The paradox of environmental ethics: Nietzsche's view of nature and the wild

Environmental Ethics

Volumn 21, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 163-174

  Drenthen, Martin ^a,b  

^a RADBOUD UNIVERSITY NIJMEGEN   (Netherlands)

^b Intl Soc Environ Ethics W Eur   (Netherlands)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 1642298475     PISSN: 01634275     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics199921229     Document Type: Review

References (34)

1. Max Hallmann, "Nietzsche's Environmental Ethics," Environmental Ethics 13 (1991): 99-125.
2. Ralph Acampora, "Using and Abusing Nietzsche for Environmental Ethics," Environmental Ethics 16 (1994): 187-94.
3. Ibid., p. 187.
4. Ibid., p. 194.
5. For this meaning of hermeneutics, see Paul J. M. van Tongeren, "Moral Philosophy as a Hermeneutics of Moral Experience," International Philosophical Quarterly 24, no. 2 (1994): 199-214.
6. In this brief sketch, I cannot do justice to the many nuances within the debate. Of course, some postmodern environmental philosophers consider themselves to be ethicists and vice versa.
7. Eugene Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1989).
8. I am not suggesting that these interpretations can be changed at will - as those opposed to this postmodern approach mistakenly think. The meaning of nature is the result of a historical process that cannot be controlled at an individual level.
9. In fact, the same could be said of nonhuman beings.
10. Friedrich Nietzsche, Human All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986), vol. 1, sec. 1.
11. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. with commentary by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), sec. 62.
12. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books 1974), sec. 109.
13. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, sec. 6: ". . . his [the philosopher's] morality bears decided and decisive witness to who he is - that is, in what order of rank the innermost drives of his nature stand in relation to each other." See also Beyond Good and Evil, sec. 187: "In short: moralities are also merely a sign language of the affects."
14. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, sec. 6: ". . . his [the philosopher's] morality bears decided and decisive witness to who he is - that is, in what order of rank the innermost drives of his nature stand in relation to each other." See also Beyond Good and Evil, sec. 187: "In short: moralities are also merely a sign language of the affects."
15. Friedrich Nietzsche, Kritische Studien Ausgabe, Colli-Montinari edition (Berlin: DTV/De Gruyter, 1885), vol. 11, p. 36; Nietzsche, The Will to Power, sec. 619.
16. Friedrich Nietzsche, Kritische Studien Ausgabe, Colli-Montinari edition (Berlin: DTV/De Gruyter, 1885), vol. 11, p. 36; Nietzsche, The Will to Power, sec. 619.
17. The very notion of "will to power," for that matter, does not appear as frequently and as unambiguously in the writings that Nietzsche himself published during his sane life, as one might think after reading The Will to Power - long believed to be his Magnum Opus. In the 1960s, however, Karl Schlechta unmasked this book as an erroneous systematization of some posthumous fragments. Since then, the Colli-Montinari edition has confirmed Schlechta's judgment. It is a pity that this book still has so much influence on Anglo-Saxon Nietzsche interpretation even today. See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968).
18. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, sec. 188: "Every morality is, as opposed to laisser aller, a bit of tyranny against 'nature'; but this in itself is no objection, as long as we do not have some other morality which permits us to decree that every kind of tyranny and unreason is impermissible. . . . Consider any morality with this in mind: what there is in it of 'nature' teaches hatred of the laisser aller, of any all-too-great freedom, and implants the need for limited horizons and nearest tasks - teaching the narrowing of our perspective, and thus in a certain sense stupidity, as a condition of life and growth."
19. Heidegger points out that Nietzsche does not say that everything wants power - that would be the same as saying that not everything is "will to power," because then there would be something else that is not "will to power" but has "will to power."
20. E.g., Nietzsche, The Gay Science, sec. 109: "When will we complete our de-deification of nature? When may we begin to 'naturalize' humanity in terms of a pure, newly discovered, newly redeemed nature?" See also Beyond Good and Evil, sec. 230: "To translate man back into nature; to become master over the many vain and overly enthusiastic interpretations and connotations that have so far been scrawled and painted over that eternal basic text of homo natura; to see to it that man henceforth stands before man as even today, hardened in the discipline of science, he stands before the rest of nature, with intrepid Oedipus eyes and sealed Odysseus ears, deaf to the siren songs of old metaphysical bird catchers who have been piping at him all to long, "you are more, you are higher, you are of a different origin!" - that may be a strange and insane task, but it is a task - who would deny that?"
21. E.g., Nietzsche, The Gay Science, sec. 109: "When will we complete our de-deification of nature? When may we begin to 'naturalize' humanity in terms of a pure, newly discovered, newly redeemed nature?" See also Beyond Good and Evil, sec. 230: "To translate man back into nature; to become master over the many vain and overly enthusiastic interpretations and connotations that have so far been scrawled and painted over that eternal basic text of homo natura; to see to it that man henceforth stands before man as even today, hardened in the discipline of science, he stands before the rest of nature, with intrepid Oedipus eyes and sealed Odysseus ears, deaf to the siren songs of old metaphysical bird catchers who have been piping at him all to long, "you are more, you are higher, you are of a different origin!" - that may be a strange and insane task, but it is a task - who would deny that?"
22. See Paul van Tongeren, Die Moral von Nietzsches Moralkritik (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1989), chap. 6.
23. Insa Eschebach - from whom I borrowed this distinction - discusses the major German Nietzsche-receptions of the 1930s as examples of such an account (Insa Eschebach, Der versehrte Maßstab (Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 1990), pp. 52-81). However, I think that some studies of Nietzsche's naturalism are "ontologizing" Nietzsche's concept of "will to power" in a similar way.
24. Hallman, "Nietzsche's Environmental Ethics," pp. 119-23.
25. Note that Acampora criticizes Hallman for another reason, saying that Hallman's emphasis on Nietzsche's alleged "ecological egalitarianism" is misguiding. Acampora, "Using and Abusing Nietzsche for Environmental Ethics."
26. E.g., Bataille, Foucault, Deleuze, and Lyotard.
27. Wolfgang Müller-Lauter, "Nietzsche's Teaching of Will to Power," trans. Drew E. Griffin, Journal of Nietzsche Studies 4-5 (Autumn 1992-Spring 1993): 37-101.
28. Hub Zwart, for instance, shows that "all ethical theories regarding the moral significance of animals are grounded in an ontological assessment of the animal's way of being." Zwart examines three different ontological perspectives on the "nature of animals," that not only lead to different degrees of moral obligation towards animals, but also to different conceptions of the kind of moral obligations we have toward them. My argument is that the awareness that more than one ontology exists, radically complicates any moral assessment. See Hub Zwart: "What is an Animal? A Philosophical Reflection on the Possibility of a Moral Relationship with Animals," Environmental Values 6 (1997): 377-92.
29. See Jim Cheney, "Postmodern Environmental Ethics: Ethics as Bioregional Narrative," Environmental Ethics 11 (1989): 117-34.
30. See Roger Paden, "Nature and Morality," Environmental Ethics 14 (1992): 239-51.
31. Neil Evernden, The Social Construction of Nature (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).
32. The same can be said with regard to William Cronon's position in "The Trouble with Wilderness," in William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature (New York: Norton, 1995): 69-90.
33. See Robert Frodeman, "Radical Environmentalism and the Political Roots of Postmodernism," Environmental Ethics 14 (1992): 307-19.
34. Acampora, "Using and Abusing Nietzsche," p. 187.