Oldal 33 [33]
OCR
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
