From intrinsic value to compassion: A place-based ethic

Environmental Ethics

Volumn 35, Issue 3, 2013, Pages 259-278

  Bannon, Bryan E ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NORTH FLORIDA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84894358604     PISSN: 01634275     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics201335325     Document Type: Article

References (73)

1. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (New York: Ballantine Books, 1970), p. 262.
2. Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, p. xviii: "We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.
3. The term is from Richard Routley, "Is There a Need For a New, an Environmental, Ethic?" Proceedings of the Fifteenth World Congress of Philosophy, no. 1 (1973): 205-10.
4. Tom Regan, "The Nature and Possibility of an Environmental Ethic," Environmental Ethics 3 (1981): 19-20.
5. Throughout this essay, I speak of the intrinsic value of nature as inclusive of both of these approaches. Although seeking the intrinsic value of nature is so prevalent, I must also mention that there is a wide divergence in the interpretations of what, exactly, intrinsic value is. For instructive articles in this regard, see Katie McShane, "Anthropocentrism and Nonanthropocentrism: Why Should We Care?" Environmental Values 16 (2007): 169-85
6. "Why Environmental Ethics Shouldn't Give Up on Intrinsic Value," Environmental Ethics 29 (2007): 43-61.
7. John O'Neill's "The Varieties of Intrinsic Value," The Monist 75 (1992): 119-37, also offers a taxonomy of intrinsic value, though it derives different conclusions from it..
8. Tom Regan, "The Nature and Possibility of an Environmental Ethic," pp. 31-32, although in a later article he seems more pessimistic about such projects, arguing that no theory of intrinsic value can ground the kinds of duties environmental ethicists advocate.
9. Regan, "Does Environmental Ethics Rest on a Mistake?" The Monist 75 (1992): 161-82.
10. The classic examples to cite are philosophers such as J. Baird Callicott, In Defense of the Land Ethic (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), especially part three;
11. Holmes Rolston, III, Philosophy Gone Wild (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1986);
12. Paul Taylor, Respect for Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).
13. For a very small sample of more recent defenses, see Robert Elliot, "Intrinsic Value, Environmental Obligation and Naturalness," The Monist 75 (1992): 138-60;
14. Keekok Lee, "Awe and Humility: Intrinsic Value in Nature" Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 36 (1994): 89-101
15. Ben Minteer, "Intrinsic Value for Pragmatists?" Environmental Ethics 22 (2001): 57-75;
16. Christopher Preston, "Intrinsic Value and Care: Making Connections through Ecological Narratives," Environmental Values 10 (2001): 243-63;
17. Mark Sagoff, "Has Nature a Good of Its Own?" in Ecosystem Health: New Goals for Environmental Management, ed. Robert Costanza, Bryan G. Norton, and Benjamin D. Haskell (1992), pp. 57-71;
18. Lars Samuelsson, "Reasons and Values in Environmental Ethics," Environmental Values 19 (2010): 517-35. Even theories that do not rely on theories of intrinsic value for its system of duties at times take care to make a place for the intrinsic value of nature in their theories.
19. See, for example, Ronald Sandler, Character and Environment (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 170;
20. Geoffrey Frasz, "Benevolence as an Environmental Virtue," in Environmental Virtue Ethics, ed. Ronald Sandler and Philip Cafaro (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), p. 130.
21. O'Neill, "The Varieties of Intrinsic Value" is a good example of a view that diverges from this account, however, arguing that some further justification is required for the intrinsic value of nature to serve as a basis for duties.
22. Samuelsson, "Reasons and Values in Environmental Ethics," p. 530.
23. See, for example, Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1993)
24. "Toward a Progressive Naturalism" in Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005): 25-53.
25. Bryan G. Norton, "Convergence, Noninstrumental Value and the Semantics of 'Love': Comment on McShane," Environmental Values 17 (2008): 7.
26. McShane, "Anthropocentrism and Nonanthropocentrism: Why Should We Care?" 174-75.
27. Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). I do not intend to endorse her moral theory in general by employing and modifying her more specific views regarding compassion, however.
28. The discussion of Nussbaum's view has been lively. For a sample of how it has been received, see Aaron Ben-Ze'ev, "Emotions Are Not Mere Judgments," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (2004): 450-57;
29. Laura Cannon, "Compassion: A Rebuttal of Nussbaum," in Feminist Interventions in Ethics and Politics: Feminist Ethics and Social Theory, ed. Barbara S. Andrew (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), pp. 97-110;
30. Brian Carr, "Pity and Compassion as Social Virtues" Philosophy 74 (1999): 411-29;
31. Roger Crisp, "Beyond Compassion," Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 11 (2008): 233-46;
32. John Deigh, "Nussbaum's Account of Compassion," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (2004): 465-72;
33. Lester Hunt, "Martha Nussbaum on the Emotions," Ethics 116 (2006): 552-77;
34. M. Weber, "Compassion and Pity: An Evaluation of Nussbaum's Analysis and Defense," Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 7 (2004): 487-511;
35. Maureen Whitebrook, "Compassion as a Political Virtue," Political Studies 50 (2002): 529-44.
36. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, p. 301.
37. The desert requirement in specific has come under close scrutiny, with commentators questioning whether it is necessary for compassion as we seemingly are capable of experiencing compassion even toward those who are in some way responsible for their own suffering. John Deigh suggests that Nussbaum can address this issue by making a distinction between moral and non-moral forms of compassion: the form of compassion that involves desert is moral since it is guided by the aforementioned concerns of justice, while we can still acknowledge feeling compassion for those who deserve their suffering due to the human capacity for sympathetic concern (Deigh, "Nussbaum's Account of Compassion," p. 471).
38. Nussbaum accepts this emendation with the stipulation that we also distinguish between "thoughtful" non-moral compassion when one, for example, feels compassion for an unknown homeless person and non-moral compassion as a reflexive response when one, for example, cringes as one watches someone accidentally slice his or her finger while cooking dinner (Nussbaum, "Responses," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 [2004]: 482-83
39. but one can already see her acknowledging this distinction in Upheavals of Thought, p. 301). Ultimately, Nussbaum does not truly want to call this reflexive distress an emotion as it lacks cognitive content, but nevertheless she recognizes it as a common psychological phenomenon. Thus, our "fellow-feeling" might be broken into three categories: moral compassion, non-moral compassion, and reflexive sympathetic reactions.
40. Roger Crisp finds this taxonomy of compassion to be rather unparsimonius: if non-moral compassion is the same emotion as moral compassion only lacking moral direction, then it seems as if compassion itself does not require the judgment of desert or a sense of justice (Crisp, "Beyond Compassion," p. 236).
41. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, p. 321.
42. Nussbaum has a variety of ways of defending herself on this point, for example, taking the judgment of non-desert to be proportional rather than absolute (e.g., while the person brought his or her suffering upon him or herself, the suffering is disproportionate to the act that caused it). I agree with Crisp, however, that including the desert requirement and thereby bundling in the need for a theory of justice in order to feel compassion distracts us from the essence of compassion, the felt distress at another being's suffering (Crisp, "Beyond Compassion," p. 237).
43. A general theory of emotions such Peter Goldie's notion of "feelings toward" can shed light on how this is possible. For Goldie, an emotion is "complex, episodic, dynamic, and structured," meaning that emotions involve a diverse array of cognitive elements (thoughts, feelings, beliefs, desires, etc.), come and go, change over time, and contribute to the larger narrative of our lives (Peter Goldie, The Emotions [New York: Oxford University Press, 2002], pp. 11-12).
44. Like Husserl, Goldie conceives of intentionality more broadly as a general mental directedness rather than consisting in merely thoughts and beliefs (pp. 17-18).
45. It also accommodates Lawrence Blum's characterization of compassion as an emotion with "an irreducible affective dimension" without having to posit the imaginative entering-into the other's situation he regards as central to compassion ("Compassion," in Explaining Emotions, ed. Amelie Rorty [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980], p. 507).
46. To be fair, Nussbaum expresses surprise that her view of compassion is seen as being independent of feelings, given that she does not hold that there is any distinction between emotion and thought; emotions just are specific kinds of judgments that present the world from a first-person perspective as being a certain, value-laden way that impacts one's eudaimonia (Nussbaum, "Responses," p. 476). The emotional response is a result of recognizing that the objects toward which the emotion is intentionally related are beyond our specific control, a result of our being entwined in the material world. Any feelings that accompany such emotional responses are accidental.
