Character and Environment

by Sandler, Ronald L.

• ISBN13: 9780231141062
• ISBN10: 0231141068
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-09-04
• Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr

Summary

Virtue ethics is now widely recognized as an alternative to Kantian andconsequentialist ethical theories. However, moral philosophers have been slow tobring virtue ethics to bear on topics in applied ethics. Moreover, environmentalvirtue ethics is an underdeveloped area of environmental ethics. Althoughenvironmental ethicists often employ virtue-oriented evaluation (such as respect,care, and love for nature) and appeal to role models (such as Henry Thoreau, AldoLeopold, and Rachel Carson) for guidance, environmental ethics has not been wellinformed by contemporary work on virtue ethics.WithCharacter and Environment, Ronald Sandler remedies each ofthese deficiencies by bringing together contemporary work on virtue ethics withcontemporary work on environmental ethics. He demonstrates the many ways that anyethic of character can and should be informed by environmental considerations. Healso develops a pluralistic virtue-oriented environmental ethic that accommodatesthe richness and complexity of our relationship with the natural environment andprovides effective and nuanced guidance on environmental issues.These projects have implications not only forenvironmental ethics and virtue ethics but also for moral philosophy more broadly.Ethical theories must be assessed on their theoretical and practical adequacy withrespect to all aspects of the human ethical situation: personal, interpersonal, andenvironmental. To the extent that virtue-oriented ethical theory in general, andSandler's version of it in particular, provides a superior environmental ethic toother ethical theories, it is to be preferred not just as an environmental ethic butalso as an ethical theory. Character and Environment willengage any reader with an interest in environmental ethics, virtue ethics, or moralphilosophy.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction: A Virtue-Oriented Alternative?	p. 1
Character and Environmental Ethics	p. 1
Overview	p. 5
What Makes a Character Trait a Virtue?	p. 9
Identifying Environmental Virtue	p. 9
The Naturalistic Assumption	p. 13
The Natural Goodness Approach	p. 14
The Life Form of the Species Perspective	p. 19
The Aspects Evaluated	p. 20
The Ends Constitutive of Human Flourishing	p. 21
The Pluralistic Teleological Account	p. 26
Conclusion	p. 37
The Environment and Human Flourishing	p. 39
Moral Considerability	p. 39
Environmental Virtue	p. 42
Agent Flourishing	p. 43
Human Flourishing	p. 52
Consumptive Dispositions	p. 55
Conclusion	p. 61
The Environment Itself	p. 63
Respect for Nature?	p. 63
Individual Organisms	p. 65
Recasting Respect	p. 70
Differential Compassion	p. 74
Environmental Collectives	p. 76
Land Virtues	p. 80
Conclusion	p. 83
Environmental Decision Making	p. 85
Virtue-Oriented Principles of Right Action	p. 85
Against Qualified Agent Principles	p. 87
Against Ideal Observer Principles	p. 90
Target Principles	p. 91
The Agent-Relative Target Principle	p. 93
Decision Making	p. 97
Environmental Decision Making	p. 101
Conclusion	p. 102
The Virtue-Oriented Approach and Environmental Ethics	p. 103
The Case for the Virtue-Oriented Approach	p. 103
Pluralisms	p. 104
Adequacy in Environmental Ethics	p. 107
Is the Virtue-Oriented Approach Pragmatic?	p. 117
Conclusion	p. 122
A Virtue-Oriented Assessment of Genetically Modified Crops	p. 123
Genetically Modified Crops	p. 123
Environmental Goods	p. 124
Respect	p. 129
Hubris	p. 131
Implications	p. 135
The Future	p. 138
Conclusion	p. 139
Conclusion: A Virtue-Oriented Alternative	p. 141
Work Done	p. 141
Work Ahead	p. 143
Notes	p. 145
Bibliography	p. 179
Index 195
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

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Introduction: A Virtue-Oriented Alternative?

What is the good of drawing up, on paper, rules for social behavior, if we know that, in fact, our greed, cowardice, ill temper, and self-conceit are going to prevent us from keeping them? I do not mean for a moment that we ought not to think, and think hard, about improvements in our social and economic system. What i do mean is that all that thinking will be mere moonshine unless we realize that nothing but the courage and unselfishness of individuals is ever going to make any system work properly.… You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society. that is why we must go on to think of the … morality inside the individual. -- C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Character and Enviornmental Ethics

Public discourse regarding the environment is framed almost exclusively in legislative and regulatory terms, so it is easy in environmental ethics to become fixated on what activities ought to be allowed or prohibited. after all, we legislate regarding behavior, not character; policy concerns actions, not attitudes; and the courts apply the standards accordingly. But it is always people, with character traits, attitudes, and dispositions, who perform actions, promote policies, and lobby for laws. So while we might condemn removing mountaintops, filling wetlands, and poison-ing wolves, and make our case against these practices before lawmakers, courts, and the public, we must also consider the character of people responsible for them. how a person interacts with the environment is influenced by her attitudes toward it, and it seems to many that a central cause of reckless environmental exploitation is the attitude that nature is merely a resource for satisfying human wants and needs. as Aldo Leopold puts it in the foreword to A Sand County Almanac, "We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect." this is precisely the point, particularized to the environmental context, of the C.S. Lewis passage at the head of this chapter. attempts to improve society, including its relations with the natural environment, will amount to mere moonshine if its citizens lack the character and commitment to make them work.

Good environmental character is not only valuable insofar as it leads to proper actions. it is also beneficial to those who possess it. Dispositions to appreciate, respect, wonder, and love nature enable people to find reward, satisfaction, and comfort from their relationship with nature. "Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life," observed Rachel Carson, and John Muir believed that "everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike." For those who are receptive to it, nature can be a steady source of joy, peace, renewal, and knowledge.

These preliminary considerations intimate the multifariousness and richness of the relationship between human character and the environment. an adequate environmental ethic must have the descriptive and evaluative resources to accommodate this complexity, without homogenization or misrepresentation. the language of virtue and vice provides these resources. Louke van Wensveen, in her outstanding work on the history and progress of virtue language in environmental ethics, reports that she has "yet to come across a piece of ecologically sensitive philosophy, theology, or ethics that does not in some way incorporate virtue language." Wensveen catalogues 189 virtue terms and 174 vice terms that have appeared in the contemporary environmental ethics literature, and she finds the use of virtue language to be integral, diverse, dialectic, dynamic, and visionary. it is not only everywhere in the discourse, it is indispensable to it. virtue language, she concludes, puts us in touch with a powerful set of evaluative concepts and perspectives that, if afforded sufficient attention, can enhance our capacity to understand and respond to environmental issues. as she puts it, "one more language is one more chance."

We could use one more chance. our environmental problems are not simple, and they are not static. the wilderness and land use issues that dominated early environmentalism are still with us both in theory (e.g., conservation, preservation, and restoration paradigms) and in practice (e.g., off-road vehicle use and road building in national forests, fire suppression policy, wolf "management" programs, and species preserva-tion). however, our pressing environmental problems go beyond issues concerning the use of the land and the treatment of flora and fauna "out there." in the 1960s and 1970s environmental issues came to us "here" in the form of pollution and chemicals, and brought their own theoreti-cal disagreements (such as between cost-benefit analysis approaches to environmental decision making, free market approaches, distributive and procedural justice approaches, and environmental rights approaches) and practical issues (such as industrial zoning and permit issuance, manufacturing and consumer waste disposal, water privatization, and environmental justice). To these first- and second-generation problems have now been added third-generation problems that are not just "out there" or "right here" but "everywhere." issues such as global warming, ozone depletion, and population growth offer unique theoretical and practical challenges because they are impersonal, distant (both spatially and temporally), collective action problems that involve the cumulative unintended effects of an enormous number of seemingly inconsequential decisions. moreover, these three generations of environmental problems are interrelated. energy policy, consumption patterns, trade policy, privatization of common goods, regulatory capacity, and corporate influence are implicated in each of them. Particular intergenerational problems also are often manifestations of the same process, from natural resources to consumer goods, at different stages (e.g., extraction of natural resources, transportation, refinement and manufacturing, consumption, and waste disposal). Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that a fourth generation of problems is not on the horizon. Genetic engineering and nanotechnology have the potential to realize environmental challenges that have previously been the stuff of science fiction.

Given the richness and complexity of our relationship with the natural environment and the diversity, dynamism, and interconnectedness of our environmental problems, it is somewhat surprising to find that many prominent approaches to environmental ethics are monistic. they emphasize one type of consideration as the basis for moral concern regarding the environment (for example, the inherent worth of living things, the interests of sentient beings, human preferences, human rights, or the integrity of ecosystems) and one type of responsiveness as justified on that basis (for example, respecting worth, minimizing suffering, maximizing preference satisfaction, respecting rights, or maintaining ecosystem integrity). Considering the variety of environmental entities to which we can be responsive and the forms of responsiveness possible, as well as the multiple dimensions of environmental issues, it seems unlikely that an adequate environmental ethic could be monistic in either of these ways. evidence of this is that there are so many monistic approaches. each gains some plausibility by capturing one of the many morally relevant aspects of our relationship with the natural environment. the natural environment provides humans with material goods. it contains values and individuals with worth independent of human beings. it allows for a variety of caring, aesthetic, recreational, and spiritual relationships and experiences. attempts to accommodate these with a single moral basis or fit them into a single mode of moral responsiveness tend to distort them in the same way that the willingness to pay and contingent valuation method distort noneconomic goods when used to convert them into economic units. there is no distilling down all the bases and forms of moral responsiveness into one common moral currency.

I am, therefore, sympathetic with environmental pragmatists' claim that monistic environmental ethics are not sufficiently responsive to the diversity of environmental goods and values, the complexity of environmental issues, or the personal, social, cultural, political, and economic contexts in which they are embedded. But a pluralistic approach to environmental ethics is not necessarily a pragmatic approach. Pluralism in environmental goods and values does not imply that theoretical or foundational issues in environmental ethics are a distraction, are intractable, or should be set aside in favor of focusing on convergence among the practical and policy objectives of contrary monistic approaches. a theoretically grounded approach to environmental ethics that can accommodate pluralism in the justification for, bases of, and forms of environmental responsiveness would provide an alternative to both environmental monism and environmental pragmatism.

The virtue-oriented approach to environmental ethics that I advocate is pluralistic in each of these ways: with respect to the types of goods and values that make character traits environmental virtues -- the justification for moral responsiveness; with respect to the types of objects, events, and entities for which environmental virtues are operative -- the bases of moral responsiveness; and with respect to the types of reactions and behaviors that environmental virtues involve -- the forms of moral responsiveness. an ethic of character is indispensable for a complete environmental ethic. it also can be the basis for an inclusive environmental ethic that accommodates the richness and complexity of human relationships and interactions with the natural environment and provides guidance on concrete environmental issues and problems. establishing this is the primary project in this book.

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