ecocentrism and the land ethic: can a community be morally considered?
August 24th, 2000
Abstract:
It is J Baird Callicott’s contention that individualistic ethical theories will never be able to deliver on the environment. He advocates Aldo Leopold’s holistic land ethic as the new paradigm for a moral schema to protect the environment. Callicott sees the land ethic as founded in the ecological concept of community and Hume’s moral philosophy of esteem. Callicott’s interpretation of the Land Ethic has been criticised as being misanthropic because it rates ‘biotic integrity’ over individual interests.
Is Callicott the ‘environmental fascist’ Tom Regan paints him as? Is the Land Ethic really the thoroughgoing normative value theory Callicott hopes it is, or could it be positing an ecological consciousness that is heavily influenced by Leopold’s personal and passionate relationships with nature and by his role in human society?
Where is our environmental ethic?
The extent to which we human beings are capable of changing the earth is only just being realised. We are daily assailed by increasing evidence that global warming, deforestation, salinity, pollution and species loss are widespread. The scale at which these events are occurring is unlike what has ever occurred in the past as a result of natural processes. We cannot deny that these changes are anthropogenic. Because we have this capacity to make the world unliveable for ourselves and other beings, it is imperative that we change the way we use the Earth and the nonhuman beings that inhabit it. To do this we need also to conceive of the earth as more than just a resource for human beings, we need to change the way we think about the planet.
Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) wrote, over fifty years ago, that,
No important change in ethics was ever accomplished without an internal change in our intellectual emphasis, loyalties, affections, and convictions. The proof that conservation has not yet touched these foundations of conduct lies in the fact that philosophy and religion have not yet heard of it. (Leopold 1949: 225)
Philosophy has certainly heard of it now, yet environmental ethics is still largely ‘despised’ as mere ‘practical’ ethics by traditional academic philosophy. J Baird Callicott suggests that this is political, historical and anthropocentric in nature. As such it is as much a political as a philosophical act to resist the impulse of traditionalists to keep environmental ethics out.
Academics have a vested interest in conceptually supporting the social and political institutions that they rely on for their continued existence. This is as much the case in the environmental sciences as it is in philosophy. Analytical and phenomenological streams of philosophy, in attempting to render it ‘scientific’ merely separate it further from reality and prevent a full exposition of the metaphysical and moral foundations of science. Those foundations are now well explicated by many thinkers primarily outside of science, who recognise the Cartesian roots of the mechanistic and atomistic paradigm in which science apprehends life. (Callicott 1999: 5) The consequent of atomism is that life has come to be viewed as object: to be dissected and put back together again at the whim of human beings. This paradigm is largely supported by western religions and mirrored in the hierarchical structure of our societies. It carries over to the way that many cultures treat the environment: as an object, a resource for human profit without any other value.
As such, a moral theory that seeks to challenge human supremacy has quite a complex of anthropocentric support systems to challenge. Indeed, eco-philosophers do consider themselves radicals. Callicott calls his life-centred, community-centred ethic as subversive and ‘revolutionary’. Paul Taylor suggests that the acceptance of ‘life-centred’ rather than ‘human centred’ ethics has the potential for a “profound reordering of our moral universe” (1998:72)
The primary challenge for ecocentrism is of course ideological. Callicott recognises that,
The whole of Western traditional moral philosophy has been resolutely (and often militantly) anthropocentric, environmental philosophers have been largely preoccupied with the more fundamental intellectual business of devising new, more nature-oriented and environmentally friendly ethical theories… (1999: 3)
For the last twenty years or more ethicists have been attempting to elucidate a moral theory that can accommodate our duties to the biosphere.
Early conservationist Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac (1949) elucidates a ‘land ethic’ that recognises these ecological connections. An egalitarian and ecologically sound theory, the land ethic is based on the assumption that all life has intrinsic value, and the importance of sustaining the integrity of the land community. In order to do this the land ethic is centred not in human beings, but in life in general, and natural ecosystems in particular. In Callicott’s interpretations Leopold’s Land Ethic he centres on the importance of the biotic community in sustaining that life. For,
If it is possible to value people for the sake of themselves, then it is equally possible to value land in the same way. (Calicott 1980: 326)
Given the urgency of dealing with environmental problems like climate change, it is a wonder that environmental ethics has not been widely embraced. An ecocentric, or ‘holistic’ environmental ethic such as Leopold outlines has met with much criticism from advocates of the rights of individuals, and has been seen to lack coherence and ‘normative force’ as an ethical theory. Yet the need for an environmental ethic remains, there are myriad forms that such an ethic may take, from those that try to define objective value in the environment, in human perception of it, or in what it means to be a virtuous person in the context of an environmental crisis in the wider biotic community of which we are all a “plain member and citizen” (Leopold 1949: 220).