47. Though she intends perception to be understood in the terms of her broader conception of reason. See Nussbaum, "Responses," p. 473.
48. I discuss the issue of relating perceptual norms and ethical actions in greater detail in "Re-Envisioning Nature: The Role of Perceptual Norms in Environmental Ethics," Environmental Ethics 33 (2011): 414-36.
49. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, p. 300.
50. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, ed. George Sher (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2001), p. 14.
51. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, p. 335.
52. For this reason, Nussbaum believes that compassion must be coupled with "an adequate theory of the worth of basic goods," "an adequate understanding of agency and fault," and "a suitably broad account of the people who should be the object of an agent's concern, distant as well as close" (Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, p. 399).
53. While outside the purview of this paper, parties interested in Nussbaum's views on these matters might consult her Women and Human Development (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001) for further detail.
54. For a sense of the differing reasons philosophers have for maintaining this point, see Virginia Held, "Taking Care: Care as Practice and Value," in Setting the Moral Compass: Essays by Women Philosophers, ed. Cheshire Calhoun (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 69;
55. Alison Jaggar, "Caring as a Feminist Practice of Moral Reasoning," in Justice and Care: Essential Readings in Feminist Ethics, ed. Virginia Held (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), pp. 193-98;
56. Uma Narayan, "Colonialism and Its Others: Considerations on Rights and Care Discourses," Hypatia 10 (1995): 133-40.
57. For those interested in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy more specifically, I develop this theory of flesh in much greater detail in "Flesh and Nature: Understanding Merleau-Ponty's Relational Ontology," Research in Phenomenology 41 (2011): 327-57.
58. Although Casey develops the concept in different directions in his more recent works, Getting Back into Place (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993) remains his most thorough explication of his views on place and their philosophical implications.
59. Casey, Getting Back Into Place, p. 215.
60. I have in mind here the sometimes fractious debates regarding ecological restoration. Perhaps the strongest exponent of the rejection of restoration based on naturalness is Eric Katz, "The Big Lie: Human Restoration of Nature," Research in Philosophy and Technology 12 (1992): 231-41.
61. At times, such arguments are bound up with views about the intrinsic value of nature as with Robert Elliot's Faking Nature (New York: Routledge, 1997).
62. Claudia Card, "Environmental Atrocities," Ethics and the Environment 9 (2004): 27-28.
63. For a history of this dispute, see Donald Worster, The Economy of Nature (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), esp. parts four and five
64. "The Ecology of Order and Chaos," Environmental History Review 14 (1990): 1-18.
65. Popular texts that take a position on the matter include Daniel Botkin, Discordant Harmonies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991);
66. John Kricher, The Balance of Nature: Ecology's Enduring Myth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009);
67. Stuart Pimm, The Balance of Nature? Ecological Issues in the Conservation of Species and Communities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
68. Kim Sterelny, "Local Ecological Communities," Philosophy of Science 73 (2006): 218-26.
69. In this I follow Georges Canguilhem in The Normal and the Pathological (Cambridge: Zone Books, 1991), esp. pp. 182-86.
70. Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological, p. 182.
71. Ned Hettinger and Bill Throop, "Refocusing Ecocentrism: De-emphasizing Stability and Defending Wildness," Environmental Ethics 21 (1999): 12. I am in essential agreement with them that "emphasizing wildness provides the most promising general strategy for defending ecocentric ethics" even as I resist their using wildness as a means of finding intrinsic value in natural systems (p. 12).
72. Amanda Schaffer, "Prescriptions for Health, the Environmental Kind," The New York Times, 11 August 2008, at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/ 08/12/health/12clin.html?-r=1&emc=etal.
73. Tom Birch, "Moral Considerability and Universal Consideration," Environmental Ethics 15 (1993): 313-32.