Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics (25th Anniversary Edition)

344 Pages·2011·22.22 MB·English

by  Paul W. Taylor

RESPECT FOR NATURE
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RESPECT FOR
NATURE
A Theory of
Environmental Ethics
25th Anniversary Edition
Paul W. Taylor
WITH A NEW FOREWORD BY
DALE JAMIESON
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON AND OXFORD
Copyright © 1986 by Princeton University Press
Foreword to the 25th Anniversary Edition copyright © 2011 by Princeton
University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton,
New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street,
Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
press.princeton.edu
All Rights Reserved
First printing, 1986
Second printing, with corrections, 1989
Twenty-fifth-anniversary edition, with a new foreword by Dale Jamieson,
2011
Library of Congress Control Number 2010942223
ISBN 978-0-691-15024-6
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Linotron Palatino
Printed on acid-free paper. °°
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 79 10 8 6 42
To the Earth's Wild Living Things
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CONTENTS
FOREWORD TO THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii
ONE. ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS AND HUMAN
ETHICS 3
1. Introduction 3
2. Moral Agents and Moral Subjects 14
3. Formal Conditions for Valid Moral Principles 25
4. Material Conditions for Valid Moral Principles: The
Content of Human Ethics 33
5. The Structural Symmetry between Human Ethics and
Environmental Ethics 41
6. Biology and Ethics 47
7. A Note on the Ethics of the Bioculture 53
Two. THE ATTITUDE OF RESPECT FOR NATURE 59
1. Introduction 59
2. The Concept of the Good of a Being 60
3. The Concept of Inherent Worth 71
4. Having and Expressing the Attitude of Respect for
Nature 80
5. Respect for Nature as an Ultimate Attitude 90
THREE. THE BIOCENTRIC OUTLOOK ON NATURE 99
1. The Biocentric Outlook and the Attitude of Respect for
Nature 99
2. Humans as Members of the Earth's Community of Life 101
3. The Natural World as a System of Interdependence 116
4. Individual Organisms as Teleological Centers of Life 119
5. The Denial of Human Superiority 129
6. The Argument for the Biocentric Outlook 156
vii
CONTENTS
FOUR. THE ETHICAL SYSTEM 169
1. The Basic Rules of Conduct 169
2. Priority Principles 192
3. The Basic Standards of Virtue 198
FIVE. Do ANIMALS AND PLANTS HAVE RIGHTS? 219
1. Legal Rights and Moral Rights 219
2. Analysis of the Assertion of Moral Rights 226
3. The Defeasibility of Rights 241
4. Is It Logically Conceivable for Animals and/or Plants to
Have Moral Rights ? 245
5. A Modified Concept of Moral Rights 251
Six. COMPETING CLAIMS AND PRIORITY
PRINCIPLES 256
1. The General Problem of Competing Claims 256
2. Human Rights and the Inherent Worth of Nonhumans 260
3. Five Priority Principles for the Fair Resolution of
Conflicting Claims 263
a. The Principle of Self-Defense 264
b. The Principle of Proportionality 269
c. The Principle of Minimum Wrong 280
d. The Principle of Distributive Justice 291
e. The Principle of Restitutive Justice 304
4. The Ethical Ideal of Harmony between Human
Civilization and Nature 307
5. The Normative Function of the Ethical Ideal 310
BIBLIOGRAPHY 315
INDEX 325
viii
FOREWORD TO THE 25TH
ANNIVERSARY EDITION
When Paul Taylor's Respect for Nature was published in 1986,
it was an intellectually liberating event. Environmental eth-
ics was a young field very much in search of its identity.
While animals were on the academic agenda thanks to Peter
Singer and Tom Regan, it was far from clear how to think
sensibly about our moral relations with nonsentient nature.
Environmental ethics had an uncertain relationship both to
the academic world and to the environmental movement,
sometimes seeming to combine the obscurantism of the for-
mer with the dogmatism of the latter. It is revealing that
what were probably the two best papers in this nascent field
were skeptical and tentative. One suggested that a new en-
vironmental ethic probably was not needed, while the other
seemed only to say that such an ethic was worth trying to
develop.1 Into the breach came Paul Taylor with a carefully
reasoned, highly sophisticated account that not only made
environmental ethics a subject of serious academic inquiry,
but also connected it to the values and lifestyles that were
emerging in the environmental movement.
What first struck me about Taylor's book was that it made
no pretense of universal appeal. Taylor claimed that it was
rational to accept what he called "the biocentric outlook,"
that this "underlies and supports" the attitude of respect for
nature, and that there is a particular system of standards and
rules that would guide moral agents were they to accept the
1 Richard Routley, "Is There a Need for a New, an Environmental, Ethic?"
Proceedings of the XVth World Congress of Philosophy 1 (1973): 205-210; and
Tom Regan, "The Nature and Possibility of an Environmental Ethic," Envi-
ronmental Ethics, vol. 3 (1981): 19-34.
ix