Why individualistic moral theories fail the environment
Traditional moral theory has considerable difficulty when one tries to apply it to the earth for two main reasons: hitherto moral theory has only dealt with the rights and responsibilities of individuals and those individuals have been human beings. One needs to find ways outside of individualism and anthropocentrism to value and define our moral obligations to the aggregate of individuals acting as a whole that makes up biotic communities, ecosystems and the biosphere.
Moral theories since the ‘Great Chain of Being’ have specified human beings as the pinnacle of value and hence moral considerability. Traditional morality has always specified a human moral agent who is the actor in the moral play or the recipient of moral consideration. The moral patient has usually coincided with the human individual – the reasoning individual, as part of a social contract with other reasoning individuals, or as the bearer of rights. Individual humans were considered autonomous and rationally self-determining. In this climate Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) formulated his social contract theory whereby only rational human beings were capable of moral judgements, and so too they were the only individuals due moral consideration. Kant described the social contract between such individuals based on ‘imperatives’ that served as rigid rules to guide human behaviour.
Kant determined that rational, self-conscious beings were “ends-in-themselves”, having intrinsic value. He considered it thus wrong to treat another rational being as an object, to use him or her to one’s own ends. In effect, the rational being had the right to own him or herself. Only rational, self-conscious beings had this right and all other beings, including children, the mentally incompetent, animals and nature wild or domestic, were only morally considerable indirectly. The protection or use of non-rational beings was not a moral issue and entirely at the discretion of the rational human beings who had ownership or use of them.
If a man shoots his dog because the animal is no longer capable of service, he does not fail in his duty to the dog, for the dog cannot judge. But his act is inhuman and damages in himself that humanity which it is his duty to show towards mankind. (Kant in Pojman 1994: 28)
According to Kant, classification as an end-in-oneself rests upon ones ability to abstractly conceptualise ones ends, to “self-value” (Callicott 1999: 252). Because Kant’s social contract requires the participation of moral patients in a rational dialogue, it is easy to see why it excludes nonhuman nature.
Callicott observes that Kantian anthropocentrism, or ‘ratiocentrism’ as he calls it, does not pass the “argument from marginal cases” criteria in that not all human beings are rational. Thus not all human beings qualify as persons, but are rendered mere things in Kant’s schema.
Kant’s ethic would therefore seem to countenance painful medical experiments on prerational human infants, hunting nonrational human imbeciles for sport, and making dog food out of postrational elderly human beings, among other wicked and depraved things (Callicott 1999: 252)
The importance of Kantian ethics to an environmental one is firstly that rational human-centred rules of conduct are still commonly conceived as the basis for morality. With their purely anthropocentric basis in rational calculation and reciprocity, Kantian imperative morality obviously excludes consideration of the environment.
Also important in a more positive way for an environmental ethic is Kant’s concept of intrinsic value. Of course only rational human beings possessed this quality in Kantian terms, but the idea that a being could have value in itself, beyond its use to other beings, has been a pervasive one. It forms the basis of our International Declaration of Human Rights. Ecocentrists seek to extend this idea to nonhuman nature.
Other individualist theories have sought to include nonhuman animals in the realm of moral concern by attributing sentience – the ability to feel – as more morally relevant than reason. Morality becomes less of a contract between consenting rational beings, than a code of practice to be adhered to by the virtuous person in actions that may affect beings that can suffer. Such is the position of animal liberationists. Nonhuman nature not attributed with sufficient nerve endings or intelligence to feel, are thus only indirectly considerable insofar as their welfare affects the welfare of the sentient beings that depend upon them.
This is not dissimilar to the tack taken by anthropocentric environmental ethicists like Bryan Norton who consider human self-interest sufficient to protect the natural environment. However they do not necessarily concern themselves with the suffering of sentient animals, only their survival as species in that a less biodiverse world diminishes human lives and resources. In the omission of the moral relevance of suffering we can see that a concern for the integrity of ecological communities or populations is inconsistent if human beings are to be excluded. Anthropocentric environmental holism still respects the survival of species and ecological communities insofar as they benefit humans (for their resource value). Yet, so long as it remains unconcerned with the individuals within that system, except for humans, it is logically inconsistent.
Ecological theory has shown us that the interelatedness of life and the system that supports it means that to proscribe rights to protection to individuals in it is not enough. The integrity of an ecosystem is often at stake even if only one factor is affected. Leopold, writing well before modern ecological theory, understood the importance of this interelatedness to the sustenance of the whole: when a change occurs in one part of the circuit, many other parts must adjust themselves to it…Man’s invention of tools has enabled him to make changes of unprecedented violence, rapidity and scope (Leopold 1949: 232)
For instance, the removal of a significant predator for human ends (perhaps through hunting, as is the case with wolves in the US, or indirectly of raptors in Australia where their feral rabbit prey population is decimated by viral ‘control’ agents) removes the natural population control on the prey and leads to increased pressure on vegetation and herbivore competitors. When this small change is added to by environmental pollution by human effluent or resource exploitation like land clearing that destroys habitat, the whole ecosystem is clearly in peril. The fact that such disasters regularly occur is testimony, in Callicott’s view, (and that of his fellow ecocentrists), that human instrumental use of the environment is out of balance with, or simply not considering the needs of nonhuman species. This anthropocentric, or human-centred valuing of the environment is considered the major ideological cause of environmental destruction. I will discuss the problems with anthropocentrism further in due course.
Whose Land Ethic?
A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.
It is wrong when it tends otherwise. (Leopold 1949: 240) Callicott selects this passage as the definitive one in the Land Ethic. From it he attempts to derive a normative code to define our moral relations to the environment. The appropriateness of vague, subjective and value-laden terms like “integrity, stability and beauty” as normative statements is questionable. Callicott has gone to great pains to elucidate what he these terms might mean in an ecological sense, for we know that the notion of ecosystem ‘stability’ has changed significantly since Leopold wrote in 1949. However, it is the psychological importance of these terms and that of the gist of the entire Land Ethic that I wish to examine further.
Callicott takes Leopold to be implying this is a kind of categorical imperative that rates community ‘integrity’ over that of the individual. The “unity of the biota… posits duties binding upon moral agents in relation to that whole.” (Callicott 1980: 317). While I agree that there are systemic similarities between organic systems and organic beings, and that we do owe consideration to the whole as the parts, Callicott overlooks the importance of individuals who constitute this system and sees them only as aggregates or species.
Indeed, Callicott makes it absolutely clear in his earlier writings that he himself considers abstract entities like ‘species’ to have a “prima facie claim to preferential consideration from the perspective of the land ethic” because diversity contributes to ‘stability’ (Callicott 1980: 325). He goes as far as to suggest that individuals in a biotic community are like the cells in a body – they have no importance except as parts of a functioning whole. The practical use of this analogy is questionable. The interests of a human or other organismic body can be defined in terms of interests. Individuals have goals, to reproduce themselves and to survive until this is accomplished, that ecosystems clearly do not. The dynamic nature of ecosystems (today perceived as not even in a state of equilibrium, but evolving or devolving) make a clearly defined whole impossible to delineate. Ecosystems , if they can be loosely defined, do not have goals like individuals do, species do not have goals either, so they cannot be said to have ends-in-themselves that would give them moral significance that even an account of the intrinsic value of individuals would allow.
Callicott interprets Leopold’s continued hunting as evidence of his privileging the biotic whole over the individual. Leopold’s “indifference” to suffering he suggests is evidence that Leopold has a “very different ethical perspective…[in addition to a] profoundly different cosmic vision as well” (Callicott 1980: 315) If the former were true, I would suggest it amounts to a pathological problem. People who deny that suffering is important in humans may be capable of heinous acts against them and ought to be locked up for the wider community’s protection! Indeed many of them already are, for it is a common psychological trait of hardened criminals that they are unable to feel compassion for their victims. Callicott himself in earlier writings considered humane justifications for nonharm to sentient animals virtually morally irrelevant. Pain, he suggests, is a good thing (Callicott 1980: 328). As indeed it is in a limited sense that it allows a sentient being to know when a situation will damage its health. However, escaping from pain is the primary drive of sentient animals, and even nonsentient creatures tend to seek out food and avoid danger even at the single-celled level as a matter of instinct. Yet Callicott prefers to use the more abstract rational calculation of the value of the whole against the importance of individual suffering. Trying to justify the existence of pain thus does not address whether it is wrong to actually inflict it, or whether it is wrong to unnecessarily kill other living things if that death is not a matter of personal survival.
Yet to justify Leopold’s hunting as part of a “very different ethical perspective…” flies in the face of his pleas for ‘conscience’, of the equality of trees, wolves and deer, and the necessary love one must feel for something in order to feel the guilt that accompanies a transgression of conscience. For this reason I consider the reason why Leopold does not condemn hunting lies in another direction. Leopold defines hunting as both part of a conservation aesthetic (ie. That it is as much the enjoyment of the experience of getting ‘back to nature’, as it is the need to kill for food). He emphasises the social conditioning of it: “We indoctrinate youth. We print definitions of ‘What is a sportsman?’ and hang a copy on the wall…”. He acknowledges the identity-bearing acquisition of ‘outdoorsman’ skills. Hunting, like all outdoor recreations, “rest(s) upon the idea of trophy”:
It attests that its owner has been somewhere and done something – that he has exercised skill, persistence, or discrimination in the age-old feat of overcoming, outwitting, or reducing-to-possession. These connotations which attach to the trophy usually far exceed its physical value.” (Leopold 1949: 260)
They also have significant symbolic value. The connections to both Leopold’s internalised ideal of what it means to be an ‘outdoorsman’ is fairly obvious in this passage: it is the stereotype of male power, of ‘overcoming’ of defeating and additionally of ‘reducing to possession’ in this case by killing. That men were expected to hunt as a kind of rite of passage to manhood has strong roots in American culture. In Leopold’s lifetime as a ranger his social circle would have largely been male, and even if it were not, it is unlikely that the associations of maleness with hunting and possession would have been challenged as this tradition is still a strong one in the United States as elsewhere. In the US in the fifties men were still the breadwinners, the ‘hunters’ returning home with the metaphorical kill in the form of a paycheque. It is unlikely that Leopold himself would have challenged this norm as his virtual contemporaries Henry Salt (1851-1939) and Henry Thoreau (1817-1862) did in their rejection of the violence of hunting, meat eating and in advocating civil disobedience. Leopold’s lifetime career as a forester would have meant he developed quite a different world view of nature, more ecologically based, but depersonalised by the necessity of ‘wise-use’. He too would have grown use to working within the system, which is evidenced by his application to policy and the emphasis he places on the personal responsibility of the landholder.
Additionally, when Leopold appeals to the aesthetic of trophyism, of ‘reducing to possession’ he commits the very objectification of nature that many environmental philosophers see as the root of environmental destruction. The farmers that Leopold critiques for their attending only to economically expedient solutions to land degradation are seeing the land as on object to be manipulated for economic gain, as their possession. The strength of idea of private property as a right has its roots in liberalism and resists attempts to see the land as a community good or for the good of the biotic community as a whole.
To Callicott’s credit, he sees in the Land Ethic the reflection of Humean morality in that Leopold reaches this conclusion not by some abstract rational calculation of duties, but from a genuine love of and intimate knowledge of the natural environment. This is quite a departure from the impetus behind the Kantian imperative. David Hume (1711-1776 ) regarded ethics as the correlative of,
esteem, respect, regard, kinship, affection, and sympathy; Kant on the other hand regarded all behaviour motivated by “mere inclination” (ie. Sentiment or feeling), however unselfish, as lacking genuine moral worth. (Callicott 1989:198)
Hume’s ethic highlights the importance of our interpersonal relationship with other human beings for our right treatment of them. It is a cornerstone of the land ethic that we can only behave morally towards that which we love.
Strangely, despite his recognition of this, Callicott sets aside the personally felt bias behind the Land Ethic to posit a value theory based on largely scientific ‘proofs’ backed up by an attempt to justify it with abstract reasoning. Yet Leopold sings his love of the land long and loud, despite his recognition of the ecological need for its preservation, in the end it comes down to his love for it:
When one of these non-economic categories is threatened, and if we happen to love it, we invent subterfuges to give it economic importance. At the beginning of the century songbirds were supposed to be disappearing. Ornithologists jumped to the rescue with some distinctly shaky evidence to the effect that insects would eat us up if the birds failed to control them… It is painful to read these circumlocutions today. (Leopold 1949: 226)
So too it is painful to read Callicott’s convoluted attempts to justify with reason what, as base he must confess is a felt relationship with wild things. I think he is right about a great many things regarding the need for a Land Ethic and the role that philosophers must play in attaining this world view. However, he denies part of himself in the same way that Peter Singer did when he claimed that we must show no trace of sentimentality when arguing the case for animal liberation.
Singer advocated the shedding of such ‘womanly’ characteristics as sentimental “affections” in favour of “hard, logical, well reasoned argument” (in Kheel 1985: 24) However, Singer denies the emotions implicit in this, and thus renders his argument only partial. There is no waterproof rational argument for the protection of marginal cases like children, mental incompetents or animals that does not rely on humans caring for each other in ways that can only be described as ‘sentimental’! No argument to respect life, no matter how well reasoned, will convince anyone to change their behaviour without a feeling attached to it. It is one thing to understand a rational argument, it is another to really have an appreciation for it. So too, an environmental ethic based entirely on well-reasoned argument will be ineffectual.
