Norton's conception of sustainability: Political, not metaphysical

Environmental Ethics

Volumn 29, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 3-22

  Elliott, Kevin ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33947356282     PISSN: 01634275     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics200729126     Document Type: Review

References (66)

1. Bryan Norton, Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
2. One should make a distinction between environmental pragmatism as a whole and the more specific set of projects in the environmental pragmatist literature that attempts to build an environmental ethic on the work of classical American pragmatists like Peirce, James, and Dewey. Many strands of environmental pragmatism aim to bring a diverse coalition of thinkers together in support of concrete proposals for action (and therefore count as "political" in the language of this paper), whereas the strands that focus on advancing the thought of the classic American pragmatists fall under what in this paper I call "metaphysical" projects. In section five, I suggest that this distinction between political and metaphysical projects is similar to Andrew Light's distinction between metaphilosophical and philosophical pragmatism in his "Environmental Pragmatism as Philosophy or Metaphilosophy? On the Weston-Katz Debate," in Andrew Light and Eric Katz, eds., Environmental Pragmatism (London: Routledge, 1996).
3. Ibid., p. 130.
4. Ibid., p. 161.
5. Ibid., p. 92.
6. Ibid., p. 96.
7. Ibid., p. 98.
8. Ibid., p. 388.
9. See John Rawls, "Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical," Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 (1985): 223-52;
10. Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
11. See Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 26-27.
12. According to Rawls, an individual is "reasonable" when he or she meets two conditions: (1) being willing "to propose and honor fair terms of cooperation," and (2) being willing "to recognize the burdens of judgment and to accept their consequences." See Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. 49-51.
13. Rawls, Justice as Fairness, p. 5 (emphasis added).
14. Norton, Sustainability, p. 317.
15. For example, let us imagine a hypothetical political conception of justice that considers the treatment of nonhuman organisms to be irrelevant to its account of justice, except insofar as the treatment of nonhuman organisms affects the well-being of humans. One could then imagine two hypothetical political conceptions of sustainability that have the same consequences for humans but that have somewhat different consequences for nonhuman organisms. The political conception of justice would not support one conception of sustainability over the other, even though they would clearly be distinct conceptions. One could also plausibly construct two different conceptions of justice that would both be endorsed by a particular conception of sustainability. Thus, it is at least logically possible to construct political conceptions of sustainability and justice that do not imply one another.
16. Norton, Sustainability, p. 78.
17. Ibid., p. 84.
18. Ibid., p. 75.
19. Ibid., p. 67.
20. Ibid., p. 108.
21. Ibid., p. 119.
22. Ibid., p. 120.
23. See Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, pp. 33-35.
24. Ibid., pp. 35-37.
25. See, e.g., National Research Council, Understanding Risk: Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1996);
26. Thomas Beierle, "The Quality of Stakeholder-Based Decisions," Risk Analysis 22 (2002): 739-49.
27. See. e.g., James Fishkin and Peter Laslett, Debating Deliberative Democracy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003);
28. Ben Minteer and Bob Pepperman Taylor, Democracy and the Claims of Nature (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002).
29. See,.e.g., Cass Sunstein, Risk and Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
30. See, e.g., Robyn Eckersley, "Environmental Pragmatism, Ecocentrism, and Deliberative Democracy: Between Problem-Solving and Fundamental Critique," in Minteer and Taylor, Democracy and the Claims of Nature;
31. John O'Neill, "Deliberative Democracy and Environmental Policy," in Minteer and Taylor, Democracy and the Claims of Nature.
32. See, e.g., Minteer and Taylor, Democracy and the Claims of Nature;
33. Fishkin and Laslett, Debating Deliberative Democracy;
34. John Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000);
35. Stephen Macedo, ed., Deliberative Politics: Essays on Democracy and Disagreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999);
36. Michael Saward, ed., Democratic Innovation: Deliberation, Representation and Association (London: Routledge, 2000).
37. Norton, Sustainability, pp. 278-90.
38. See John O'Neill, "Deliberative Democracy and Environmental Policy," in Minteer and Taylor, Democracy and the Claims of Nature, p. 267.
39. Iris Marion Young, "Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy," in Fishkin and Laslett, Debating Deliberative Democracy, p. 109.
40. See, e.g., Michael Saward, "Less than Meets the Eye: Democratic Legitimacy and Deliberative Theory," in Saward, Democratic Innovation;
41. Ian Budge, "Deliberative Democracy versus Direct Democracy-Plus Political Parties!" in Saward, Democratic Innovation.
42. For a compilation of several different accounts of political liberalism, see Shaun P. Young, ed., Political Liberalism: Variations on a Theme (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004).
43. One might think that Norton surely would not mind allowing these theories to continue to operate as long as they are viewed just as perspectives within an overarching deliberative process. Nevertheless, he sometimes makes it sound as if intrinsic value theory is almost entirely problematic as a tool in current environmental deliberations; see his "Integration or Reduction: Two Approaches to Environmental Values," in Environmental Pragmatism, ed. Andrew Light and Eric Katz (London: Routledge, 1996);
44. see also Norton, Sustainability, pp. 375-77.
45. Norton, "Democracy and Environmentalism," in Minteer and Taylor, Democracy and the Claims of Nature, p. 30.
46. For example, J. Baird Callicott argues that it is problematic for pragmatists to promote value pluralism in environmental ethics while suppressing the nonanthropocentric theory of value that he supports; see his "Appendix," in Minteer and Taylor, Democracy and the Claims of Nature.
47. J. Baird Callicott, "The Pragmatic Power and Promise of Theoretical Environmental Ethics: Forging a New Discourse," Environmental Values 11 (2002): 3-25.
48. See. e.g., Sharon Beder, Global Spin, rev. ed. (White River Junction, Vt.: Chelsea Green, 2000).
49. Norton, Sustainability, p. 376.
50. In response to a rudimentary version of this paper in March 2006, Norton did in fact suggest that he might accept both a metaphysical and a political conception of sustainability (although he would likely reject the label "metaphysical").
51. J. Baird Callicott, "The Conceptual Foundations of the Land Ethic," in Companion to A Sand County Almanac: Interpretive and Critical Essays, ed. J. Baird Callicott (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987).
52. J. Baird Callicott, In Defense of the Land Ethic (Albany: State University of Nrew York Press, 1989), pp. 169-72.
53. Norton, Sustainability, pp. 258-61.
54. Norton hints at a willingness to adopt this tolerant, empirical stance toward other conceptions of sustainability when he suggests that he would like to wait and see whether adaptive-management approaches that incorporate the language of intrinsic value are actually more effective than those that do not. See Norton, Sustainability, p. 376.
55. One might draw an instructive parallel between utilitarian ethics and pragmatist theory. Some utilitarians have suggested that, in order to maximize utility, it might be necessary for the majority of people not to act consciously based on utilitarian principles (e.g., because they would be likely to miscalculate utilities and waste a good deal of time). Rather, most people would actually maximize utility by acting based on a simpler, roughly "deontological" set of principles. Similarly, the best way to advance the pragmatic method in philosophy might be to encourage the development of a wide variety of philosophical theories, even those that explicitly oppose pragmatism. To denigrate other philosophical theories in support of pragmatism would potentially conflict with the wide experimental method that pragmatism encourages.
56. See Bryan G. Norton, "Why I Am Not a Nonanthropocentrist: Callicott and the Failure of Monistic Inherentism," Environmental Ethics 17 (1995): 341-58;
57. Ben Minteer, "No Experience Necessary? Foundationalism and the Retreat from Culture," Environmental Values 7 (1998): 336;
58. Ben Minteer, "Deweyan Democracy and Environmental Ethics," in Minteer and Taylor, Democracy and the Claims of Nature, p. 33-48.
59. As Callicott puts it, the pragmatists "seem to want to make environmental philosophers chair panel discussions of environmental policy, but not allow us to speak substantively as panelists," in "Appendix," p. 107; see also Robyn Eckersley, "Environmental Pragmatism, Ecocentrism, and Deliberative Democracy," in Minteer and Taylor, Democracy and the Claims of Nature, pp. 49-69.
60. See the clarification of this distinction in n. 2, as well as Light and Katz's essay "Introduction: Environmental Pragmatism and Environmental Ethics as Contested Terrain," in Light and Katz, Environmental Pragmatism.
61. Andrew Light, "Environmental Pragmatism as Philosophy or Metaphilosophy? On the Weston-Katz Debate," in Light and Katz, Environmental Pragmatism.
62. See also his "Contemporary Environmental Ethics: From Metaethics to Public Philosophy," Metaphilosophy 33 (2002): 426-49.
63. Dryzek, "Discursive Democracy vs. Liberal Constitutionalism," in Saward, Democratic Innovation;
64. Cass Sunstein, "Deliberation, Democracy, and Disagreement," in Justice and Democracy: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, ed. R. Bontekoe and M. Stepaniants (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997).
65. Paul Thompson, "Pragmatism and Policy: The Case of Water," in Light and Katz, Environmental Pragmatism.
66. Andrew Light and Eric Katz, "Introduction: Environmental Pragmatism and Environmental Ethics as Contested Terrain," in Light and Katz, Environmental Pragmatism.