Environmental Ethics Muhammad Usman Ghani

What is Environmental Ethics? First of all, we have to understand that what is Environmental Ethics. It is based on the moral relations among human beings with respect to their natural environment Moral norms are responsible for changing human behavior in the direction of natural world.

The Bases of Environmental Problems “Agriculture displaced sustainable foraging lifeways, beginning 10,000 years ago Agricultures destroyed ecosystems and the foraging societies that had co-evolved with them” Paul Shephard

Power over Nature God instructs humans to “Fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing.” (Genesis)

Refusal of Pantheism and Animism Animism: Everything of the environment, living as well as non living has some kind of awareness or spirit (anima, soul). Hence, all the beings deserve respect. Pantheism: Based on processes and natural objects. Nature is sacred (divine) and deserves our respect.

Rene Descartes Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650) believed that animals have no minds and cannot suffer Humans have minds and souls, they are different from animals His famous motto “I think, therefore I am’ suggests that thought reveals not only existence, but also human superiority.

Rene Descartes (contd) For Descartes, the natural world becames an objectified thing. On the other hand, there are some critics which say that “objectification of nature” is key to science and progress.

Francis Bacon Bacon (1561 – 1626) is known as the father of scientific method. According to his point of view “Both woman and slaves were like a nature and they both should be treated and restricted for the services of man.”

Types of Environmental Ethics Individualistic Holistic Reference: