1. (Lynn White) In Christian religion, nature is but an instrument that God puts in the hands of men. This view can be seen as the starting point of an interrogation about “what is wrong in man’s relationship to nature,” an interrogation that gave birth to environmental ethics as an ethical concern about nature, as a way of taking intrinsic value in nature seriously.
This issue of the intrinsic value in nature is mostly what environmental ethics is about in the English-speaking world, and this has led to distinguishing between approaches with different focuses: biocentric, ecocentric, anthropocentric. All of them are related to a philosophy of nature, and develop an ethics of respect for nature. The general idea is that if we change our relationship to nature by taking into consideration its moral dimension, we will behave both rightly and usefully.
2. (Jacques Ellul) The environmental crisis is related not to our (wrong) relationship to nature, but to our capacity to assess and to master our technological activities. We are now unable to master our technology. It has become an autonomous, self-developing process, which confronts us as a necessity. Technologies form a system, and this system holds us prisoner. The challenge is to master this system, to develop the ability to limit or steer the technological process.
In this approach, the question is not so much our respect for nature as our responsibility towards a technological process that we initiated but no longer fully master.
Because there are two ways of explaining the environmental crisis, there are two ways of addressing it, and two different ethics: an ethics of respect for nature (“naturalistic environmental ethics”) and an ethics of responsibility (“ethics of technology”). Each set of ethics ignores the other.
Two Philosophies of the Environmental Crisis
by Catherine Larrère
in “The Structural Links between Ecology, Evolution and Ethics – The Virtuous Epistemic Circle”, edited by Donato Bergandi
Abstract One of the most important – and most disturbing – characteristics of philosophical reflection on environmental questions is that there are, in reality, two separate issues involved. One refers to a philosophy of nature and the other to a philosophy of technology. This has led to two forms of well-established and clearly argued reflection, each with its own debates. These two currents have developed independently of each other, and continue to do so, as if the other did not exist. But this duality is no longer tenable. Due to the generalization of the environmental crisis and the emergence of new technologies, it has become impossible to treat nature and technology separately. This paper is thus an attempt at a synthesis of these two fields of environmental ethics.
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Philosophy of Nature or Philosophy of Technology
In a relatively recent issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics (2003), James B. Gerrie documents this divide in approaches to environmental problems, clearly distinguishing between what he calls the “White hypothesis” and the “Ellul hypothesis.” The difference between the two hypotheses stems from the respective views of what the environmental crisis is related to.
1. Lynn White Jr is famous for having published a paper in 1967 on “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” where he charges Christianity (or Judeo-Christianity) with responsibility for the environmental crisis because it enhances humanity’s contempt for nature. In Judeo-Christian religion, nature is but an instrument that God puts in the hands of men. White’s paper can be seen as the starting point of an interrogation about “what is wrong in man’s relationship to nature,” an interrogation that gave birth to environmental ethics as an ethical concern about nature, as a way of taking intrinsic value in nature seriously.
This issue of the intrinsic value in nature is mostly what environmental ethics is about in the English-speaking world, and this has led to distinguishing between approaches with different focuses: biocentric, ecocentric, anthropocentric. All of them are related to a philosophy (Gerrie would say a metaphysics) of nature, and develop an ethics of respect for nature. The general idea is that if we change our relationship to nature by taking into consideration its moral dimension, we will behave both rightly and usefully.
2. The “Ellul hypothesis” is completely different. The environmental crisis is related not to our (wrong) relationship to nature, but to our capacity to assess and to master our technological activities. Jacques Ellul seems indeed to have been the first to elaborate the thesis of the “technological system” (Ellul 1964 [1954]), what is called in French “the autonomy of technology” and in English “technological determinism,” the general idea being that we are now unable to master our technology. It has become an autonomous, self-developing process, which confronts us as a necessity. Technologies form a system, and this system holds us prisoner. The challenge is to master this system, to develop the ability to limit or steer the technological process.
In this approach, the question is not so much our respect for nature as our responsibility towards a technological process that we initiated but no longer fully master.
Because there are two ways of explaining the environmental crisis, there are two ways of addressing it, and two different ethics: an ethics of respect for nature (which we will call the “naturalistic environmental ethics”) and an ethics of responsibility (which we will call the “ethics of technology”).
Each set of ethics ignores the other. James Gerrie performed a survey of textbooks and encyclopedias of naturalistic environmental ethics, and concluded that the “Ellul hypothesis” was almost never mentioned. I presume that a similar survey of technological environmental ethics would yield the same result.
In one way, this reciprocal ignorance is no surprise. The approaches arise out of very different contexts, as responses to very different problems.
1. The first approach is to be found in the English-speaking countries, mainly in the former British colonies (North America, Australia, New Zealand). It is strongly related to the way that the pioneers transformed and destroyed the natural environment that they had found. Whereas in Europe taming wild nature had been a very long process, a relation between people and nature going back and forth, for centuries and centuries, in America it took less than a century for the pioneers to destroy the wilderness, and to become ashamed of having done so. Naturalistic environmental ethics originated in the desire, during the nineteenth century, to preserve this threatened wilderness.
