Non-Anthropocentric Value Theory and Environmental Ethics

TLDR: In this article, the authors present a synoptic and critical review of various proferred candidates for a non-anthropocentric value theory for environmental ethics, and conclude that the most important philosophical task of environmental ethics is the development of a nonanthropo-centric value theory.

Abstract: OVER the last decade, environmental ethics has emerged as a new subdiscipline of moral philosophy. As with anything new in philosophy or the sciences, there has been some controversy, not only about its legitimacy, but about its very identity or definition. The question of legitimacy has been settled more or less by default: profes? sional philosophical interest in environmental philosophy seems to be growing as, certainly, work in the field proliferates. The question of identity? just what is environmental ethics??has not been so ingenuous. Environmental ethics may be understood to be but one among several new sorts of applied philosophies, the others of which also arose during the seventies. That is, it may be understood to be an application of well-established conventional philosophical categories to emergent practical environmental problems. On the other hand, it may be understood to be an exploration of alternative moral and even metaphysical principles, forced upon philosophy by the magnitude and recalcitr? ance of these problems.1 If defined in the former way, then the work of environmental ethics is that of a philosophical yeoman or underlaborer (to employ Locke's self appraisal); if defined in the latter way, it is that of a theoretician or philosophical architect (as in Descartes' self image). If interpreted as an essentially theoretical, not applied discipline, the most important philosophical task for environmental ethics is the development of a non-anthropocentric value theory.2 Indeed, as the discussion which follows will make clear, without a non-anthropocentric axiology the revolutionary aspirations of theoretical environmental ethics would be betrayed and the whole enterprise would collapse into its more work? aday, applied counterpart. The subject of this paper, accordingly, is a synoptic and critical review of various proferred candidates for a non-anthropocentric value theory for environmental ethics. Ethical hedonism and