Ethics and Nature

1) Describing the effects of the culture vs. nature dilemma in

Western Modernity.
2) Defining different forms of the relationship between society
and nature/environment.
3) Analyzing the rights of nature and animals.
4) Specifying environmental ethics and its main concepts to
understand its application to ecological dilemmas.

Generating questions:
Does nature and animals have rights? Are humankind’s
culture and knowledge different things from nature? What are
the impacts of our way of life on nature?
Crisis of our time
Anthropocentrism
• Anthropos = mankind
• Renaissance and humanity’s point of view of the
world: understanding the world from men abilities
and knowing capacities (not a theological/religious
one) – men as the measurement of everything.
• Shifting from a theological point of view of
organizing and thinking (when Earth was at the
center of the universe, and we were understood as
the image of God).
• Modern sciences and new political and social
forms of organizations as means for controling
nature and population
• Nature as a mere resource of mankind
 Descartes and the Modern
Human-Nature conception

As regards my speculations, although they pleased me very much, I

realized that other people had their own which perhaps pleased
them more. But as soon as I had acquired some general notions
in physics and had noticed, as I began to test them in various
particular problems, where they could lead and how much they differ
from the principles used up to now, I believed that I could not keep
them secret without sinning gravely against the law which obliges us
to do all in our power to secure the general welfare of mankind. For
they opened my eyes to the possibility of gaining knowledge which
would be very useful in life, and of discovering a practical philosophy
which might replace the speculative philosophy taught in the schools.
Through this philosophy we could know the power and action of fire,
water, air, the stars, the heavens and all the other bodies in our
environment, as distinctly as we know the various crafts of our
artisans; and we could use this knowledge - as the artisans use theirs -
for all the purposes for which it is appropriate, and thus make
ourselves, as it were, the lords and masters of nature. This is
desirable not only for the invention of innumerable devices which
would facilitate our enjoyment of the fruits of the earth and all the
goods we find there, but also, and most importantly, for the
maintenance of health, which is undoubtedly the chief good and the
foundation of all the other goods in this life.
(Descartes, Discourse on Method, 1637, Part Six)
The Anthropocene:
humans’ footsteps on Earth

Holocene (“Recent Whole”): is the name given to the post-glacial

geological epoch of the past ten to twelve thousand years as agreed
upon by the International Geological Congress in Bologna in 1885
(Encyclopaedia Britannica 1976). During the Holocene, accelerating in
the industrial period, mankind’s activities grew into a significant
geological and morphological force, as recognized early by a number
of scientists. Thus, in 1864, G. P. Marsh published a book with the title
“Man and Nature”, more recently reprinted as “The Earth as Modified
by Human Action” (Marsh 1965). Stoppani in 1873 rated mankind’s
activities as a “new telluric force which in power and universality may
be compared to the greater forces of earth”. Stoppani already spoke of
the anthropocene era. Mankind has now inhabited or visited all places
on Earth; he has even set foot on the moon.

Anthropocene (“Human Whole”): Supported by great technological

and medical advancements and access to plentiful natural resources,
the expansion of mankind, both in numbers and per capita exploitation
of Earth’s resources has been astounding.

(Crutzen, 2006)
Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Biodiversity
and agro-
industrial
impacts
New ecological thought: the Gaia hypothesis

• James Lovelock, British physician, chemist, and

ambientalist, first suggested the Gaia
Hypothesis in the 1960-1970’s.
• Earth can be thought as a single functioning
ecosystem, a living superorganism, where
organisms interact within their surroudings.
• All living things and their non-living
environments are harmonic and closely
integrated to form a one system which is self-
regulated and maintains the conditions for life
(biochemical and environmental).
• Life has persisted for over 3.8 billion years
despite increasing solar luminosity and variable
exchange of matter with the inner Earth.
• The Earth system has repeatedly recovered
from massive perturbations.
• This approach have changed how Earth and the
environment is thought by humans: not as
source or provider, but as a living being that we
are part of it.
From anthropocentrism to
ecocentrism
 Metamorphosis as the naturel feature of life
In the beginning, we were all the same living being. We share the same body and the same experience. Since then, things haven't changed that much.
We multiply the forms and ways of existing. But we are still the same life today. For millions of years this life has been transmitted from body to body, from
individual to individual, from species to species, from kingdom to kingdom. Certainly, it shifts, it transforms. But the life of each living being does not
begin with its own birth: it is much older. Let us consider our existences. Our life, what we imagine to be what is most intimate and incommunicable in us,
does not come from us, it has nothing exclusive or personal: it was transmitted to us by someone else, it animated other bodies, other pieces of matter,
besides the one that shelter us. For nine months, the inappropriate and unassignable side of life that animates and awakens us was physical, material
evidence. We were the same body, the same humors, the same atoms as our mother. We are this life that shares the body of another, prolonged and taken
elsewhere. It is the breath of another that lingers in ours, the blood of another that circulates in our veins, it is the DNA that another gave us that sculpts and
chisels our body. If our life starts long before our birth, it ends long after our death. Our breath will not be exhausted on our corpse: it will feed all those who
find in it a supper to celebrate. Our humanity is not an original and autonomous product either. She is also an extension and a metamorphosis of a previous
life.
It is, more precisely, an invention that primates another form of life knew how to extract from their own bodies from their breath, from their DNA,
from their way of living to make the life that inhabited them exist in a different way. and cheered them up. They were the ones who transmitted this form to
us and, through the human form of life, they are the ones who continue to live in us. In fact, the primates themselves are just an experiment and a bet made
by other species, other forms of life. Evolution is a masquerade that takes place in time and not space. It allows every species, from age to age, to wear a
new mask in front of the one that generated it, and, to sons and daughters, not to allow themselves to be recognized and to no longer recognize their parents.
And yet, despite the change of mask, mother species and daughter species are a metamorphosis of the same life. Each of the species is a patchwork of pieces
extracted from other species. We living species never fail to exchange parts, lines, organs, and what each one of us is, what we call species, is just the set of
techniques that each living being borrowed from others. It is because of this continuity in transformation that every species shares a multitude of traits with
hundreds of others. We share the fact of having eyes, ears, lungs, a nose, warm blood with millions of other individuals, with millions of other species and in
all of these forms we are only partially human. Each species is the metamorphosis of all those that came before it. The same life that molds for itself a new
body and a new form to exist in a different way.
(Metamorphosis, by Emanuele Coccia)
 Bruno Latour and the politics
of Science and Nature
• Latour calls for an inclusive, reflective process that respects
interdependency:
To avoid the trap of thinking that it would be possible to live in sympathy, in
harmony, with so-called “natural” agents. We are not seeking agreement among all
these overlapping agents, but we are learning to be dependent on them. No reduction,
no harmony. The list of actors simply grows longer; the actors’ interests are
encroaching on one another; all our powers of investigation are needed if we are to
begin to find our place among these other actors.
Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime. Polity Press: Cambridge, UK,
2018. p.87.
• Science task according to Latour: translation and composition.
• “I use translation to mean displacement, drift, invention, mediation, the
creation of a link that did not exist before and that to some degree modifies
two elements or agents” [8] (p. 32).
• By employing the term “composition,” Latour is endeavoring to navigate the
notion that “things have to be put together” while “retaining their
heterogeneity” [9] (pp. 473–474).

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

The care ethics approach for humans and
nature
Questions to entangle translation and composition:
This process may seem all well and good, but what of situations that are more complex than a field study
involving only scientists using relatively simple tools and stable and uncontroversial protocols? What do
composition and translation look like when, as in the case of the growing turmoil resulting from dramatic
climate change, decisions about the actions involve science, law, politics, religion, morality, and economic
forces? How heterogeneous are the composites that take shape amid dispute, amid institutional forms of practice
that differ (law is not science, politics is not economics)? Where and how, amid the tangles, does care come into
play?

Care and concern:

“Concern brings us closer to care. However, there is a ‘critical’ edge to care that the politics of making things
matter as gatherings of concern tends to neglect” [17] (p. 18). Bellacasa discusses the divergent connotations of
the words “concern” and “care.” The former, according to Bellacasa, suggests worry and thoughtfulness, while
the latter adds a “sense of attachment and commitment” (p. 42). Bellacasa credits Latour for connecting these
forms of regard to the technoscientific world.

Flower, M.; Hamington, M. Care Ethics, Bruno Latour, and the Anthropocene. Philosophies, 7, 31, 2022.
Climate emergence as
an ethical problem

First questions:
• What measures should the government undertake against
climate change?
• What would a just international climate treaty look like?
• Do we have a duty to limit our prosperity in order to protect
future generations against climate damage?
• Is it still acceptable to drive to the supermarket or fly to Spain for
a short holiday?
• What should happen and what we ought to do when faced with
climate change?
 
Cons against climate change ethical duties:
• Science might be wrong
• No responsibility for the future
Pros for climate change ethics duties:
• Do we have a duty to do anything at all in the face of climate
change? 
• Assuming that we are obliged to do something, how much should
we do?
• How should these duties be distributed?
Climate Justice:
an ethical approach
to climate change
•We saw that we have a fundamental moral obligation to engage in climate
mitigation.
•We specified more precisely to what extent we must protect the climate:
We should ensure that future generations will be at least sufficiently well off,
and perhaps even just as well off, as we are. But anyone who has ever shared
an apartment knows that it is not enough to know that the kitchen must
always be kept tidy and that it should be clean enough, or maybe even as
clean as, at the beginning of a house party. A decisive question remains:
Who should do what? When it comes to cleaning up, who should perform
which tasks to what extent? How should we spread the amount of climate
mitigation to be performed across different shoulders?
•Climate ethics and justice proposes a just distribution of the advantages
and disadvantages entailed by climate mitigation among members of the
present generation. This can also be called the “question of
intragenerational global climate justice.”
•One might think that we have already answered this question—for,
amazingly enough, there is a widely held view within international climate
policy circles about the standard according to which the costs of climate
mitigation should be distributed. In the 1992 UNFCCC, 154 states committed
themselves to protect the climate system “in accordance with their
common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities”