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Teleological Ethics

Relationships

Relationships: Empathy and Integrity

Moral philosophy has long relied on character traits and virtues to describe what is involved in being a good person. This chapter considers what our relationships with others and nature mean for doing environmental ethics. Living in Africa led Albert Schweitzer to realize that being concerned only for the good of other people is incomplete. “Only by means of reverence for life,” he affirmed, “can we establish a spiritual and humane relationship with both people and all living creatures within our reach.”1 Joseph DesJardins simply states: “We can and do exist in relationships with our natural surroundings, and any abstract ethical theory that ignores that will be inadequate.”2

To understand our moral community in terms of our diverse relationships, we consider evidence from biology that empathy evolved in primates. Then we reflect on three human cultures, each of which has a different sense of our relationship with animals. We

assess the claims of those promoting “deep ecology” as the only way to save life on earth and consider the arguments of ecofeminists for resisting the language of domination used to rationalize the mistreatment of women and nature. Finally, we note that the environmental standard of ecosystem integrity is now recognized by law as well as science.

Empathy Is Natural

Chapter 1 offered evidence that empathy is natural in human development and important for doing ethics. 3

Is our species unique in this respect, or is empathy also natural for at least some other primates? “Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days.”4

If observed in humans, these behaviors would be identified as evidence of empathy. Therefore, many scientists argue that what humans understand as morality arose among primates living in social groups, as in these circumstances there is a survival advantage in helping other members of the community. It may be that morality and ethics evolved.

Origins of Morality

In the 1960s Frans de Waal, now director of the Living Links Center at Emory University, observed that among chimpanzees, after fights involving two combatants, other chimpanzees would comfort the loser. He suggests that consoling another creature requires empathy and self-awareness that only apes and humans seem to have, and that empathy is the basis for what in humans is identified as morality.

Thus our conceptions of morality involving notions of rights and justice may have evolved from a basic concern for others and patterns of behavior for resolving conflict. De Waal argues that social living requires empathy and notes that every species of ape and monkey has its own rules for fostering reconciliation.

Female intervention is often crucial in maintaining peace among chimps (and perhaps among humans). If two males are unable to make up, female chimpanzees will often intervene to bring the rivals together. Or, before a fight begins females may try to prevent it by taking stones away from the males.

Scientists suggest that these are not simply random acts, but are done for the greater good of the community, and are “a significant precursor of morality in human societies.”5 Recent studies have also found that monkeys, like humans, have mirror neurons in their brains that enable them to experience what another monkey is experiencing.6

1 Text from Chapter 6 of Doing Environmental Ethics by Robert Traer (Westview Press, 2013).

BeingGood

Empathy Binds Us

Like these other primates, humans do not live as individuals. We have evolved as a species with a brain containing mirror neurons that directly link us to other persons (and also to members of some other species). We identify the person we’re facing as someone like ourselves.7 As persons, we are members of social groups.

A recent study reveals that damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex of the human brain reduces a person’s empathy. “Previous studies showed that this region [of the brain] was active during moral decision-making, and that damage to it and neighboring areas from severe dementia affected moral judgments. The new study seals the case by demonstrating that a very specific kind of emotion-based judgment is altered when the region is offline.”8

The study posed a hypothetical moral problem of whether to divert a runaway boxcar that is about to kill five people by throwing a switch that would result in the death of one man. Both those with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and persons in the control group favored throwing the switch. Yet when asked whether they would push someone in front of a train, if doing this was the only way to save the five other people, those with ventromedial injuries were almost twice as likely to say they would, in contrast to the persons in the control group.9

A psychologist not involved in this study explains these results as evidence that in our brains there are two different systems involved in making moral judgments: (1) an emotional system working in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and (2) another system not dependent on the ventromedial prefrontal cortex that provides a cost-benefit analysis.10 Those with damage were only able to employ the second system in considering the ethical dilemma.

Empathy is what binds us in our relationships and enables us to feel what others are feeling. Also, it seems clear that those who have a close relationship with an animal, such as a dog or cat, feel empathy for their pet. If we have evolved this capacity for empathy and thus for caring about our relationships with human beings and also nonhuman animals, it seems reasonable to infer that our empathy contributes to our fitness to survive in our environment.

Ethics of Care

Empathy moves us to involve those who care for us when we make an ethical decision, instead of simply following a moral rule or calculating the likely consequences of acting on our decision. Moreover, making such a decision engages an area of our brain that relies largely on our feelings, rather than another area of the brain that makes an impersonal assessment of outcomes.

Thus, what is known as an ethics of care poses a challenge to more traditional forms of ethics that claim to rely only on objective reasoning. “Caring, empathy, feeling with others, being sensitive to each other’s feelings, all may be better guides to what morality requires in actual contexts than may abstract rules of reason, or rational calculation.”11 An ethics of care is an effort to temper justice with compassion.

Critics raise three objections. First, the emphasis on personal relationships seems to limit this ethical approach to those we know. Yet there is much factual evidence to the contrary. A disaster anywhere in the world may elicit a caring response among millions of persons who know none of the victims. It is an undeniable fact that empathy may lead many individuals and groups to identify with the suffering of strangers and respond with compassion.

Second, an ethics of care seems to provide no way to construct moral guidelines. The weakness of this objection is its assumption that ethics is only about rules. Empathy provides both motivation and compassion, which may be lacking in the formulation of rules. Caring about others may help us see through rationalizations and attain a less self-serving point of view.


Third, although those advocating an ethics of care are critical of principles, critics argue that their position is easily summarized by a few principles, such as “do no harm” or “maintain and strengthen relationships.” Whether or not these imperatives are identified as principles, they seem to function like they are.

This criticism sounds reasonable, but misses the point. An ethics of care gives legitimacy to feelings and listening. Making ethical decisions with greater empathy for others is likely to make it easier to agree on what principles are just and fair.

Our ethical presumption, therefore, is that we should consider not only our duty and our character aspirations, but also how our response to an ethical problem may reflect empathy for all those involved as well as a commitment to maintain the relationships that are likely to be affected by whatever action we take.

Segun Ogungbemi, a Nigerian philosopher, asserts that in Africa this notion of an ethics of care is “traditional moral wisdom” applied to the “proper management” of natural resources. He also identifies this as “the ethics of nature-relatedness,” which “leads human beings to seek to coexist peacefully with nature and treat it with some reasonable concern for its worth, survival and sustainability.”12

Culture and Human Nature

Like other primates, we are naturally social animals, but our language, literature, science, art, religion, and ethics distinguish us from other species. We live in the natural world of our planet, but in our cultural lives we also transcend the natural world.

Human culture, however, is also diverse. Ethical presumptions reflect the relationships among people within a culture and also the relationship between people and nature in that culture. To see what this might mean, as we face environmental issues, we consider two very different contexts—an indigenous community and traditional Buddhist culture.

Indigenous Culture

Native American and other indigenous traditions have preserved legends that emphasize close relationships between people and animals. Many of these striking folktales may be found in wonderfully illustrated versions in the children’s section of a public library.

An example is a story called Buffalo Woman. In this tale a buffalo hunter finds and falls in love with a woman who says she comes from the Buffalo Nation. They marry and she bears him a son, but because members of his tribe mistreat the woman and her son, she leaves to return to her relatives. When the hunter follows their trail, hoping to be reunited with his family, he sees that the footprints of his wife and son have slowly taken the shape of buffalo hooves.

The hunter tracks his family to a large herd, where he is confronted by its leader. The hunter professes his love for his family, but the head buffalo says the “Straight-up-Person” will be killed because his tribe has mistreated his wife and son, unless the hunter can pick them out of the herd. The hunter’s son secretly tells his father that he will flick his ear and that he has put a burr on his mother’s back, so the hunter is able to identify his son and wife among the buffalo.

After the hunter spends three nights sleeping under a buffalo robe with the horns and hoofs attached to it, the buffalo bulls roll the hunter in the dust, pressing the breath from his body and breathing new life into him. As they lick and rub against him, the hunter feels the buffalo robe adhere to his body and finally he stands on his own four legs, as a young buffalo.

“That was a wonderful day!” the story concludes. “The relationship was made between the People and the Buffalo Nation; it will last until the end of time. It will be remembered that a brave young man became a


buffalo because he loved his wife and little child. In return the Buffalo People have given their flesh so that little children, and babies still unborn, will always have meat to eat. It is the Creator’s wish.”13

Narratives from hunting and gathering cultures present animals as persons and animal herds as communities. Hunting and killing animals are accepted as necessary, but the stories express respect for animals and gratitude that animals allow themselves to be killed. These stories suggest that the line distinguishing humans from other animals is ambiguous and may be crossed by empathy and imagination.

A Sioux boy, for instance, was taught by his grandparents “to shoot your four-legged brother in his hind area, slowing it down but not killing it. Then, take the four legged’s head in your hands, and look into his eyes. The eyes are where all the suffering is. Look into your brother’s eyes and feel his pain. Then, take your knife and cut the four-legged under his chin, here, on his neck, so that he dies quickly. And as you do, ask your brother, the four-legged, for forgiveness for what you do. Offer also a prayer of thanks to your four-legged kin for offering his body to you just now, when you need food to eat and clothing to wear. And promise the four-legged that you will put yourself back into the earth when you die, to become nourishment for the earth, and for the sister flowers, and for the brother deer.”14

We fail to understand what this teaching tells us about taking the lives of animals for food, if we reduce it to a statement about our duty or character. In indigenous traditions, life is understood as a natural community. Humans are related to all forms of life, and thus nonhuman organisms are brothers and sisters. Moreover, in this natural community killing animals is not merely a necessity, but also an act that should express reverence and respect for life.15

Buddhist Culture

Two and a half millennia ago Gautama Siddhartha, known to history as the Buddha, renounced his privileges as an upper-caste Hindu and, after years of living as a solitary ascetic, “awoke” and embraced a life of simplicity and gratitude. There are many differences among Buddhists, who for centuries have followed the path of the Buddha, but Buddhist culture has a distinctive way of affirming the interdependence of all life.

Buddhists “take refuge in” (entrust themselves to) the Buddha, the dharma (his teachings), and the sangha (the community). The dharma offers a way of embracing interdependence by letting go of the desire to separate ourselves from others and from nature. In the sangha monks (or nuns) not only meditate, study, chant, and beg, but also garden, clean, cook, bathe, help one another, and receive guests.16 The ordinary activities of a Buddhist community are also spiritual practices, because the Buddha came to the realization that being awake means accepting the physical realities of life.

Buddhists follow the Eightfold Path to overcome suffering. In addition to right views, right thought, right speech, right action, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration, this way of life also requires right livelihood. A traditional Buddhist would not work in a slaughterhouse or with animal hides in factories making leather. For Buddhists, right livelihood means living from work that does not harm the natural world.

Given the interdependence of reality and thus the close relationship between humans and other animals, Buddhists try not to harm animals that appear to suffer as humans do. Therefore, for Buddhists, right conduct requires nonviolence, and killing any sentient being is viewed as an act of violence. (By sentient beings, Buddhists mean all animals that seem to try, like humans, to avoid pain rather than simply behaving according to reflex actions.)17

Buddhist monks traditionally obtained their food by begging and ate whatever was given to them, including scraps of meat. Their vow was not to kill, but this did not mean they were necessarily vegetarians. Later in the Buddhist tradition, the vow of nonviolence was broadened by some communities to mean not eating meat. Today Buddhists vary in what they eat, as some are strict vegetarians and others are not.


Buddhist teaching is paradoxical: care and empathy involve relationships whereas overcoming suffering requires “letting go” of these relationships. For Buddhists, however, this paradox is an illusion. Accepting the transitory nature of life enables us to do both.

Modern Culture

Our culture emphasizes human relationships, rather than our relationship with nature. Unlike indigenous communities, our folktales do not remind us that the distinction between culture and nature is ambiguous. We do not think of ourselves as human animals or of nonhuman animals as persons.18 In contrast to cultures influenced by Buddhist teaching, most of us eat hamburgers without any concern for the suffering of cattle in feedlots and slaughterhouses.

We have pets, visit wild animals in zoos, watch nature shows on television, and fund wildlife preserves, but mostly we live apart from wild animals. We are beginning to understand that biodiversity is required for healthy ecosystems. Yet we do little to preserve natural habitats, and we use chemicals to rid our homes and gardens of organisms we identify as pests and weeds.

Some living in our contemporary culture are developing greater empathy for other species and paying more attention to our relationship with the natural world, but most of us would be unwilling to embrace a traditional indigenous or Buddhist ethic concerning animals. Our life is largely urban, and we live apart from the animals we consume as food or enjoy watching in zoos. Moreover, this globalized form of human culture has altered the natural environment almost everywhere, so that the survival and well-being of wildlife now requires careful management.

Is the management of wild habitats within national parks as caring as it ought to be? The policy in the United States prohibits staff from intervening to protect a wild animal or to reduce its suffering, if an animal’s predicament is not the result of human error—unless the animal belongs to a protected or endangered species. This means a buffalo that has fallen through thin ice on the surface of a pond is left to die. Its carcass becomes food for wolves. Yet a mother bear and her cubs—stranded on a small island due to melting ice—are rescued, if the cubs are too small to swim ashore, because bears are an endangered species.19

Native American culture recognizes that wolves need to eat as much as humans do, and that buffalo give their lives to both. Traditional Buddhist culture guards against human desire by limiting the impact of human communities on nature. National park policy in the United States expresses a new awareness of our relationships with animals that distinguishes our duty to care for individual animals, which our actions have put at risk, from our duty to preserve the ecosystems that ensure the survival of wildlife and diverse species.

Deep Ecology

Scholars whose writings define the deep ecology movement20 reject modern culture. They find the cause of the environmental crisis in the dominant worldview of Western culture, which they claim values only the human use and consumption of natural resources. Advocates of deep ecology see efforts to curb pollution and the rapid depletion of nonrenewable resources as misguided and ineffectual—as anthropocentric and “shallow” rather than biocentric and “deep.” Biodiversity will only be saved, they argue, by embracing “an ecological, philosophical, and spiritual approach” that accepts the “unity of humans, plants, animals, the Earth.”21

Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess writes: “To the ecological field-worker the equal right to live and blossom is an intuitively clear and obvious value axiom. Its restriction to humans is an anthropocentrism with detrimental effects upon the life quality of humans themselves. This quality depends in part upon the deep pleasure and satisfaction we receive from close partnership with other forms of life.”22


Biocentric Equality

This philosophical worldview affirms that “there is no bifurcation in reality between the human and the nonhuman realms.”23 All things in the biosphere have an equal right to flourish and reach their own “self-realization” within the larger “Self-realization.” This basic intuition is that all “organisms and entities in the ecosphere, as parts of the interrelated whole, are equal in intrinsic worth.”24

Yet the claim of equal worth for all organisms and entities is hardly self-evident.25 Every organism has an interest in survival, but we might reasonably distinguish the nature of this interest for persons from the same interest for other organisms. For instance, although elk and humans need to eat, a human who can be educated has a greater interest in eating than an elk: “The eating supports other interests, and the other interests enrich the significance and value of the eating.”26 Elk eat to survive. We also eat to nourish our bodies, but dine to enjoy the taste of good food in the company of family and friends, and feast to celebrate harvests and significant cultural and religious events.

In addition, defending the right of self-realization for every organism makes it hard to distinguish our duty of care for animals in the wild from our duty to care for our pets and other domesticated animals. We likely agree that humans have a duty to help rescue a person or our dog who has fallen through the ice on a pond. Many would disagree, however, with the inference drawn from deep ecology that we have the same duty to try to rescue a wild buffalo trapped in an icy pond.

The deep ecology platform is summarized by Bill Devall and George Sessions in eight general principles:

1. The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman Life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes.

2. Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.

3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.4. The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the

human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.5. Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly

worsening.6. Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economic, technological, and

ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present. 7. The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of

inherent value) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.

8. Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes.27

Advocates of the fourth principle urge strong measures to limit the number of births in countries like India and have no patience with arguments that policies supporting contraception and abortion may violate the human rights of women.28 Ecofeminists, however, affirm that securing women’s rights is more just as well as more effective in controlling population growth.

Whether or not the third principle is reasonable depends on what is meant by “vital” needs. What criteria are to be used in deciding whether a need is vital, and who is to make this determination? Chapter 7 argues that fundamental political and economic rights are the necessary social conditions for human dignity, and this would be one way of identifying what our vital needs are. Yet proponents of deep ecology seem unable to affirm human rights laws, as these moral affirmations are anthropocentric and rooted in the cultural tradition that deep ecologists see as causing the environmental crisis.


Spirituality

Advocates of deep ecology reject the use of contemporary science and law to define our vital needs and look to philosophy and spirituality for guidance. They ignore or condemn, however, the monotheistic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, because each of these traditions gives human beings a privileged place in nature. Instead, they affirm that Taoist, Buddhist, and Native American traditions agree with the basic principles of deep ecology.29

Does their claim withstand scrutiny? Chinese culture reflects Confucian as well as Taoist and Buddhist teachings, and the Chinese have long relied on all three schools of thought. The Tao Te Ching presents nature as a model for living, but the Chinese turn to the Analects of Confucius to learn the virtues required for realizing harmony in a society.30 Ancient Chinese culture is more urban and agricultural than wild, and Taoist writings are silent about the self-realization of every organism.

In traditional Buddhist culture the life of a monk depended on the support of nearby merchants and farmers, as well as on begging in the market. The setting of a Buddhist temple is always natural, yet gardens are raked, fish ponds are maintained, and trees are trimmed and often given new shapes. Buddhist monks exercise control over nature around their monastery and utilize its resources, even as they practice nonattachment to its use value.

The claim that Native American traditions reflect the principles of deep ecology may also be misleading. A recent analysis of hunting and fishing societies has shown that “their use of the environment is driven by ecological constraints and not by attitudes, such as sacred prohibitions, and that their relatively low environmental impact is the result of low population density, inefficient technology, and the lack of profitable markets, not from conscious efforts at conservation.”31 In modern culture, Native Americans drive cars or trucks most of the time, rather than ride horses, and like most contemporary Buddhist monks I know, carry cell phones.

Advocates of deep ecology also assert a notion of individual salvation that is absent from Eastern cultures. Devall and Sessions proclaim that: “‘No one is saved until we are all saved,’ where the phrase ‘one’ includes not only you, an individual human, but all humans, whales, grizzly bears, whole rain forest ecosystems, mountains and rivers, the tiniest microbes in the soil and so on.”32 This is not Taoist, or Buddhist, or Native American spirituality. Using the notion of being saved, which is central to the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions, and expanding this concern to include all organisms and entities, is meant to shock us, and it does.

Proponents of deep ecology seem to believe that conversion to their way of thinking is required before an ecological world order can be achieved. Others committed to ecology are critical. “The fact that people can consciously change themselves and society, indeed enhance the natural world in a free ecological society, is dismissed as ‘humanism.’ Deep ecology essentially ignores the social nature of humanity and the social origins of the ecological crisis.”33

Ecofeminism: A Social Ecology

Ecofeminism refers to a way of reasoning that emerged in the writing of feminists in the 1970s. It identifies a connection between the exploitation of nature and the oppression of women. In this sense, it combines the creative analysis of the feminist movement with a critical assessment of the environmental movement.

The meltdown of the nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in 1979 motivated many women to attend the first ecofeminist conference in the United States in 1980. The goal of the conference was to explore the connections between feminism and militarization, as well as healing and ecology.

One of the organizers, Ynestra King, explained these connections: “We see the devastation of the earth and her beings by the corporate warriors, and the threat of nuclear annihilation by the military warriors, as


feminist concerns. It is the masculinist mentality which would deny us our right to our own bodies and our own sexuality, and which depends on multiple systems of dominance and state power to have its way.”34

The social origins of our environmental crisis, ecofeminists argue, involve a “language of domination”35 concerning both women and nature, which has long been taken for granted in both Western and Eastern cultural traditions. If this is so, then we can only improve our relationship with nature by changing the way we live together as men and women. “Women must see that there can be no liberation for them and no solution to the ecological crisis within a society whose fundamental model of relationships continues to be one of domination. They must unite the demands of the women’s movement with those of the ecological movement to envision a radical reshaping of the basic socioeconomic relations and the underlying values of this society.”36

Advocates of ecofeminism differ in many respects, but affirm “the interdependence of all life, humanity’s role as part of the earth’s ecosystem, and the non-hierarchical nature of a system in which all parts affecting each other are emphasized to counteract relationships dominated by values of control and oppression.”37 Their key concerns are environmental sustainability and social justice.

Specifically, ecofeminists identify a number of ways in which environmental degradation decreases the quality of life for women, children, and people of color, noting the connections between the oppression of women and that of nature by examining global economics, Third World debt, reproductive rights, militarism, and environmental racism.38

A Social Ecology

Seeing how conceptions of justice and culture allowed the domination of women by concealing this reality, and what this concealment has done to the nature of both men and women, should make us suspicious of similar language about our environment and its resources. The task of environmental ethics, therefore, is not simply to use natural resources more efficiently, but to resist the worldview that depicts both nature and women as resources.

