Philosophy

Lesson 6
The Human Person in the Environment
Environmental philosophy examines our relation, as human
beings, to nature or our natural environment: it reviews our
philosophical understandings of nature and our conception of
nature’s value and entitlements; it explores how we are to live
with and in nature and to what degree nature is or is not
implicated in our own human identity. The question whether
nature and environment are useful concepts at all, or merely
contribute to attitudes that pathologise our relations with our
world, is also considered.
Environmental philosophy includes in its scope all the
core discourses of philosophy: metaphysics, our
assumptions about the basic stuff and structure of
things; epistemology, how we come to know and
understand nature and how different epistemologies
reveal different aspects of the natural world;
aesthetics, the patterning that may or may not be taken
to confer meaning or value on nature; and ethics, the
morality of our treatment of living things and systems.
Environmental inquiry also overlaps with
other disciplines, such as environmental
psychology and environmental politics, and is
furthermore cross-cultural, since different
societies understand and relate to their
natural environments in different ways.
Modern issues within environmental philosophy include but are not
restricted to the concerns of environmental activism, questions raised
by science and technology, environmental justice, and climate change.
These include issues related to the depletion of finite resources and
other harmful and permanent effects brought on to the environment
by humans, as well as the ethical and practical problems raised by
philosophies and practices of environmental conservation, restoration,
and policy in general.
Another question that has settled on the minds of
modern environmental philosophers is "Do rivers have
rights?"[3] At the same time environmental philosophy
deals with the value human beings attach to different
kinds of environmental experience, particularly how
experiences in or close to non-human environments
contrast with urban or industrialized experiences, and
how this varies across cultures with close attention paid
to indigenous people.
Deep ecology movement
Main article: Deep ecology
In 1984, George Sessions and Arne Næss articulated the principles of the
new Deep Ecology Movement.[9] These basic principles are:

1. The well-being and flourishing of human and non-human life have value.
2. Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these
values and are also values in themselves.
3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to
satisfy vital needs.
4. The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a
substantial decrease in the human population.
5. Present human interference with the nonhuman world is
excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.
6. Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic
economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting
state of affairs will be deeply different from the present.
7. The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality
(dwelling in situations of inherent value), rather than adhering to an
increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound
awareness of the difference between big and great.
8. Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation
directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes.