Callicott, Beyond The Land Ethic


J. Baird Callicott uses Leopolds land ethic in his argument, but then takes us beyond those points.  Callicott address how the land ethic might be related to more familiar modern concerns, and how it can be applied to contemporary environmental concerns. His main focus is the serious and disturbing theoretical and practical challenge to the land ethic raised by professional philosophers, regarding Eco fascism. He speaks about the evolutionary origins of ethics, using Darwin’s viewpoints. Ethics demands that moral agents selflessly consider other interests in addition to their own. But history indicates the opposite; our remote ancestors were more brutal and ruthless than we are.He states that the existence of ethics presents a problem for Darwin’s attempt to show how all things human can be understood as gradually evolved by natural selection. The problem Darwin is faced with that the social contract theory was not useful to Darwin because they ground ethics in reason. Callicott states that ethics demands that moral agents selflessly consider other interests in addition to there own.  He points out that ethics is a set of behavioral rules, and that moral sentiments are the foundation of ethics. He also mentions the social contract by Thomas Hobbes and how animal societies aren’t acknowledged, and don’t exist. Callicott mentions Hobbes, to challenge the social contract theory even being a theory of ethics. The social contract theory reduces morality to enlightened self-interest. A proper ethics for Callicott requires moral agents and to respect others. He discusses how the development of ethics is correlative to the development of society. The emergence of human social groups was attended by a corresponding extension of ethics. In the land ethic we see the eltonian “community concept”. Leopold states “ Ecology simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land” Callicott points out that the land ethic has a holistic dimension to it that is completely foreign to the mainstream modern moral theories going back to Hobbes. He states that Leopolds land ethic was concerned about the biological and ecological wholes, populations, species, communities, ecosystems, and not their individual constitutes. Callicott talks about how killing of certain members of the biotic community is sometimes not land ethically wrong, because it depends who is killed, for what reasons and under what circumstances. He covers the idea of environmental fascism, which basically means that we’d do anything to uphold the land ethic.  For example, if there is an overpopulation of a certain human community, and the existence of such a large human population is land ethically wrong, then killing them off would be the right thing to do, in terms of upholding the land ethic.
Callicott presented to us an extreme of putting nature over human life, but everyday we put human desires over nature. I feel like we act this way in response to our own selfish desires. If a new multi million condo needed a place to be built, and the only place was a field where rabbits lived, the construction for the condominiums would win over the rabbits.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kenneth Goodpaster: On Moral Consideration

Kenneth Goodpaster leads us through many principles and perceptions of different philosophers to tackle the overall question, “ to whom principles of morality apply?” In order to begin to develop an answer for this question, we must first understand the framework of moral consideration, and then proceed to the application of this framework. Goodpaster presents to us distinct viewpoints on the sorts of entities that can and should receive moral consideration. He believes that neither rationality nor the capacity to experience pleasure and pain are necessary conditions on moral considerability. Instead, the simple act of being alive, for Goodpaster is a plausible criterion in terms of moral consideration. He believes that the universe of moral consideration is more complex that just individual persons and their joys ad sorrows. Goodpaster begins to draw the distinction between rights and considerability. He believes that the notion of rights are more specific that those of considerbaili...
Read more

Class #23: Heather Davis and Zoe Todd, “On the Importance of a Date, or Decolonizing the Anthropocene”

Heather Davis and Zoe Todd point out the failure of the Anthropocene, as a name to be assigned to today’s epoch. The start date that is being chosen for the Anthropocene is mid twentieth century 1964.  They are drawing connections saying that the Anthropocene, is explicitly linked to the beginnings of colonization. By linking the Anthropocene with colonization, it draws attention to the violence at its core, and calls for the consideration of Indigenous philosophies and processes of Indigenous self-governance as a necessary political corrective, alongside the self-determination of other communities and societies violently impacted by the white supremacist, colonial, and capitalist logics instantiated in the origins of the Anthropocene. They feel that the Anthropocene betrays itself in its name: in its reassertion of universality, it implicitly aligns itself with the colonial era. Heather Davis and Zoe Todd propose a 1610 start date to coincide with colonization p...
Read more

Rolston, Duties to Ecosystems

Holmes Rolston talks about the separate duties that humans and organisms owe to the ecosystem through distinct lenses. He states that the apparent harmony in ecosystems is superficial. Like business, politics, and sports ecosystems thrive on competition. He talks about how environmental necessity involves conflict, selection pressure, niche fittedness, environmental support, etc. These section pressures will routinely drive adaptation and counter adaptation; therefor the ecosystem is forcing a check on competitions by forced cooperation.   He believes us humans need to see that, an ecosystem has no centeredness at all, and we ought to simply value organisms for their evolutionary journey and purpose. The members of the biotic community have no shared needs; each species is individualistic in the sense that they are focused on the needs of their own survival.   He further explains how an ecosystem is far from being a satisfactory community, instead it is rath...
Read more