In this sense, ecofeminism “is a social ecology. It recognizes the twin dominations of women and nature as social problems rooted both in very concrete, historical, socioeconomic circumstances and in oppressive patriarchal conceptual frameworks which maintain and sanction these circumstances.”39

This is why ecofeminism applies an ethics of care to the environment. It sees the parallel between raising children, which has long been understood as a woman’s responsibility, and caring for nature. For women, both experiences are less about principles or rules as to what is right and wrong, and more about being in nurturing relationships. Moral actions are understood as reflecting the compassionate virtues of a person, as opposed to doing what ethical principles or legal rules define as our duty.

The common dualisms of our language reflect a domineering attitude toward both women and nature. Distinctions such as mind and body are not neutral, but are rooted in a long history of identifying men as more rational and women as more emotional. The same is true for the distinction between being objective and subjective. In the twenty-first century in many Western societies, these dualisms are openly criticized. Nonetheless, the impact of centuries of tradition continues to affect the way men talk about women, and the way many men and women talk about nature.

Therefore, ecofeminism requires that we look carefully at relationships to see more clearly what our choices are. For example, the exploitation of animals in our food production system is not only an issue of cruelty to animals. In addressing the issues of industrial farming, ecofeminists also consider how such a system affects workers, and women in particular, both in the raising and slaughtering of animals.

Similarly, the dualism between being a meat eater or a vegetarian requires, in an ecofeminist analysis, greater cultural sensitivity than is usually recognized. Ecofeminists argue for “a contextual moral


vegetarianism” that opposes the injustice of factory farming, but recognizes that the traditional food practices of indigenous people are justifiable.40

Nurturing healthy relationships with others, and with nature, should be our goal. “The primary aims of ecofeminism are not the same as those typically associated with liberal feminism,” because ecofeminists “do not seek equality with men as such, but aim for a liberation of women as women. Central to this liberation is a recognition of the value of the activities traditionally associated with women: childbirth, nurturing and the whole domestic arena.”41

Decision-Making

Ecofeminists reject the notion that “experts” should decide what policies are needed to limit population and make the best use of natural and human resources, pointing out that this approach has generally meant a few men deciding what is best for women (and nature). Thus, in contrast to the biocentric egalitarianism of deep ecology, ecofeminists support women’s rights and human rights law.

“[W]omen’s health advocates argue for a different approach to population policy—one that makes women’s health and other basic needs more central to policy and program focus, and by doing so increases human welfare, transforms oppressive gender relations, and reduces population growth rates.”42 As women are able to make their own reproductive decisions and to pursue livelihoods that will support their families, they choose to have fewer children.

Ecofeminists also hold that poor women have knowledge that is generally unrecognized. “Women in subsistence economies, producing and reproducing wealth in partnership with nature, have been experts in their own right of holistic and ecological knowledge of nature’s processes. But these alternative modes of knowing, which are oriented to the social benefits and sustenance needs” are not valued by those concerned only with economic development, who fail to understand our relationship with nature and “the connection of women’s lives, work and knowledge with the creation of wealth.”43

Ecofeminists are committed to social and economic development in poor societies, but demand that this development be environmentally sustainable. They also argue that living ecologically does not simply mean following a new set of rules to protect the environment. Instead, an ecological way of living involves lifting up the various patterns of life, as these emerge, that embody just relationships among men, women, and the earth’s ecosystems. It means evolving our culture, so that it may be more just as well as ecologically sustainable.44

Father God and Mother Earth

Feminists point out that the language of domination has been reinforced by the monotheistic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which have long taught that God created nature for human use and gave authority to men over both women and nature. In the scriptures of these three religious traditions, God intervenes in nature, as he chooses, for his purposes. Religious rules limiting leadership roles to men and curtailing the participation of women in the religious life of the community (because they bleed and bear children) are enforced largely by men who assert that they are doing God’s will.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that many women who are resisting the language of domination are rediscovering spiritual traditions that focus on the earth, because in these traditions women are identified with the creative power of nature. Some turn for inspiration to ancient cultures that identified women with Mother Earth.

Others have begun to refer to our planet as Gaia, using the name of a Greek goddess to affirm that the earth is sacred and deserving of our reverence as well as greater care in our use of her bounty. Christian theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether writes: “The term Gaia has caught on among those seeking a new ecological spirituality as a religious vision. Gaia is seen as a personified being, an immanent divinity.”45


Ruether supports a spiritual ecofeminist perspective that, she says, is not optimistic as opposed to pessimistic, but is marked by love. “Being rooted in love for our real communities of life and for our common mother, Gaia, can teach us patient passion, a passion that is not burnt out in a season, but can be renewed season after season.” The goal of healing the earth “is not just for us, but for our children, for the generations of living beings to come. What we can do is to plant a seed, nurture a seed-bearing plant here and there, and hope for a harvest that goes beyond the limits of our powers and the span of our lives.”46

Science

Feminist scientist Evelyn Fox Keller argues that the metaphors used to describe modern science in its formative period reflect an aggressive attitude toward both nature and women. For instance, Francis Bacon (1561–1626), whose writings shaped the beginnings of modern science, asserted that science and technology do not “merely exert a gentle guidance over nature’s course” but “have the power to conquer and subdue her, to shake her to her foundations.” Bacon argued that the goal of science was to “establish a chaste and lawful marriage between Mind and Nature,” which will make Nature our “slave.”47

We may find these images provocative, but they have been commonplace in our culture. Nature is identified as feminine, and science and technology are the means by which men take from nature what they (and we, too) need and want. Until very recently science was restricted only to men, as women were thought to lack the objectivity required for scientific investigation.

In the 1970s a very different view of the earth as a living organism was asserted first by a chemist, James Lovelock. He argued that “the self-regulation of climate and chemical composition is a process that emerges from the rightly coupled evolution of rocks, air and the ocean—in addition to that of organisms. Such interlocking self-regulation, while rarely optimal—consider the cold and hot places of the earth, the wet and the dry—nevertheless keeps the Earth a place fit for life.”48 Biologist Lynn Margulis was an early supporter with Lovelock of what came to be known as the Gaia hypothesis.

For two decades many scientists argued that this hypothesis was unsupported by evidence. Then, in 2001, a thousand scientists meeting at the European Geophysical Union signed the Declaration of Amsterdam, which affirms: “The Earth System behaves as a single, self-regulating system with physical, chemical, biological, and human components.”49 Since then the hypothesis has been used to make useful predictions, and the evidence for it has led many scientists to argue that the hypothesis is now a proven theory.

In 2006 geologist Sir Crispin Tickell gave a speech entitled “Earth Systems Science: Are We Pushing Gaia Too Hard?” He concluded with these words: “If we are eventually to achieve a human society in harmony with nature, we must be guided by respect for it. No wonder that some have wanted to make a religion of Gaia or life as such. At least we need an ethical system in which the natural world has value not only to human welfare but also for and in itself.”50

Ethical Presumptions

Paying attention to these natural relationships, with one another and with our environment, will likely change the lives of both men and women. “Most ecofeminists believe that men have as much potential as women to adopt a deeper environmental awareness, but they will need to work harder to fully embrace those values.”51 Therefore, to renew our relationships with nature and one another, ecofeminists assert that we should: (1) be suspicious of the language of domination, (2) address feminist and ecological issues together, and (3) support the right of women to make their own decisions.

Ecological Integrity

Aldo Leopold, whose affirmation of a land ethic has inspired many in the environmental movement, affirms that: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”52 Christopher Stone expands on Leopold’s thinking: “Most of us, I


believe, are unpersuaded that all moral judgments can be referred to a single psychological state, such as happiness, or to a thinly veiled conventionalism which reduces all questions of value to what the majority favors or fancies. If [this is] so, then some other referent, some other ‘goods,’ are called for. It is not surprising, nor indefensible, that candidates for morally significant goods should include the living, the beautiful, the majestic, the rare, the untouched, the intricately complex, and the profoundly simple.”53

This debate continues, but Leopold’s notion of land integrity has become a standard for measuring the health of an environment. The word integrity has long referred to a quality of human character, and more recently, to judgments about human cultures and institutions. Like the word health, which also may refer to an individual and an environment, integrity implies wholeness and endurance. There is dignity and personal worth in integrity, and “we praise those who achieve it.”54

Both Catholics and Protestants combine these notions with stewardship, in affirming the “integrity of creation.” Ecological integrity, therefore, is best understood as a system of relationships that is dynamic, self-sustaining, and resilient. Natural chaotic events that disrupt an ecosystem do not necessarily destroy its integrity.

Natural systems are, on the whole, “places of adapted fit with many species integrated into long persisting relationships, life perpetually sustained and renewed. There is cycling and re-cycling of energy and materials. The member organisms are flourishing as interrelated fits in their niches. The system is spontaneously self-organizing in the fundamental processes of climate, hydrology, speciation, photosynthesis, and trophic pyramids. There is resistance to, and resilience after, perturbation.”55

The scientific and ethical standard of ecosystem integrity provides a practical way of measuring our impact on the natural environment. In the twenty-first century, earth will increasingly become a managed planet. Therefore, to maintain social integrity, we will have to ensure the integrity and health of our habitats. I apply this standard in chapter 12 to agriculture; in chapter 13 to the conservation and preservation of forests, deserts, and wetlands; and in chapter 14 to urban environments.

Law

The law has begun to protect ecological integrity. In 1972 the United States and Canada agreed to the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (GLWQA), which was renewed in 1978 and amended by a protocol in 1987.56 The current version of the GLWQA states: “The purpose of the Parties is to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the waters of the Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem,” and this integrity is defined as “the interacting components of air, land, water and living organisms, including humans within the drainage basin of the St. Lawrence River.”57

The 1972 US Clean Water Act affirms ecosystem integrity, as do statements by the UN Commission on Environmental Development (UNCED).58 In 1991 the International Council of Scientific Unions and the Third World Academy of Sciences asserted this environmental standard.59

In the new discipline of industrial ecology, ecological integrity is defined in terms of three aspects of the self-organization of ecological systems: (1)current well-being; (2) resiliency; and (3) the capacity to develop, regenerate, and evolve.60 The well-being of a system is sometimes identified as its “health.” Resiliency refers to a system’s capacity to respond successfully when it is disturbed. The third facet of ecological integrity is its emerging complexity. As discussed in chapter 14, those supporting green construction are working to include the standard of industrial integrity in architectural design criteria and municipal building codes.

Summary

We bring to environmental ethics not merely a capacity to reason about duty, character, and the likely consequences of our actions, but also our feelings of empathy for one another and many other organisms.


This capacity to act morally, relying both on empathy and reason, is natural for humans. Thus we may conclude that this moral dimension of our human nature has contributed to our survival as a species. It also seems reasonable to expect that our ethical nature will continue to serve us well as we confront our environmental crisis.