I believe this sentimental attachment to the land is what Leopold is arguing for. He admits the foolishness of trying to make an argument that denies our love for the land by clothing it in economic or self interest. He too admits the inadequacy of attending only to economic expedience and clothing it in conservationism. The missing ingredient seems to me to be caring.
Nonetheless, Callicott and other ecocentrists have been accused of two philosophical crimes that are almost diametrically opposed. The first is that the Land Ethic and other holist theories seek to apply an abstract and objective value of the whole over the individual and thus are willing to sacrifice the interests of individuals to that whole. The other is that, in basing the premise of their theory on ‘intrinsic value’ they are asking us to abandon reason for subjectivity, a kind of nature worship, a mysticism which (in some theorists more than others) seems to amount to an irrational love of nature. It is my task to bring these two together, for it is my conviction that all life does have intrinsic value (be it a human projected one), but that this value can only be protected by a felt attachment to the land.
Non Anthropocentrism and Holism
Why anthropocentrism is a shaky foundation for an environmental ethic
Given that the equal intrinsic value of human beings has long been appealed to as the impetus for our right treatment of our fellow human begins, it is easy to understand why some ethicists would consider merely extending this to encompass future human beings would be enough to ensure environmental preservation. I will now look at why an entirely human-centred ethic is inadequate for the environment.
Ecocentric environmental ethics has had to defend itself against claims that it has spent too much time dwelling on abstract concepts such as intrinsic value and subjectivity and not applying itself to the urgent task of environmental reform. Critic Bryan Norton (dubbed an environmental ‘antiphilosopher’ by Callicott!) considers a wide ranging anthropocentric environmental ethic sufficient to generate a workable theory that can be used to inform environmental policy. Anthropocentrism, is the ‘conservative’ option in Callicott’s view, because it does not challenge the prevalent human assumption of supremacy.
But both Warwick Fox and Callicott say Norton is wrong because anthropocentrism, or ‘enlightened self-interest’, will never be able to deliver protection to all facets of an ecosystem, when only some have use or value to human beings. As John Seed remarks, “the idea that humans are the crown of creation, the source of all value, the measure of all things, is deeply embedded in our culture and consciousness” (in Fox 1990: 11)
Warwick Fox elucidates six important reasons for rejecting anthropocentrism. Fox proclaims anthropocentrism as “empirically bankrupt and theoretically disastrous, practically disastrous, logically inconsistent, morally objectionable, and incongruent with a genuinely open approach to experience.” (Fox 1990: 19)
The primary reason for questioning anthropocentric assumptions, in Fox’s view, is simply that it is “self-serving”. As such, it is less likely to probe a good assessment of what is favourable to human beings, and more likely to challenge one that is not. This is not amenable to a truthful assessment of a situation. The primacy of self-interest is quite evident in governmental and industrial responses to environmental impact assessments of development, such as that carried out for the Jabiluka uranium mine proposal which was widely accepted by the economic interest groups despite widespread opposition from the environment movement and the public. The Springbrook cableway proposal in south-east Queensland, was rejected by EIA when it was found that running a commercial and privately owned cableway through world heritage listed rainforest posed a risk to conservation of the ecosystem. It was criticised strongly by both government and the developers while being applauded by conservationists.
Secondly Fox points to the factual case against human supremacy over the environment.
We do not live at the center of the universe and we are not biologically unrelated to other creatures…we are not even psychologically, socially, or culturally different in kind from all other animals and …we are not the “end point” of evolution. (Fox 1990: 14)
Again, human centred decision making has often proved ‘disastrous’ in the past, for we and the natural environment, still bear the scars of environmental poisoning begun with DDT early last century. There is no place on earth where traces of toxins we have introduced into the environment have not been detected. Even at the South Pole so far from significant human habitation or agriculture.
Thirdly, anthropocentrist attitudes are simply logically inconsistent. Both Peter Singer and Tom Regan elucidate the many ways in which we have tried to discern our difference from other animals in order to justify our expatiation of them. Our intellectual capacity, language, reason, the ability to form intentions based on experience, that we have souls: none of these criteria succeed in including all humans or excluding all animals, or are simply too contentious to make a firm foundation for morality.
Fox claims that many philosophers find anthropocentrism “morally objectionable”. Even if we were able to logically differentiate ourselves as superior to nonhuman life, that it should increase rather than decrease out obligations towards it. This idea is based on a conception of what it means to be a good person and forms the basis of virtue ethics. As we shall see, a combination of moral reasoning and a reformulation of what it means to be a human being are the two keys factors in ecocentrism, and reflected in Callicott’s recognition of the significance of Darwinian theory for environmental ethics.
Fox’s final objection to anthropocentrism is that it is narrow minded. By this he means that a “genuine openness to the world leads one away from anthropocentrism,” away from the “pompous pursuits of men” (Fox 1990: 18)
For Callicott the reason for rejecting anthropocentrism is akin to altruism: ”Why,” Callicott asks, “should we rational beings value only ourselves and other rational beings intrinsically?” (Callicott 1999: 251) It is true that, as far as we know, no other animals are capable of developing the level of subjectivity required to be able to conceptualise our ends. But by the same token, no other beings are “capable of transcending the limitations (of our) subjectivity, or realising that others value themselves as one values oneself – to wit, intrinsically.” (Callicott 1999: 252)
Intrinsic value then, for Callicott, is not an objective fact. Rather, it is a possibility that rational, subjective beings like ourselves are capable of empathising or intuiting that other life forms have a will-to-live which need not be attached to conscious awareness of it. To recognise the intrinsic value of other life forms is to accord them respect and consideration enough to allow them to pursue their life ends without undue interference from human beings.
While other environmental philosophers, such as Paul Taylor and Holmes Rolston III have sought to define an objective basis for attributing intrinsic value, Callicott deems human subjectivity as enough. For Callicott, human beings are value conferring subjects (but by no means not the only animals capable of valuing), and because of this and our ability to rationally conceptualise our place in nature, are also capable of defining their moral relations with other life forms. In what Fox calls the ‘weak’ or trivial sense of the term, everything a human being thinks or does is anthropocentric in that it is done by a human being. It is the strong, self-centred, exploitative and unjustifiable sense that ecocentrists are opposed to. To conflate the two is committing what Fox calls “the anthropocentric fallacy” (1990: 21).
Additionally, and in agreement with Rolston, the existence of an instrumental value (for example, the edible fruit of a tree is instrumentally valuable to humans and many nonhuman species alike) is presupposed by the existence of an intrinsic value to the tree. The fruit, as the seed dispersal mechanism of the tree, has evolved to be eaten (valued instrumentally) by other species to perform the function that is intrinsically worthwhile in terms of the tree: reproduction.
So the existence of intrinsic value of an organism, or a part thereof, does not preclude its being valued instrumentally by another species and hence used. This runs contrary to a common mistake made by critics of ecocentrism who condemn it as misanthropic and advocating ‘hands off’ nature based on the concept of intrinsic value.
Is Holism Environmental Fascism?
Despite their common agreement on the intrinsic value of living things, animal rights proponent Tom Regan has accused Callicott and the ecocentrists of advocating ‘environmental fascism’. Regan considers a moral schema that rates the biotic whole with greater value at the expense of the lives and interests of the individuals in it to be wrong.
Regan’s critique suggests similarities between ethical holism and totalitarianism “in which the good of the community, group, or nation-state superseded that of the individual. When pressed, environmental fascism demanded the sacrifice of the interests and even the lives of individuals in the ecosystem, planet, and universe.” (Nash, 1999:157) However, Regan himself has argued that having a ‘good of one’s own’ is what accords an individual intrinsic value, and that even non-sentient things like trees, or more contentiously, rivers, could be said to have a ‘good’ that may be compromised by the actions of human beings, and hence could be determined to be morally considerable. For example, land clearing cannot be thought of as anything else but detrimental to the ecosystem in which it occurs, for the effects flow on to other areas also affecting the ‘good’ of the individuals in it. Hence Regan calls for an ‘ethic of the environment’ that is based on this ‘goodness principle’ which “would…commit us to a far larger view of what individuals, and possibly groups of individuals (eg. Ecosystems) are of direct moral significance.” (Nash 1999:159). In effect, Regan seems to be advocating a new sense of holism that attempts to accord moral respect to both individuals and the community that they live in. Practically, this schema could only work on a case by case basis, and constitutes in my opinion a kind of moral dualism. However, given Regan’s strong stance on individual rights, I imagine that he would always consider the claim of the sentient being over that of the nonsentient or the whole if issues of suffering where at stake.
Most Ecocentrist philosophers (except perhaps Dave Foreman), have been forced to ‘water down’ claims to species egalitarianism to concede that in most situations, (and given that human beings are usually the moral agent in question) the moral agent will consider ties of kinship before more abstract ones to the wider community. In effect human interests will always ‘trump’ those of other species. This is one reason why I consider the attempt to get a comprehensive value theory, and from that a set of rules for behaviour, from the Land Ethic to be futile.
Indeed, quite a different, personal and passionate interpretation based on Leopold’s psychology may be made of the Land Ethic. Despite the bias’ of Leopold’s social situation, the Land Ethic can still provide an impassioned guide to action in the same general way that Naess ‘ecosophy’, Fox’s ‘transpersonal ecology’ and the writings of some Ecofeminists do, which do not compromise our important ties with each other and our obligations to sentient animals. Ecocentrism can thus be defended against claims of ‘fascism’ by including the parts as well as the whole. For it is with the parts, with individuals, that we are able to make relationships and thence develop the necessary empathy to extrapolate to the wider ecological community.
The Land Ethic as Ecological Conscience and Ecological Consciousness
We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love or otherwise have faith in. (Leopold 1949: 230) It is inconceivable to me that an ethical relation to land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for the land, and a high regard for its value.
By value, I of course mean something far broader than mere economic value;” (Leopold 1949: 239)
No moral theory may satisfactorily deal with the conflict between individual interests and common good, indeed in some respects autonomous rights and social obligations are mutually exclusive. Yet despite the impossibility of this reconciliation, it is imperative that we formulate some guidelines for our moral obligations to biotic communities. We may abandon the search for a single comprehensive moral schema and adopt moral pluralism, or we may adopt instead an ‘attitude’ for respect for nature based not on a well defined value theory, but on an ‘ecological consciousness’ where we act contextually. This is the course that is adopted by some ecocentrists and ecofeminists. It does not mean that we also abandon the idea that either individuals or the whole may be deserving of our moral consideration. In both these options, our moral obligations are contingent upon the relative impact we may have on the various entities we take to be morally considerable, and with a firm grounding in ecological good a redefinition of human good may occur.
That the Land Ethic is an ethic borne of Leopold’s love for the land is evidenced by explicit declarations of it, and his condemnation of farmers who only take those conservation measures that are profitable. Leopold wants us to respect the land as more than a human resource, more than an itemised account of it’s economic value. He wants those farmers to love the land and develop a conscience in their dealings with it, so that they will take that extra step beyond profit margins. Many ecocentrists, while embracing interconnectedness and holism, temper it by appealing for a personal consciousness change that adopts an attitude of respect and non-harm: it is expected that once one comes to value the land as part of oneself, as the giver of life to all beings, one will act with conscience, abstaining from those acts that will cause more ill than good. This is the precautionary principle combined with a humane respect for the rights of other beings to exist: it is based in what it means to be a good person, a good ecological citizen that takes into consideration more than just human gain.
Additionally, ecologically virtuous actions that give ecological benefit are seen to also benefit the individual in that they form part of a journey towards ‘self-realisation’. This need not be the cynical motivation of pure self-interest that Hobbes might see it as. Fox and Arne Naess both look to Abraham Maslow’s ‘transpersonal psychology’ and Laurence Kohlberg’s categories of moral development as indicative that altruistic or ‘other focused’ behaviour are concomitant with a wider more ’cosmic’ understanding of the place of human kind in the universe and an evolution of self. There is nothing in the Land Ethic that contradicts this approach to developing an ecological consciousness.
An important part of Naess philosophy is the idea of ’self-realisation’. Leopold alludes to the character-forming, the ‘evolutionary’ potential of an “ethic dealing with man’s (sic) relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it.” (Leopold 1949: 218) This ethic can only grow, in Leopold’s estimation, from the development of “an ethical obligation on the part of the private owner…”, an ethical obligation borne of ‘good citizenship’. Leopold sees the landowner as bound by obligations to the land that go beyond traditional property rights which have been “strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations” (1999:88) Leopold examines what the so-called ‘love’ that farmers profess for the land is, and finds it wanting:
…do we not already sing our love for and obligation to the land…Yes, but just what and whom do we love? Certainly not the soil, which we are sending helter-skelter down river. Certainly not the waters which we assume have not function except to turn turbines, float barges and carry sewage. Certainly not the animals of which we have already extirpated many of the largest and most beautiful species…(Leopold 1949: 219)
Clearly Leopold senses a lack of virtuous behaviour towards the land, lack of consistency between the obvious symbolic importance we place on the land (and the even more obvious survival value) and our behaviour towards it. Naess bases his ‘ecosophy T’, the personal growth aspect of his environmental ethic, in the traditions of “non-violence, non-injury and reverence for life” in Buddhism and other eastern religious traditions. In this sense, it goes beyond being a value-theory, and instead suggests that respect for nature is as much a psychological attitude. Naess allows scope for the rights of individuals, human and nonhuman, in the “vital needs” clause: recognising that all life forms require the use of others for their survival, but that this should be minimal. That farmers need to use the land for survival, economic as well as ecological, could be the starting point for this attitude of respect.
Fox suggests a reconfiguring of the meaning of self to include the biotic community and wider to the cosmos while Ecofeminists seek ecological identification in the interpersonal. Marti Kheel sees the affinity deep and transpersonal ecologies because:
the emphasis of both philosophies is not on an abstract or ‘rational’ calculation of value but rather on the development of a new consciousness for all of life…they call for an inward transformation in order to attain outward change (1990:128)
Leopold too condemns hyper-rationality, in particular the economic variety, in favour of a felt connection to and kinship with, the land community. According to Nel Noddings an appreciation and respect for life arises as a result of the nurturing, the learning how to care that we experience as children. The ‘ethic of care’ is a sensibility developed through experiencing and reflecting with reason on the feelings that arise from those experiences. So too, nurturing the land is not necessarily alien to the farming process, it is the concentration on economic values that has given rise to the travesties of industrialised agriculture.
However, a felt connection with the land need not exclude rationality:
feeling and action are essential element in morality, which concentration on thought has often made philosophy overlook…In general, feelings, to be effective must take shape as thought, and thoughts, to be effective must be powered by suitable feelings (in Kheel 1985:26)
This unity of feeling and reasoning is what Robyn Morgan calls a “unified sensibility”. In the same way that deep ecologists call for a recognition of the interconnectedness of all the physical elements of the ecosystem, ecofeminists call for a recognition of the interconnectedness of human thought and emotion in morality. To achieve such a synthesis is to reject the objectification, the atomisation of the world as prescribed by scientific rationalism and perpetuated by the search for universalizable normative moral theories, and reconnect with the real world in which moral decisions are made.
While deep and transpersonal ecology take a cosmic or ‘outside-in’ approach to our relationship with the cosmos, Ecofeminists start with our human capacity to care for each other, our personal relationships with other human beings from which we may develop relationships of caring for the wider human and thence ecological community. This is not dissimilar to the Humean context of the Land Ethic, yet it does not seek to extrapolate a rigid value framework from this, but to remain within the personal.
So too, Ecofeminist writers seek a reintegration of the parts and the whole combined with a revaluing of both. Ecofeminist Marti Kheel says, “what the wholists seem to forget…is that the whole consists of individual beings - beings with emotions, feelings and inclinations - and these too are part of the whole.” (1985:22) I suggest not only a reclaiming of holism, but a reclaiming of the Land Ethic from abstract holism for a personal holism: for the passion and love for the land that it advocates.
I would suggest that because environmental ethics attempts to so radicalise the realm of the morally considerable, seemingly to the detriment of especially human individuals, it will never be widely embraced. An environmental ethic that can embrace commonly felt and vital human impulses to care, to share and respect the environment based on feelings of kinship with other humans and a recognition of our kinship with nonhuman life is better placed to win popular acceptance than a value theory that defines in abstract terms our moral duties and expects us to do ‘justice though the heavens may fall’ . The tools for such a moral revolution are already within every one of us.
footnotes:
I think that Leopold does make criticism of hunting in his mention of willingness of hunters to ‘break, if need be, every law of commonwealth…to kill a duck’ and of the ‘already overfed’ status of the hunter, thought this does not constitute a condemnation on humane grounds, it could be taken to imply that Leopold considers disrespect for the law and excessive consumption to be morally questionable. (Leopold 1949: 258) He also suggests that taking game is not good citizenship because it pays “dividends to one citizen out of capital stock belonging to all.” (Leopold 1949: 262)
Indeed, Leopold and Thoreau led very similar lifestyles. Both were university educated, both wrote their treatise on the land in the wilderness ( Leopold in the only heritage listed chicken coop in the US), relied on their ‘survivalist’ skills. Leopold however, spent a significant amount of time working in a government department were most likely the prime concern was of ‘wise-use’ of forest (indeed Leopold worked in ‘forest products’ and conducted game management surveys) and also wrote and taught at University of Wisconsin, while Thoreau was a teacher, surveyor, a prolific writer and a farmer. Both wrote rather poetically of their love of the land and of nature. Indeed, Thoreau’s nature writings earnt him the name of “Father of our National & State Parks” from Lewis Mumford. RW Emerson wrote of Thoreau that “He was bred to no profession; he never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to the State; he ate no flesh; he drank no wine; he never knew the use of tobacco; and, though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun.” Bonson Alcott’s referred to him in “The Forester” as “so purely a son of Nature”. The significant difference lie in their experiences of the political system: Thoreau was an advocate of civil disobedience, an anarchist who had little faith in democracy, indeed he thought it every man’s duty to resist the system and appealed to the will of individuals to decide their own course. Leopold however, a lifelong employee of the state, was firmly ensconced in it.
Categories: environment, philosophy | Tags: leopold | No Comments