2. European environmental concern mostly originated later on, out of worry about twentieth-century technology, and mostly nuclear technology. This could be one reason why environmental concerns in Europe most often find a political rather than ethical expression: it has to do more with political collective decisionmaking than with individual behaviours.
Having emerged in different contexts, the two different ethics (or concerns) are facing different questions: the preservation of nature, on the one hand, and riskavoiding policies, on the other. These two sets of ethics are not even really dealing with the same nature. Nature preservation is about a very visible and sensible nature, a nature we see, feel, and love. As far as scientific knowledge is required, it is ecology. Risk assessment is about a much more abstract nature, about physical, chemical, biological processes, a mostly invisible nature, a nature that we can access only through very sophisticated instruments.
So naturalistic environmental ethics and technological assessment are two separate areas that can coexist without competing or overlapping – or rather which could once coexist. For this is no longer the case.
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A Non-sustainable Duality
To show this, I will take an example. Fire is part of natural processes, and can be seen as an example of the disturbances that play an important part in natural successions. Many plant species depend on fire to survive their competition with other plants. So this is the reason why most nature preservationists (and people in charge of preserved natural areas) think that the right thing to do (for both ecological and ethical reasons) is simply to let forests burn in wilderness areas. This is what happens every summer in North America.
On the other hand, burning forests release a huge quantity of greenhouse gases. When such fires occur in very large areas, these effects cannot be overlooked or ignored. This is so much so that, at the Kyoto conference, in assessing global warming, and how each country could contribute to facing the crisis, the fact that some countries had very large wooded areas (carbon wells) was taken into account in balancing the release of gases. So letting forests burn not only adds to the greenhouse effect, but also diminishes the volume of captured carbon.
So this is a case of conflicting ethical indictments: let the forest burn, out of respect for nature, or stop the fire to master the greenhouse effect. This can be seen as a consequence of the globalization of the environmental crisis: it calls into question nature preservation solutions that, though well-founded, are based on local considerations.
There is yet another reason for calling into question the separation between the two ethics: it is more and more difficult to tell apart the natural and the artificial, as the border between them has definitely blurred.
(a) There is no longer any true wilderness, that is, a nature which is completely apart from man, completely free from human transformation. Even in (socalled) wilderness areas, where (according to the Wilderness Act) man is only a temporary visitor, there are too many visitors, and they have become the main threat to preserving the wilderness.
(b) How can one tell what is artificial and what is natural? Take GMOs, for instance. They are highly artificial: they are the result of human design (they are intentional, that is), and they cannot exist without very sophisticated technological instruments and scientific knowledge. At the same time, they are very natural: they live and reproduce by themselves, without human intervention (and these are criteria for naturalness), which is the very reason why many people fear their environmental and agronomical effects: once they have been released into nature, one cannot call them back. They live their own lives.
In such a situation, one can see that the two approaches are no longer coexisting, they are competing, and the technological approach is winning over the naturalistic one. This is especially clear with the worldwide success of the ethics of sustainable development. Not only is sustainable development obviously anthropocentric (to speak the language of naturalistic environmental ethics), since it is concerned with future generations and views nature solely as a resource to safeguard for future generations, but even more, sustainable development means the victory of the conservation of resources over the preservation of nature, of Pinchot’s heritage over Muir’s heritage.
Environmental ethics: Should we preserve the red Herring and flounder?
by James B. Gerrie
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 16 (1):Environmental ethics: Should we preserve the red Herring and flounder? [Book Review]
Abstract Based on a survey of some popularintroductory anthologies and texts, I arguefrom my experience as a philosopher oftechnology that environmental philosophy mightbe conceived by some researchers in the fieldin terms of an overly narrow theoreticalfoundation. Many of the key figures in thefield take as a basic assumption that theenvironmental crisis is fundamentally bestexplained in terms of some failing in themetaphysical outlooks of most people. However,philosophers of technology typically present atleast two additional types of generalexplanation of the crisis. Environmentalethicists might benefit from consideration ofthese alternative ways of explaining the rootcauses of the ecological crisis.Abstract Based on a survey of some popularintroductory anthologies and texts, I arguefrom my experience as a philosopher oftechnology that environmental philosophy mightbe conceived by some researchers in the fieldin terms of an overly narrow theoreticalfoundation. Many of the key figures in thefield take as a basic assumption that theenvironmental crisis is fundamentally bestexplained in terms of some failing in themetaphysical outlooks of most people. However,philosophers of technology typically present atleast two additional types of generalexplanation of the crisis. Environmentalethicists might benefit from consideration ofthese alternative ways of explaining the rootcauses of the ecological crisis.
(sk)
「キリスト教 vs. 科学」の戦いは、旧イギリス植民地以外では、科学の勝利に終わる。環境問題も例外ではない。
でも、たとえ国連がなにを決めようとも、超大国のアメリカがキリスト教側についている限り、科学の勝利には意味がない。
そこに、「開発途上国」という旗を掲げた中国が入ってくると、環境の問題は政治の問題に変質してしまう。
そんなことをしているあいだにも、環境は人間にとってますます悪くなっていく。
価値の違いが、問題解決を遠いものにする。