Relying on empathy as well as reason enables us to see and appreciate our relationships in nature and also to discern and define the integrity of ecosystems. This reasoning process leads us to extend our moral community by affirming the following ethical presumptions. We should:

• Protect ecosystems and endangered species.• Aid animals that our actions have put at risk.• Respect the rights and the experience of women.

Aldo Leopold wrote: “That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.”61 He challenged us to make ethical decisions about the environment by “thinking like a mountain.”62 A greater awareness of our relationships within nature may help us see that living ethically now means living ecologically.

Questions (Always Explain Your Reasoning)

1. Why it is important for ethics to consider relationships and not merely individual character traits? How does an ethics of care affect our decision making?

2. How are animals protected (and not protected) by Native American and Buddhist teachings?

3. Apply the principles of deep ecology to an environmental issue of your own choosing. In what ways do you find deep ecology helpful?

4. Explain the contextual approach of ecofeminist thinking to the issues of not eating meat and defending women’s rights.

5. Give your interpretation of what it might mean to “think like a mountain” and apply your thinking to an environmental issue of your choosing.

NOTES

1. Albert Schweitzer, “Reverence for Life,” Civilization and Ethics, A. Naish, trans., in Louis P. Pojman and Paul Pojman, eds., Environmental Ethics, 132.

2. Joseph R. DesJardins, Environmental Ethics: An Introduction to Environmental Philosophy, 250.

3. “The other’s emotion is constituted, experienced and therefore directly understood by means of an embodied simulation producing a shared body state. It is the activation of a neural mechanism shared by the observer and the observed to enable direct experiential understanding.” Vittorio Gallese, “Intentional Attunement: The Mirror Neuron System and Its Role in Interpersonal Relations,” European Science Foundation: Interdisciplines, http://www.interdisciplines.org/mirror/papers/1.

4. Nicholas Wade, “Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior,” New York Times, March 20, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/science/20moral.html.

5. Ibid. See Nicholas Wade, “How Baboons Think (Yes, Think),” New York Times, October 9, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/science/09babo.html.

6. Vittorio Gallese, “Intentional Attunement: The Mirror Neuron System and Its Role in Interpersonal Relations,” European Science Foundation: Interdisciplines, http://www.interdisciplines.org/mirror/papers/1.

7. Vittorio Gallese, cited in Lea Winerman, “The Mind’s Mirror,” Monitor on Psychology (October 2005), http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct05/mirror.html.


8. “Those with ventromedial injuries were about twice as likely as the other participants to say they would push someone in front of the train (if that was the only option), or poison someone with AIDS who was bent on infecting others, or suffocate a baby whose crying would reveal to enemy soldiers where the subject and family and friends were hiding.” Benedict Carey, “Study Finds Brain Injury Changes Moral Judgment,” New York Times, March 21, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/health/21cnd-brain.html.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid. The psychologist making this comment is Joshua Greene.

11. Virginia Held, “Feminist Transformations of Moral Theory,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (1990): 344, quoted in James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 164.

12. Segun Ogungbemi, “An African Perspective on the Environmental Crisis,” in Pojman and Pojman, Environmental Ethics, 336.

13. Paul Goble, Buffalo Woman.

14. In Karen J. Warren, “The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism,” Environmental Ethics 12 (1990): 125–146, in David Schmidtz and Elizabeth Willott, eds., Environmental Ethics, 246.

15. “Algonquian woodland peoples, for instance, represented animals, plants, birds, waters, and minerals as other-than-human persons engaged in reciprocal, mutually beneficial socioeconomic intercourse with human beings. Tokens of payment, together with expressions of apology, were routinely offered to the beings whom it was necessary for these Indians to exploit. Care not to waste the usable parts and care in the disposal of unusable animal and plant remains were also an aspect of the respectful, albeit necessarily consumptive, Algonquian relationships with fellow members of the land community.” J. Baird Callicott, “The Conceptual Foundations of the Land Ethic,” Companion to a Sand County Almanac, in Pojman and Pojman, Environmental Ethics, 184.

16. Eshin Nisimura, Unsui: A Diary of Zen Monastic Life,

17. “Who Are the Sentient Beings?” Buddhist Teaching of the Week, http://www.geocities.com/dharmawood/sentient_beings.htm.

18. Werewolf and vampire stories are an exception, but both are very negative and threatening in contrast to most Native American stories.

19. Holmes Rolston III, “Values in and Duties to the Natural World,” in F. Bormann and S. Kellert, eds., Ecology, Economics, Ethics: The Broken Circle, 73–96, in Schmidtz and Willott, Environmental Ethics, 35.

20. The three most prominent are Arne Naess, Bill Devall, and George Sessions.

21. Bill Devall and George Sessions, Deep Ecology: Living As If Nature Mattered, ix.

22. Arne Naess, “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecological Movement,” in Pojman and Pojman, Environmental Ethics, 216. See Arne Naess, “Deep Ecology,” http://www.mogensgallardo.com/deepeco/english/deep_ecology_arne.htm.

23. Warwick Fox, “The Intuition of Deep Ecology” (paper presented at the Ecology and Philosophy Conference, Australian National University, September, 1983), in Devall and Sessions, Deep Ecology, 65–77, in Schmidtz and Willott, Environmental Ethics, 121.

24. Devall and Sessions, Deep Ecology, 65–77, in Schmidtz and Willott, Environmental Ethics, 122.

25. Richard Watson argues that the logic of species egalitarianism means letting humans be, as they are, even if this means vastly reducing biodiversity. To place a special responsibility on humans as a species is anthropocentric, not biocentric. “Anti-anthropocentric biocentrists suggest that other species are to be allowed to manifest themselves naturally. They are to be allowed to live out their evolutionary potential in interaction with one another. But man is different. Man is too powerful, too destructive of the environment and other species, too successful in reproducing, and so on. What a phenomenon is man! Man is so wonderfully bad that he is not to be allowed to live out his evolutionary potential in egalitarian interaction with all the other species.” “A Critique of Anti-Anthropocentric Ethics,” Environmental Ethics 5 (1983), in Pojman and Pojman, Environmental Ethics, 283.


26. Andrew Light and Holmes Rolston III, eds. Environmental Ethics, 74.

27. Devall and Sessions, Deep Ecology, 65–77., in Schmidtz and Willott, Environmental Ethics, 123.

28. Ibid., 124. For an ecological argument supporting strict birth control measures, see Garrett Harding, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (1968): 1243–1248.

29. Devall and Sessions, Deep Ecology, 65–77., in Schmidtz and Willott, Environmental Ethics, 121.

30. For a discussion of Chinese ethics, see chapter 5 in Robert Traer and Harlan Stelmach, Doing Ethics in a Diverse World.

31. B. S. Low, “Behavioral Ecology of Conservation in Traditional Societies,” Human Nature 7, no. 4 (1996): 353–379, in Michael Shermer, The Science of Good and Evil, 96.

32. Devall and Sessions, Deep Ecology, 65–77, in Schmidtz and Willott, Environmental Ethics, 122

33. Murray Bookchin, “Social Ecology Versus Deep Ecology,” Socialist Review 88 (1988): 11–29, in Schmidtz and Willott, Environmental Ethics, 130.

34. “Women and Life on Earth,” http://www.wloe.org/what-is-ecofeminism.76.0.html.

35. “Many authors have argued that, ultimately, historical and causal links between the dominations of women and nature are located in conceptual structures of domination that construct women and nature in male-biased ways.” Karen J. Warren, “What Is Ecofeminism?” in Michael E. Zimmerman, J. Baird Callicott, George Sessions, Karen J. Warren, and John Clark, eds., Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology, 253–267, http://www.roebuckclasses.com/texts/modern/warrenecofeminism.htm.

36. Rosemary Radford Reuther, New Woman/New Earth, 204.

37. “Ecofeminism,” http://www.thegreenfuse.org/ecofem.htm.

38. Greta Gaard and Lori Gruen, “Ecofeminism: Toward Global Justice and Planetary Health,” in Light and Rolston, Environmental Ethics, 280.

39. Karen J. Warren, “The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism,” 244.

40. Gaard and Gruen, “Ecofeminism,” 286.

41. “Ecofeminism,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofeminism.

42. Gita Sen, “Women, Poverty, and Population: Issues for the Concerned Environmentalist,” in Schmidtz and Willott, Environmental Ethics, 251.

43. Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive: Women Ecology and Development, 24, quoted at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofeminism.

44. “With its emphasis on inclusivity and difference, ecofeminism provides a framework for recognizing that what counts as ecology and what counts as appropriate conduct toward both human and nonhuman environments is largely a matter of context.” Warren, “The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism,” 244.

45. Rosemary Radford Ruether, Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing, 4.

46. Ibid., 273–274.

47. In DesJardins, Environmental Ethics, 253.

48. James Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia, http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/lovebioen.htm#revenge.

49. “Gaia Hypothesis,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis.

50. “Earth Systems Science: Are We Pushing Gaia Too Hard?” University of Leicester, http://www2.le.ac.uk/ebulletin/features/2000–2009/2006/11/nparticle.2006–11–20.9623961254.

51. Ibid.

52. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 224–225.


53. Christopher D. Stone, Earth and Other Ethics, 98.

54. Holmes Rolston III, “Foreword,” in Laura Westra, An Environmental Proposal for Ethics: The Principle of Integrity, xi.

55. Ibid., xii.

56. In 2008 the Environmental Protection Agency delayed a report on public health problems due to contaminants in the environment of the Great Lakes. Kari Lydersen, “Delay of Report Is Blamed on Politics,” Washington Post, February 18, 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/17/AR2008021702186.html.

57. The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement is at http://www.ijc.org/rel/agree/quality.html#prot. This passage is quoted in Westra, Environmental Proposal for Ethics, 21. She is quoting Henry Regier et al., “Integrity and Surprise in the Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem,” in An Ecosystem Approach to the Integrity of the great Lakes in Turbulent Times, Great Lakes Fisheries Commission Special Publications 90–4, 17–36.

58. Westra, Environmental Proposal for Ethics, 24.

59. ICSU (International Council of Scientific Unions) and TWAS (Third World Academy of Sciences, Conference Statement: International Conference on an Agenda of Science for Environment and Development into the 21st Century (Ascend 21), in Westra, Environmental Proposal for Ethics, 71.

60. James J. Kay, “On Complexity Theory, Exergy, and Industrial Ecology,” in Charles J. Kibert, Jan Sendzimir, and G. Bradley Guy, eds., Construction Ecology, 83–84.

61. The Aldo Leopold Foundation, http://www.aldoleopold.org/LandEthicCampaign/campaign.htm.

62. Aldo Leopold, “Thinking Like a Mountain,” http://www.eco-action.org/dt/thinking.html.


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