Universal consideration as a deontological principle: A critique of birch

Environmental Ethics

Volumn 18, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 55-62

  Hayward, Tim ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0009561023     PISSN: 01634275     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics199618141     Document Type: Article

References (8)

1. Janna Thompson, "A Refutation of Environmental Ethics," Environmental Ethics 12 (1990): 149-60. Even if this argument does not definitively rule out the possibility of arriving at a criterion, it does at least give a prima facie reason for exploring alternative approaches.
2. Thomas H. Birch, "Moral Considerability and Universal Consideration," Environmental Ethics 15 (1993): 313-32. All page numbers given in brackets in the text refer to this paper.
3. I am here assuming that one can have a commitment to discovering what is good for another being without necessarily having any moral commitment to pursue that good.
4. This is particularly the case in relation to animals: see, for instance, the illuminating thought experiments in empathy to be found in Franco Cassano, Approssimazione: esercizi di esperienza dell'altro (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989).
5. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, in H. J. Paton, The Moral Law (London: Hutchinson, 1948), p. 84.
6. Of course, an unreconstructed Kantianism will not do, since the requirement of reciprocity between rational agents is inhospitable to the concerns of environmental ethics; however, a more "modest Kantian ethics," as proposed, for instance, by Angelika Krebs, Ethics of Nature (Ph.D., diss., University of Frankfurt, 1993), can retain a focus on the rationality of human moral agents while allowing the development of concern for non-rational "patients." See also Tim Hayward, "Kant and the Moral Considerability of Non-Rational Beings," in R. Attfield and A. Belsey, eds., Philosophy and the Natural Environment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
7. Of course, an unreconstructed Kantianism will not do, since the requirement of reciprocity between rational agents is inhospitable to the concerns of environmental ethics; however, a more "modest Kantian ethics," as proposed, for instance, by Angelika Krebs, Ethics of Nature (Ph.D., diss., University of Frankfurt, 1993), can retain a focus on the rationality of human moral agents while allowing the development of concern for non-rational "patients." See also Tim Hayward, "Kant and the Moral Considerability of Non-Rational Beings," in R. Attfield and A. Belsey, eds., Philosophy and the Natural Environment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
8. This claim may seem to be in tension with my earlier claim that a commitment to identifying a being's good does not necessarily mean a commitment to pursuing that good. However, it remains the case that knowledge of a being's good is insufficient as a determination of action, particularly since goods can conflict. Accordingly, the presumption mentioned only requires that consideration should make reference to beings' goods rather than disregard them, and in this sense it is moral; it, nevertheless, remains a presumption with no determinate commitment to action.