Reflection Paper
Holmes Rolston III: Pages 158-222 (Chapter 6 & 7)
Rolston, in A New Environmental Ethics, provides a clear illustration that ethics needs to be ambitious in depth and breadth, practical and theoretical of its critique on traditional thinking methods yet connected and grounded to practical inquiries of wilderness protection, animal welfare, climate change and ecological restoration. Rolston provides a substantial difference between anthropocentrism as well as non-anthropocentrism. He defends, unapologetically the values of non-human animals and plants as well as other non-sentient life forms, ecosystems, species and the whole earth. He is forthright of his technique and the predicament of environmental philosophy more generally in an effort to come up with a paradigm shift, as necessary, and does not proceed from any previously existing assumptions.
Rolston makes an attempt of facilitating a sense of scenic scope through laying out in detail the relevant consideration with the help of examples and cases. Bringing into focus the ecological, environmental, law, science, economics and policy, he provides the possibility of valuing nature more broadly and thoroughly than is the case as of now. This involves a worldly environmental ethics, mostly based on observations made in nature and the workings accompanied by astute critique where personal institutions and beliefs do not succeed in acknowledging sources of value besides ourselves. Rolston does not purport to argue from the first principle but instead provides a narration of the world in order to show the possibility of a coherent alternative to the entrenched and narrow valuing modes as well as anthropocentric organizations that work further to instantiate and reinforce them.
The politically-correct and enlightened environmentalism do not have any particular exemptions from the critical gaze of Rolston. Adaptive management can better its proceedings but does not necessarily ensure its competence. Likewise, Rolston avoids contemporary moves that could collapse nature as well as culture and on the basis of questioning the ideal and ideas of wilderness coherence. When taking note of the fact that several North American landscapes where shaped historically by people and not necessarily pristine before the colonization of the Europeans, he emphasizes on the fact that it is essential to acknowledge degree differences between the categories of manipulations that featured Native American land use and the ones typical of present-day civilization.
Along with this line, it is possible to dedifferentiate wild lands from the ones that people dominated. Equally, Rolston acknowledges the confused conceptual critique of wilderness that appeals to the fact that wilderness is simply a social set up that the Westerners erected in a romantic idealization grip. He asserts, “The problem is that smart intellectual are focused on language –lens that they do not see. For instance, it cannot count on “wilderness” having a successful reference that earlier people never had the word. Yes, “wilderness” is in one sense, a twentieth-century construct (Rolston 177).” Regarding this view, there are parts of the natural world that are often wild, and others that are not wild at all, and this difference is of great significance. Not every part of the world should be wild, but the nature of wilderness is of a distinct value, one which deserves protection and preservation.
Rolston engages his reader with up-to-date examples as well as engagement with contemporary interlocutors, yet at the same time reflecting a perspective that has been developed for decades. It is considerate and thoughtful of their perspectives, while at the same time uncompromising and direct. Rolston does not simply lay out possibilities for various readers to take into consideration. Instead, he argues, and neither is he deterred by the popularity nor the power of his opponents. Rolston expresses his deep concern with the theoretical question of the things that have value while at the same time showing the how practices that people do every day reflect different value presuppositions. It would be safe to say that the author is indeed an attentive and engaged social critic.
For instance, he makes an evident distinction between environmental economics as well as ecological economic, both which makes attempts to ameliorate the incapability of classical economics to adequately account for the environment while at the same time identifying ecological economies as a strategy which is worth practicing. Environmental economics mainly involves “classical economics applied to natural systems” (168). Ecological economies, however, challenges the basic presuppositions of classical economics, which includes commitments to the maximization of profits as well as endless development.
While showing the concerned that people should avoid using restoration as an excuse to be part of ecological destructive behavior, Rolston contests the claim that nature if restored is inevitably inauthentic and natural as well. In one section, he argues that the naturalness returns if people put back the pieces; nature will take over eventually, and a site is able to be altered from an artifact state to places where nature processes often reign (184). Rolston considers the term “restoration” as one that is misleading insofar because it suggests that we are placing things back or resting the clock –restoration, as he considers it is “forward-looking” it involves “rehabilitation for the future”(185). Therefore, while he establishes that a distributed site has undergone a disruption or discontinuity that can’t be undone, Rolston attempts to make his reader understand that there are different other aspects of natural value that can be returned: a restored site can be wild and natural, which means that natural procedure can reverse as can significant freedom from control by humans.
This argument however, raises the question of the appropriate form of considering other restoration forms, especially the ones that don’t entirely restore wildness or naturalness. Rolston is, however not aware that there are categories as well as degrees of restoration and that at times it is essential to restore in order to make up for the damage made previously, and sometimes for pragmatic reasons in order to be beneficial to people. This is a consistent argument with a contextual approach to restoration as well as identification of cultural values that as cute with specific landscapes as well as the probability of restoration which integrates the culture as well as nature. This approach consent to ‘historical fidelity’ –normally understood intently as loyalty to pre- disturbance ecological condition—as not simply the relevant restoration value.
The willingness of Rolston to acknowledge different forms of restoration shows a general acknowledgment of the complicity of relationship that people have with nature as well the values that are often found there. The emphasis of context, however, value diversity and complexity pervades the work of Rolston and the identification of this complexity seems to call for the cultivation of specific features of traits in us, features that give us the ability to grapple with motives as well as complexity and gives us the ability to respond in the most appropriate ways.
As a conclusion, Rolston provides a clear argument that he is not a virtue ethic in any case what virtue ethics involve is rule rejection as essential guides for behavior. Rolston puts into the picture a representation of the kind that is necessary in case we have to embrace the ethics of the earth. He provides encouragement for us not simply to be “good citizens” in a traditional way, but citizens who are ecological (221). We have to learn the way to reside on Earth and to do so with “relevance, respect, and care” (222). It is important for us to be aware of our home place, not simply the shopping malls and highways, but the animals, plants, the climate, the geology and the interconnections among these things as well as our relation to them.
Works Cited
Rolston III, Holmes. A new environmental ethics: the next millennium for life on earth. Routledge, 2012.
