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their consideration would have direct ethical consequences. Benjamin
Hale, for instance, argues that the question itself is not posed correctly
by those who seek the source of ethical value in nature, because we term
acts good and evil, not what endures them.** Nothing has any inherent
ethical status that could be judged and ranked, stresses Hale. For we
judge not the things of the world, but the motives of the actor. Judging
is not some kind of account of the qualities of things, but a practical
act; it is the way in which we participate in the affairs of the world. It
follows from the universal nature of rationality that such deliberative
thought must take into account everything that it is at all capable of
comprehending of the world. Everything matters, therefore: the burden
of proof lies with whoever claims that someone or something need not
be considered during the deliberation. "Ihe burden is on us — human
animals with voices and minds — to approximate the morally binding
rules and principles that are already in play in human — nonhuman
relations. ... Entities in the world deserves at least honest and deliberate
consideration ... by virtue of what we are, not by virtue of what they
are." It is not impossible that in eco-ethics it is in fact Hale’s
antinaturalist, deontological approach that leads to the most radical
conclusions.
This argumentation nevertheless fails to satisfy the naturalists who
claim inherent ethical value for nature. For even if they recognise that
Hale has posed the question of ethical evaluation more clearly than them,
they could still make the point that the question of the source of ethical
value also acquits them of the accusation of a naturalistic fallacy. Even
Hale admits that the laws placing us under ethical obligation are already
in some way “in play” in the relation of man and nature. To what can we
refer when we find the motives of an act good or bad, if not to the previous
knowledge of the difference between good and evil and whence comes
this knowledge if not from experience? In this centuries-old debate
between the adherents of end- and duty-based ethics, the defenders of
the inherent ethical value of nature find themselves on the side of the
Thomists and can refer to the teleological view of human nature as
mediation between human duty and natural order. ‘This applies to the
neo-lhomist representatives of the school of ecotheology, such as John
Finnis or Michael Northcott, who aim to vindicate the relevance of the
classical theological view of man and nature, as mediated by Aquinas (and
“Benjamin Hale: Moral Considerability — Deontological, not Metaphysical. Ethics &
the Environment 16.2. 2011.
5 Ibid. pp.46, 54.