Abstract
I approach environmental ethics here through an appeal to the human capacity for appreciating value wherever it is found, contesting the supposed disunity of person and external world that is arguably at the root of the global disrespect for the natural environment. In the more dominant non-anthropocentric approach attention is drawn to the overarching eco-system equalizing the functional roles of both human and non-human. But this seems self-undermining, as appeal is necessarily made to that human moral and rational consciousness whose regulating role is at the same time being called into question. Drawing on an Aristotelian/Thomist metaphysics, congruent with the African traditional idea of “vital force” running through natural and social reality, I argue that organisms—human or otherwise—are not functional elements in the ecosystem but historically viable co-determinants thereof. The role of the human organism is that of co-determining through narrative and history. Human subjectivity is not, pace Nagel, confined to a species-perspective but there is a supra-biological patterning of experience intending understanding and true value. However, the development of these powers of agency, and sympathy, are stultified by a picture of self-determination as the most absolute independence from the “other”. In contrast, the African traditional value of ubuntu posits a normative development of agency through others that can be unpacked to apply beyond simply social custom. The contribution this cultural tradition brings is enhanced if the metaphysics of “force” or “spirit” is interpreted non-dualistically and without appeal to a supernaturalism.
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Notes
- 1.
This is an indifference pointed to by Coetzee (1999: 35) when he refers to a general lack of empathy with the suffering of animals in abattoirs, “we do not feel tainted. We can do anything, it seems, and come away clean.”
- 2.
This way of unpacking the kind of human participation in the whole of reality posited in African traditional metaphysics, was something that African philosophy pioneer Placide Tempels (1959) was aware of through his Thomistic philosophical training, although he does not himself make reference to this (see Giddy 2012).
- 3.
J. M. Coetzee, in contrast, suggests the dichotomy reason/nature goes back through Descartes to Aquinas and Aristotle. He references (Coetzee 1999: 22) Aquinas’ idea that cruelty to animals is of no moral concern except insofar as it may accustom us to being cruel to humans (see Aquinas 1964, Summa Theologiae IaIIae, Q.10 art. 6 and 8.). LeBlanc’s (1999: 299) account of “eco-Thomism” is more sympathetic to Aquinas.
- 4.
Darwin’s impact on environmental thinking has been crucial, and has been extended to take into account the noosphere, Teilhard de Chardin’s term, the sphere of consciousness and mind. Wilhelm Wundt in the late 19th century sees human consciousness as constituting “a decisive point in nature’s course, a point at which the world becomes aware of itself” (in Menaud 2001: 269), an insight developed at length by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry in The Universe Story (1994).
- 5.
A neglect well-articulated by M. Robinson in her 2011 critique of contemporary culture’s “absence of mind”.
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Giddy, P. (2019). Environmental Ethics in the Context of African Traditional Thought: Beyond the Impasse. In: Chemhuru, M. (eds) African Environmental Ethics. The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics, vol 29. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18807-8_4
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