely reproducing the results of holistic approaches, they obfuscate what could be interestingly different about a Kantian approach that clearly privileges moral patients over the rest of the natural world.

Kantianism for Animals offers an alternative by going the other way: Instead of claiming that its approach to the environment is not exploitative, it can argue that once the line of moral concern is moved to include animals, a largely exploitative approach to the unfeeling environment is not obviously objectionable. Kantianism for Animals makes it simple to account for rainforest-feedlot cases. But that is simply due to the contingent overlap between our duties to animals and the demands of holistic environmentalism (see Jamieson 1998, 46). We should make no secret of the fact that Kantianism for Animals is a thoroughly individualistic ethical system which demands, for the most part, that we use unfeeling nature as a means to the happiness of animals and human beings. It belongs firmly in the camp of animal liberationist or sentientist ethics, whose contrasts with more holistic environmental ethics are well known (Callicott 1980; Crisp 1998; Varner 2001). But on the one hand, precisely because it is almost unabashedly exploitative of the unfeeling environment, Kantianism for Animals is a more independent, and thus more interesting, Kantian interlocutor position for environmental ethicists. On the other hand, the notion of duties to self helps the framework to avoid some pitfalls of animal liberationist positions in environmental ethics. This makes it all the more helpful to work with.

To start with, consider that environmental ethicists are typically unenthusiastic about Kant. As Rolston puts it, “Kant was still a residual egoist” (Rolston 1988, 340), because he establishes moral principles only between subjects capable of rationally striving for their own happiness and exploiting their environment. Perhaps the most infamous quote of Kant’s in environmental ethics is the beginning of the Anthropology:

The fact that the human being can have the “I” in his representations raises him infinitely above all other beings on earth. Because of this he is a person, and by virtue of the unity of consciousness through all changes that happen to him, one and the same person—i.e., through rank and dignity an entirely different being from things, such as irrational animals, with which one can do as one likes. (Anth 7:127.04–10)

In another remark, Kant has an early human being address a sheep with the words: “Nature has given you the skin you wear not for you but for me” (Muthmaßlicher Anfang 8:114.07–09). Kant means to say that the human being was right. Now, as we have seen in Chap. 3, his considered view is not that human beings can exploit anything non-human in just any way they please. Duties to self demand that we at least conserve our capacity for sympathy and gratitude, hence refrain from acting from cruelty as a motive. Still, it is hard to deny that Kant’s remarks express an approach to animals and the environment that is fundamentally exploitative. Kant answers the question whether human beings may exploit animals and the environment not with “No”, but with “Yes, but…”.

In another passage, Kant designates human beings as the ‘end of creation’:

For what are [animals], together with all the proceeding natural kingdoms, good? For the human being, for the diverse uses which his understanding teaches him to make of all these creatures; and he is the ultimate end of the creation here on earth, because he is the only being on earth who forms a concept of ends for himself and who by means of his reason can make a system of ends out of an aggregate of purposively formed things. (CPJ 5:426.34–427.03)

In this case, however, Kant is not clearly making a moral statement about whether human beings may exploit their environment. The purpose of this passage in the Critique of the Power of Judgment is rather to illustrate two kinds of purposiveness (Moyer 2001, 85; see Sect. 6.4). One thing in nature may be ‘good for’ another like plants are ‘good for’ herbivores. This is a matter of what Kant calls ‘ends of nature’ (Naturzwecke). Roughly speaking, ends of nature are a matter of ecological and biological functionality (Euler 2015, 2747). In this sense, human beings too are only ‘there for’ other things in nature, as Kant notes shortly after (CPrR 5:427.11–13; see also MM 6:434.22–25). In the passage quoted, however, Kant means to emphasise that in another sense, everything in nature is ‘good for’, or ‘there for’ human beings alone. This is so because, to Kant’s mind, human beings alone use means to practical ends, while all other animals function purely by instinct and lack instrumental practical reason altogether (see Sect. 6.3). It is only to the human mind that things appear like potential means to ends, Kant holds. So in this sense, all of nature is ‘there for’ human beings alone, and human beings are right to think of themselves as the end of all creation in this very specific sense.

However, that not all of Kant’s statements truly express an exploitative attitude towards the non-human environment does not show that Kant’s moral philosophy does not encourage such an attitude. Setting aside Kant’s own stated words, it is easy to construct a Kantian case in favour of an aggressively exploitative stance towards the non-human environment: Kant’s moral philosophy demands that we promote the two obligatory ends, which are the happiness of other human beings and our own moral perfection. We ought to use the natural world as a means to these ends. Therefore, while we ought not to exploit nature selfishly as a means to our own happiness, we ought to exploit it to the benefit of other human beings. This Kantian view prima facie encourages any exploitation of the environment that benefits human beings—even, say, to slash-and-burn a patch of rainforest land to establish a feedlot. And in contrast to a mere permission to exploit, this line of reasoning suggests that we have a duty to exploit our environment for the benefit of other human beings.

At first glance, then, environmental ethicists would not be wrong to think that Kant’s approach to the non-human environment is, at its core, exploitative. Human beings ought to use everything in nature as a means to promote the obligatory ends, and the happiness of other human beings is one of those ends. But if Kant cannot even robustly prohibit slash-and-burn operations in the Amazon rainforest, this presumably amounts to a reductio of his view in the eyes of most environmental ethicists.

The objection that Kant licenses and even encourages exploitation of the environment closely resembles the substantive objection to Kant’s account of animal ethics (see Sect. 3.3), which claims that Kant licenses indifference to animal suffering. In both cases, Kant is measured against a preconceived moral standard, a standard typically established by appeal to moral intuitions. However, and again in parallel to said debate, the Kantian response to the challenge from environmental ethics has not been to claim immunity against moral intuitions, nor to cast into doubt the specific intuitions with which Kant’s view appears to conflict. Rather, Kantians have argued that Kant puts stricter limits on our exploitation of nature than is often acknowledged. Altman even claims that Kant’s account, considered in full, has comparable upshots to holistic ethical approaches that assume that the environment has some intrinsic moral value (Altman 2011, 49).

To make this case, traditional Kantians can advance two types of argument: First, they can point out that our duties to other human beings already demand that we do not exploit nature without restriction. Arguing along these lines, Altman emphasises that “[d]irectly harming the environment indirectly harms rational beings” (Altman 2011, 51). Hence, because we have duties to promote the happiness of other human beings, we should not let them be harmed by changes to their environment.

Secondly, Kantians can advance arguments from duties to self regarding our own natural capacities insofar as they are serviceable to morality. Most importantly, Kant encourages us to cultivate our capacity for aesthetic appreciation (MM 6:443.02–09). This is the focus of virtually all Kantian texts on environmental issues (Lucht 2007; Altman 2011; Svoboda 2012, 2014, 2015; Biasetti 2015; Vereb 2019). The capacity for aesthetic appreciation is a capacity to value things disinterestedly (MM 6:443.07–08), which beings like us require to be moral. It is, in effect, a preliminary stage of respect for the moral law, which is also a form of disinterested valuing. So we ought to treat our environment in a way that does not erode our capacity to value things disinterestedly.

However, the import of both types of arguments should not be overstated. Consider first the argument from concern for other human beings. The idea is that what benefits the environment ultimately benefits the human beings in it, and what harms the environment also harms human beings. But this picture itself betrays an anthropocentric bias. As Palmer has pointed out, it is exceedingly hard to tell what might constitute a ‘benefit’ or ‘harm’ to such entities as species and ecosystems (Palmer 2011, 277, 280). And whatever we assume to be in the ‘interest’ of non-human entities, anthropogenic changes to the environment will usually have a diverse range of impacts on them. In other words, the consequences of any change will likely be harmful for some non-human entities in some respects, and beneficial to other entities in other respects. For instance, some ecosystems may wither, collapse, and disappear as a result of anthropogenic climate change, but others will thrive and expand in their place (Palmer 2011, 291). Very often, what we consider to be an ‘environmental harm’ is simply a change to the environment that may come to harm human beings. In any case, this is the only conception on which the interests of human beings and their environments are always aligned.

Of course, the traditional Kantian could move beyond such an anthropocentric conception of environmental harms. But if we define the ‘interests’ of species and ecosystems without reference to human happiness, there will inevitably arise situations in which things are bad for environments, but good for human beings, and vice versa. Not only does the argument from concern for other human beings suggest that the environment’s interests are overridden by human interests in such cases, but it implies that the environment’s interests do not count for anything at all. So an appeal to duties towards other human beings does not show that Kant’s environmental ethic is not exploitative of the non-human environment.

Consider again the rainforest-feedlot example: To slash-and-burn the forest is to destroy part of an ecosystem, which (let us assume) is a ‘harm’ to it on some non-anthropocentric conception. But to expand the feedlots would promote the happiness of the human beings who stand to gain from it, and its contribution to a longer-term harm to human beings is, at best, uncertain and complicated.Footnote 1 So the argument from concern for other human beings finds nothing wrong in expanding the feedlots but may even encourage it.

However, in the debate about Kantian environmental ethics, arguments from concern for other human beings play only a minor role. Much more central are arguments from duties to self. Altman claims that the duty to cultivate aesthetic appreciation implies a duty to preserve sublime nature (Altman 2011, 57 f.). This could explain why we should oppose expanding feedlots on rainforest land: The forest is sublime, but the feedlot is not. Therefore, to slash-and-burn the forest to raise the feedlot would be a threat to our capacity for aesthetic appreciation. So we have an indirect duty to refrain from environmental destruction, even though we do not owe this duty to the environment itself.

Three grave problems plague this argument. First, as we have seen, Kant does not just permit exploitation of the environment, but plausibly demands that we exploit it to the benefit of other human beings. But then, to robustly prohibit slashing-and-burning the rainforest, our duty to cultivate aesthetic appreciation would have to trump our duty of beneficence. There is no reason to think that it always would. As we saw earlier in Sect. 3.3, the point of cultivating our natural capacities is to enable us to observe our duties. It would be completely wrong headed to prioritise this cultivation over the actual observance of our duties to others. As we also saw, the philosophical primacy that Kant gives to duties to self does not imply a lexical normative primacy. So if Kantians want to argue against the exploitation of the non-human environment, it is not enough for them to merely point out that we have duties to self that conflict with exploitation. They would also have to explain why these specific duties to self should take precedence over our duty to exploit nature to the benefit of other human beings. But there appears to be no reason why they always would.

Secondly, recall from Chap. 3 that Kant’s account of animal ethics is good at condemning intentional cruelty, but bad at condemning the “legitimate and non-trivial” (Carruthers 2002, 159) motives that drive most violence against animals. A similar problem occurs with regard to the environment: Kant can easily condemn a “spiritus destructionis” (MM 6:443.03), a lust for wanton destruction, but he has trouble condemning a somewhat regretful act of destroying sublime nature for the sake of making a living or producing goods for human consumption. This is more than a mere loophole, given that most environmental destruction today is the result of economic enterprises. It is plainly uncharitable and implausible to suggest that the driver who bulldozes a patch of rainforest is motivated by a lust of wanton destruction, just like most slaughterhouse workers are not motivated by cruelty.

Thirdly, as we have also seen in Chap. 3, things can be good for our capacities that are bad for the objects to which we apply them. In the case of animals, actions that harm animals may help cultivate our sympathy and gratitude, and actions that benefit animals can harm these capacities. The same is true for the environment, assuming that things can ‘harm’ or ‘benefit’ it in a non-anthropocentric way.

This point becomes particularly destructive to Kant’s view when we consider that nature is not the only source of sublimity in the world. As Kant puts the matter himself, the sublime is “to be sought in our ideas alone” (CPJ 5:250.09). That is, sublimity is not a property of things themselves, but lies in the eye of the beholder. There is no reason, then, why the sublime should be found only in nature. Indeed, some of Kant’s own examples of the sublime are artefacts such as the Egyptian pyramids and St Peter’s Basilica in Rome (Beobachtungen 2:210.09–11). But then, a sublime building may help cultivate our capacity for aesthetic appreciation just as much as the sublime forest which had to be cleared for its construction.

One can press the point even further. Kant points out that the sublime does not have to be pleasant, but it can also be terrifying (Beobachtungen 2:209.15). His examples are artistic renderings of a storm and of hell itself (Beobachtungen 2:208.27–28). But could there be anything more terrifyingly sublime than the vast, complex, and intricately calculated death machinery of feedlots and slaughterhouses? From a Kantian standpoint, one could argue that appreciating such non-obvious and unsettling sublimity is an even more important moral exercise than appreciating the comparably obvious and pleasant sublimity of rainforests. After all, we thereby cultivate the capacity to value things disinterestedly at will, without this valuing having to be triggered by the senses. But then, why oppose the clearing of the rainforest if we can simply appreciate the sublimity of the feedlot more?

The upshot of this section is that it is very difficult for traditional Kantians to argue that Kant’s environmental ethic is not objectionably exploitative. Duties to human beings, others or self, only partially mitigate the consequences of Kant’s basic commitment to exploitation to the benefit of other human beings. In the next section, I hope to show that Kantianism for Animals provides a worthwhile alternative.

2 A Kantian-for-Animals Perspective on the Environment

We have seen that, in response to the objection that Kant’s approach to the non-human environment is objectionably exploitative, Kantians have attempted to show that he is not so exploitative after all. However, the arguments they can advance to make this case face serious difficulties. To simply accept Kant’s exploitative approach does not seem like an attractive option for Kantians, let alone for most environmental ethicists. However, another option opens up if we accept Kantianism for Animals: Instead of arguing that its approach to the environment is not exploitative, we can argue that its exploitation is not objectionable. Once we move the line of moral concern to include animals, the demand that we exploit the rest of the natural world for the benefit of moral patients becomes much less repugnant.

More specifically, including animals in moral concern makes a difference to Kantian environmental ethics in three respects: First, it changes what counts as an ‘environment’. It is the natural world insofar as it sets conditions for the lives not just of human beings, but of all subjects of happiness. Secondly, it changes what we should consider an ‘environmental harm’. What we ought to prevent according to Kantianism for Animals are harms to subjects of happiness, not just human beings. Thirdly and perhaps most importantly, including animals in moral concern extends the implications of the Kantian argument that we should protect the environment for the sake of other human beings. Not only must we avoid causing harm to human beings, but also to other animals.

In some cases, the Kantian-for-Animals view produces the conclusions Kantians have previously tried to reach, but for different reasons. For instance, it straightforwardly yields the conclusion that we ought not to slash-and-burn a patch of rainforest in order to build a feedlot. Doing so would violate our duties towards the animals in the forest and those in the prospective feedlot. But of course, this argument does not appeal to any properties of the rainforest that do not affect animals. We ought to exploit the rainforest to the benefit of others, and it just so happens that the best way of doing so is to leave the rainforest as it is—a lot of the time, anyway. So if Kantianism for Animals produces the same results as a holistic approach, it is due to the contingent overlap of the interests of animals and the (arguable) interests of their environments (Jamieson 1998, 46).

For the most part, however, the upshots of Kantianism for Animals are markedly different from those of holistic approaches. It belongs in the camp of animal liberationist or ‘sentientist’ approaches, and the point is well known in the literature that this camp differs from more holistic approaches (Callicott 1980; Crisp 1998; Varner 2001). Usually, such differences result in objections from the holistic camp to the effect that sentientism cannot account for widely shared environmentalist intuitions. For the rest of this section, let me highlight four major points of disagreement between Kantianism for Animals and holistic approaches, and explain how Kantianism for Animals can avoid some of the associated objections from the holistic camp.

The first and most fundamental difference is that Kantianism for Animals, like any sentientist approach, basically refuses to offer any independent considerations in favour of protections for species, ecosystems, biospheres, planets, and so on. Such entities matter morally exactly insofar as they affect the happiness of animals and human beings, plus the moral perfection of human beings.

The traditional main objection against such views is that they prohibit harming individuals for the good of ecosystems, as is the aim in hunting for the sake of population control (Callicott 1980, 312; Varner 2001, 197). Here, Kantianism for Animals largely reproduces the position previously taken by Regan, who denounces hunting as “environmental fascism” (Regan 2004, 362). That is, individuals must not be sacrificed for the sake of ecosystems as such, and this prohibition should not strike us as objectionable. We can try to justify killing individuals by appealing to our duties to others who depend on the stability of the ecosystem, and to an account of why these duties should have priority in a case of apparent moral conflict. But even this could only make killing individuals a means of last resort to be taken with great regret, and the institution of hunting as a routine and self-righteous practice is clearly beyond justification for Kantianism for Animals. What the framework can add to Regan’s position, however, is that even though we should categorically prioritise individuals over ecosystems, we should still do our best to appreciate the ecosystem’s sublimity. We ought to exploit the environment, but we ought not to be callous towards it. So for instance, we should regret having to let an ecosystem be forever altered or even destroyed by invasive species. So although duties to self do not put any tight restrictions on our treatment of ecosystems, they take the edge off the animal liberationist attitude towards the environment.

Another well-known difference is that holistic approaches to the environment have an easier time justifying duties to preserve and restore ecosystems, while sentientist approaches must make preservation and restoration contingent on the interests of sentient beings (Varner 2001, 196). Whatever promotes the good of sentient beings, the sentientist approves. Altman intends to side with holists on this matter, deriving a Kantian duty to preserve and restore ecosystems from our duty to appreciate the sublime (Altman 2011, 50). By contrast, Kantianism for Animals sides with sentientism. Whether we ought to preserve, restore, alter, or destroy an ecosystem is largely a matter of our duties towards the animals in and around them. Our duties to self merely put some restrictions on how we ought to go about doing whatever is best for the happiness of others. Oftentimes, the best we can do for the animals in an ecosystem is to leave it as it is, and as part of our duties of non-exaltation, we should keep our distance (see Chap. 6). But there is no iron law that non-intervention, or intervention for the sake of preservation and restoration, is always to be favoured. It all depends on the contingent facts of the particular situation.

A similar point applies to ongoing environmental changes: If Kantianism for Animals demands that we inhibit or stop such changes, it is because they are a threat to subjects of happiness. This includes anthropogenic changes just as much as the complex ways in which ecosystems change on their own (see Palmer 2011, 281). But in our assessment whether some given environmental change is a harm or benefit, we should not be anthropocentric. As Altman correctly points out (Altman 2011, 51 f.), anthropogenic climate change is an anthropocentric environmental harm—a change to the environment of human beings which will harm them. One of the harms he mentions, curiously enough, is that rodents may spread further than before (Altman 2011, 52). This betrays the complications of non-anthropocentric climate ethics: It is not so clear that climate change is more harmful than beneficial to most animals other than human beings (see Palmer 2011, 288). The habitats of some animals will likely shrink and deteriorate, but others will expand and improve. Some animals will lead unhappier and shorter lives, and others happier and longer ones. While Kantianism for Animals by no means licenses a blasé or laissez-faire attitude towards anthropogenic climate change, it calls for a zoocentric assessment of its environmental harms and benefits. Zoocentric environmental protection, understood as a moral endeavour to promote and safeguard the happiness of animals and human beings, should begin with the dismantling of systems of animal exploitation, which after all inflict deliberate and immediate harm on animals.

What Kantianism for Animals can add to the sentientist position is, once again, the contention that our duties to self nevertheless demand that we cultivate appreciation for the sublime in nature. Though this does not require that we preserve and restore ecosystems across the board, it demands that we do not indulge in a spiritus destructionis when we alter the environment for the sake of moral patients.

A third difference between holism and sentientism is that holists can easily account for the intuition that the last person on earth should not wantonly destroy an ecosystem, assuming there are no sentient beings left in it (Varner 2001, 200). To a sentientist, who holds that literally all our duties hinge on the interests of sentient beings, it would seem that this destruction is permissible. Evidently, Kantianism for Animals is well-equipped to deal with this case. Wanton destruction is opposed to a duty we have towards self, and the last person on earth would have it against themselves too. However, once again we need not exaggerate the import of this duty. If the last person on earth had any non-trivial reason for destroying the ecosystem, and destroyed it with appropriate regret, Kantianism for Animals would not forbid it. But this position does not seem objectionable.

Last but not least, an important difference between Kantianism for Animals and holism is that according to Kantianism for Animals, no moral merit attaches to environmental action that is isolated from practical benevolence. Its main line of reasoning in favour of environmental protection is that we ought to exploit the unfeeling environment to the benefit of moral patients, but that overexploitation may backfire and harm the moral patients we ought to benefit. But then, our environmental efforts can only be moral if they occur against the backdrop of a project that aims at the happiness of human beings and animals. Environmental action for the sake of species and ecosystems alone is not what duty demands. From the perspective of Kantianism for Animals, such environmental action is philosophically confused. Worse yet, it is likely to be driven purely by inclination—perhaps an inclination to enjoy the beautiful and sublime in nature, or an inclination to secure the future of one’s own offspring. To act on these inclinations while ignoring our duties towards animals is straightforwardly immoral. So Kantianism for Animals emphatically calls for a zoocentric environmentalism, dismissing or even condemning any form of anthropocentric or holistic environmentalism that does not oppose the exploitation of animals.

To sum up, in this chapter, I have argued that traditional Kantianism is fundamentally exploitative of the non-human environment. Though Kantians are right to point out that harms to environments oftentimes also harm human beings, and that we have duties to self to cultivate our capacity to appreciate the sublime, these arguments do not plausibly condemn most actual environmental destruction for human gain.

The key to a more robust Kantian condemnation of environmental destruction is to move the line of moral concern to include animals. Although Kantianism for Animals is still fundamentally exploitative, it is only exploitative of the unfeeling environment to the benefit of beings capable of happiness, who are animals and human beings. Environmental protections, but also active changes to the environment, are called for exactly to the extent that they prevent an overexploitation that backfires, harming subjects of happiness. However, Kantianism for Animals does not offer any considerations that favour environmental protections independently of their impact on animals and human beings. This leads to a thoroughly zoocentric environmentalism that puts different demands on us than either an anthropocentric approach or a non-anthropocentric approach that assigns value to species, ecosystems, and other unfeeling entities. In particular, Kantianism for Animals requires that environmental efforts must be connected to practical benevolence towards others, so that concern for the environment as detached from concern for animals appears non-moral or even immoral.