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ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY 3
furniture from it, or from its ability to produce oxygen, or from being pleasing to
behold — these are all external, added values (Routley 1973; cited in Brennan and
Lo 2014: 10).
Environmental philosophy and environmental ethics are tightly related. This
is understandable, for ecophilosophy — as seen above — identifies itself as an applied
field of scholarship. The basis of ecological ethics is the criticism of the
anthropocentric position; its goal is “to assign moral status to nature and devise
frameworks regarding what constitutes a virtuous life within the limits of the
biosphere” (Hubbell — Ryan 2022: 112). They also share a critique of the
philosophical paradigm of positivism, which led to the primacy of science and the
irrefutability of scientific validation in Western thought. Environmental ethics
defines environmentally right and wrong behaviors, as well as eco-virtue (Traer
2020: 1-68). Concrete steps are proposed by the branch of ecophilosophy
concerned with animals, by Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, or Murray Bookchin’s social
philosophy.
ANTHROPOCENTRISM VERSUS BIOCENTRISM
The debate is a fundamental one in environmental ethics:
The anthropocentric position is centered on the human being and interprets the
usefulness of the environment and peoples duties to nature from this position. Its basic
argument is acting “in the interest of future generations”, hence the protection of nature
is imperative only insofar as it promotes the welfare of future human communities.
In contrast, biocentrism (or ecocentrism: see the chapter on Religion and Ecology) is
a life-centric ethical theory. It claims that every species or organism contributes to the
health of the ecosystem, and, therefore, “it should be able to continue living free of
undue human interference” (Boyland 2014: 115; Hubbell — Ryan 2022: 113).
Antecedents and key texts of environmental philosophy
The “keynote” work of environmental philosophy is Australian logician Richard
Routley’s paper, Is There a Need for a New, an Environmental, Ethic?, which he
presented in Varna, Bulgaria, in 1973 at the 15 World Congress of Philosophy.
In it, he called on scholars to elaborate a philosophical framework to define people’s
relations to the natural environment (Routley 1973: 205). His basic tenet is that
we people have to supersede anthropocentrism, our “species bias”, and “human
chauvinism’, because they prevent us from evaluating ecological issues correctly.
He says philosophy’s task is to employ its assets — creative thought and the
conceptual analytic faculty — to lay the foundations for an understanding of the
interests of non-human beings and of the environmental whole (ecosystems and
habitats), and for environment-conscious action (Routley 1973).
Routley — along with ecophilosophy in general — levels his criticism at the
contemporary concept of nature rooted in positivism and mechanical natural
philosophy. The best-known practitioner of the latter was René Descartes (1596—
1650), to whom is attributed — in the present context — the scientific validation
of the instrumentalization of nature. The devaluation of nature and an emphasis