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What must I do (and why me)? | 75 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.
