António dos Santos Queirós (Lisbon
University, Portugal)
Source
Title: Neoliberalism in the Tourism and Hospitality Sector
Copyright:
© 2019 |Pages: 26
DOI:
10.4018/978-1-5225-6983-1.ch008
Abstract
In the
framework of the globalization of tourism this chapter discuss the concepts of
modern Ethics and Moral, on a critical perspective to the dominant standpoint
that set the morale in the order of the rules and social conventions and leave
the ethics on the field of personal experience. Critical essay postulates three
fundamental theses: 1. The environmental philosophy builds a new ontology
created by the critique of anthropocentrism. 2. But, only their articulation
with a new epistemology, founded in the critique of ethnocentrism, could lead
to a new ethics universal theory. 3. However, the applied ethics of
environmental philosophy needs a new global political ethics shaped on the
critique against political alienation. Consequently Global Code of Ethics for
Tourism must be refunded on the light of Environmental Philosophy and takes an imperative
character.
Keywords
Alienation.
Anthropocentrism. Aristóteles. Environment. Espinosa. Ethnocentrism. Jonas.
Landscape. Leopold. Paradigm. Quental. Sena.
INTRODUCTION
This essay analyses the contribution of the environmental philosophy
from the twentieth century philosophy renovation and, in this context, the particular
contribution from the Portuguese philosophers: the historical contribution from Bento (Baruch)
de Espinosa (born in a Jew Portuguese family); Antero de Quental, Portuguese
philosopher from XIX century, that build their Philosophy of Nature on a
critical perspective of the thought of Ernest Haëckel; and Jorge de Sena
philosophical poet and writer from the XX century, teacher and world citizen in
Brazil and USA.
He follows a research line trying to discover the complex and
dialectical connection between ethics and moral, from Aristotle's Ethics and Aristotle’s
Politics to the contemporary Environmental Philosophy and Environmental Ethics.
And their influence in the Global Code of Ethics
for Tourism.
Their analytic perspective is that the fundamental push of environmental
philosophy is the ethical issue and the moral problems.
Contrasting with the history of philosophy, that the core problems are
the human condition, the environmental philosophy drive their thought to the “raison d 'être”, the sense of the
existence of the world and their phenomenology, without becoming a philosophy
against the Human being, because the nature of the Human being, the nature of
all entities and beings from the universe, is that they was generate by the
same "star dust".
Modern "Environmental Reason" emerged, with a new categorical
imperative to the men’s action, beyond the Kantian principle conforming
individual acts with a universal law, configuring the human conduct within the
limits that safeguard the continuity of life and its diversity, a new ethical
framework built by Environmental Philosophy and applied to the tourism global activities.
Ethics and Moral
The Wittgenstein's
distinction between ethics and moral are common to most contemporary
philosophical thought, moral is placed in the order of the rules and social
conventions and the ethics is situated in the field of personal experience.
However, if ethics emerges of subjectivity of each individual person, as
says Cristina Berckert, does not have universal value. (Beckert,
Ethics, page 90)
But why not inquire this
principle and, at the same time, in terms of morals and ethics, their common
nature of social product, how singular, autonomous and original it seems the
philosophical thought that supports them, without depreciate the specific speech
from philosophy? Why oppose so irreducibly subjectivity and universal value? The
question is: the existence of universal moral values may or may not be recognized
by the subjectivity of each and every human being, like happen with the
international law? The environmental values could create a new ethical
paradigm, with various ethical practices and new moral conventions subordinated
to a global bioethics?
Inquiring those apories leads us to revisit the history of philosophy,
not in a chronological logic but in dilemmatic logic, before return to the
tourism issues.
The compromise "of practical wisdom" of Ricoeur is a real
possibility not just because it emanates from two models of action – the theological
Aristotelian and the deontological Kantian – only formally separated, but
because these models share a common culture and society.
Our perspective is not to replace the philosophical discourse by a sociological
analysis or an anthropology study. Philosophical discourse has a specific identity
that is distinct from the literary speech or the psychological analysis. But, that
don’t means philosophical discourse cannot coexist or cross other speeches, as
the arts and politics, and by this way we arrive to the issue of political
philosophy…and tourism globalization.
Ethics and city-state
In
Aristotelian teleology, the symbiosis between the ontological, anthropological
and ethical levels outcome from human nature, which have in its own nature the virtues of reason to proceed
cautiously by the good and achieve happiness (eudaimonia)!
The supreme virtue is wisdom (sóphos)
which go ahead to contemplation. Prudence raises the man on the condition of
the city's ruler and confers them moral superiority because it combines in
itself the ethical and political dimension; but contemplation already is from
the domain of the divine sphere.
The Aristotelian Man is not only a philosophical abstraction, but also a
citizen; Aristotle’s thought builds a bridge between two dimension of human
being, the philosophy of existence and political philosophy.
Aristotle’s human beings are the only species that has not only biological
capacities but a “rational soul” as well.
Aristotle conceives of ethical theory in
order to live in accordance with virtue, one way in which such goods as
friendship, pleasure, health…fit together as a whole and in lifelong activities. The rational part of the soul
searches the highest good!
We become
virtuous on the city community, sharing with parents, citizens and friends the
responsibility for acquiring and exercising the virtues.
Aristotle
identifies the nature of human being with its end or final cause to the good, in the Physics and in the Eudemian Ethics. For
human beings the ultimate good or their natural function consists in walk way
to inaccessible perfection.
The Politics
postulates the political nature of human beings for living in the city-state.
Aristotle maintains that only
on the city-state human beings attains the limit of good life, which means
accept the law and justice authority of the community.
On the
political context of Aristotle age, different forms of rule are required for
citizens and despotic rule for slaves. Disturb those balanced system will results
in disorder and injustice. In this political context the main principle of the
rule of reason also implies different constitutions for different city-states,
justifying tyranny or democracy.
Modernity broken human nature
When the
philosophy of Descartes announces its vision of modernity of human thought, that
emerges from an autonomous subject who thinks and acts using the reason, the
division between the human being and nature not becomes inevitable, they are
the result from the dilemmatic choice of the philosopher (s).
If opened the way to study nature as object of science, to discover
mechanical laws designed by God in the cosmos, the raise of the man above
nature, reigning over all beings and things for the award of the Creator, came from
the domain of religion and politics and from the subordination of philosophy to
its dogmas and interests. It’s appears in the first flush of mercantilism, as a
social necessity.
Descartes travel around the courts of Central and Northern Europe, in the
middle of the “Thirty Years War”, as
professor, scientist and military; contributing to the ideological combat
against scholastic and to emerge a new scientific epistemology, such as the
birth of a new economic and political regime. In 1643, the University of
Utrecht, in their country of refuge, the Netherlands, condemned his philosophy
as atheist. In 1667, the Roman Catholic Church placed his works on the index of
Forbidden Books.
The moral void, that the Cartesian philosophy does not occupied, it's
not inevitable consequence of the abandonment of divine conception of human
nature and their ontological, ethical and anthropological unity; even in
classical Western philosophy, in parallel with the Aristotelian thought, other
concepts of moral emerged without religious foundation, but never becoming
dominant.
Such was the case of Epicurus, which work we know only a few fragments, that
is singularly modern in its appeal to the altruism in relation to the “other”
and concerning the possession of material goods, the practice of gender
equality in the gardens of the philosophy and above recognition of the intrinsic
meaning of life liberated from the heuristics of fear ... of death.
Or, at the East and China, the morals rules of Confucian and Tao. In 551 B.C., Confucius was born in Zouyi (
Qufu) in the Kingdom Lu and Shandong province, when China was divided by
various kingdoms or states who fought among themselves. The population suffered
a hard life and society knew the moral degeneration. As if it could then create
a well-ordered society, harmonious and happy? These become a pressing issue.
From the three sources of Taoism, we can found as the oldest, the
mythical "Yellow Emperor", that have lived between 2697 BC and 2597
BC; the mystical aphorisms book Tao Te Ching (Dao De Jing), attributed to Laozi
(Lao Tse), which, according to tradition, was an older contemporary of
Confucius (551 BC -479 BC); and the works of the philosopher Zhuangzi
(Chuang-Tzu) (369 BC -286 BC).
Almost a thousand years later, St. Augustine was born in Tagaste
(Souk-Ahras), in the year 354, in Algeria; died on August 28, 430 in Hipona,
today Annaba, Algeria, after writing De
Civitate Dei, “The City of God”, among the ruins of the Western Roman Empire;
their thought belongs to the field of philosophy-theology of Creation and to
the Christological finalism of Celestial City; that philosophy-theology is
critique of Neo-Platonism
concerning the nature of the soul… but also
proclaims a political polemic against those that attributed to the
abandonment of the ancient cults and the adoption of Christianity as religion
of the Empire, the transcendental cause of its decline and fall.
The doctrine founded by Confucius advocated the implementation of
ethical codes and rituals to guide the community in their conduct and persuade
its members to love and respect each other, and to restore the order on the
society and on the family, based on a solid hierarchy system. In this moral
system, Jen (Compassion) and Yi (compassion), prevail over the Li
(interest/benefit).
The philosophical Taoism, a philosophical school based on the texts Dao De Jing (道德 经) attributed to
Laozi and Zhuangzi (庄子), and their tian-dao or "nature's way", propose
not a moral code but a species of spiritual self-discipline that emphasizes the
autonomy of being conscious and its unity with the universal nature and leads
the man to act respecting the three Moral Treasures: compassion, moderation,
and humility.
Backing to the advent of the modern age, the thought of Bento de
Espinosa surmount the dichotomy between the subjectivity and the nature,
without breaking that unity; the concept of extension of the categories of God
Substance and God Nature, unifies the being and the duty, without putting the
Man above nature and under their domain. However not denies the autonomy of
reason that Kant would elevate to a higher grade; furthermore, is that
potentiality to liberate the power of rationality and human autonomy, on the
unity of Substance and Nature, which not consents no one privileged status to
the man specie.
And if this singular vision of the human condition precipitated the sectarian
and fanatic odium of the Jewish Inquisition, also carried out the thought of
Espinosa to our modernity, what means replace the Man outside the
anthropocentric sphere, where Western philosophical and religions_ the Christian,
the Jewish and the Muslim, settle the
human being.
We can now conclude that one of the alternative routes of philosophy and
ethics evolution, which come from Epicurus and the Orient, and advocated by
Bento de Espinosa, not prevailed in the philosophical debate of the academies,
but was always present.
It would be appropriate here make a break to analyze the problem of what
is the "cause of the things" and its relationship with the "being". The preconceived notion that reserve to
philosophy the question about "what it means to be" and assigns to
the domain of science to study of "phenomenological causes”, can lead to
the old mechanicisme and to a kind of a new scholastic. Where that conception see
only opposition, predetermined by that prejudge, cannot have a dialectical
relationship?
The development of modern concept of Nature
Following Antero and the critique of
Aristotle’s Philosophy:
… from the
Renaissance, inside the fundamental idea of nature. The dynamic way, autonomous, realistic, of conceiving nature is what
more radically distinguishes the modern (philosophical) thought from the old thought...
(our parenthesis between
and underline)
… Nature, to the antique thought… (from Aristotle),
was designed as abstract, inert, passive; far way to be figured as concrete and
spontaneous, was considered only as a reflection, act or an emanation or
transcendent and perfect being or beings (the ideas of Plato, the intelligence of
Anaxagoras, the unmoved motor and the substantial forms of Aristotle) …
From the last days of the middle age, with the
dissolution of the scholastic philosophy and all kind of revolutions,
intellectual, social, religious, that announce the dawn of modern times, in the
deep regions of the human intelligence an extraordinary fermentation begin,
which is expressed, even with little awareness of their own range, in the
creations of astronomy and modern physics (Copernicus , Kepler, Galileo,
Torricelli) and philosophical reforms of Bacon and Descartes, which is
revitalized with Leibniz and Spinoza and with the early works of social
sciences, botany and physiology (Gesner, Harvey, Malpighi, Boerhaave, Hobbes,
Grocio, Vico, Lessing, etc.) to finish, fully conscious in the 19th century…in
all spheres of human activity. Naturalism
is to modern times what was rationalism to antiquity. The doctrine of
evolution is just one of their determinations, the latest ... " (Quental, 1991, p. 111) (our parenthesis
between and underline)
The “environmental reason”:
critique of ethnocentrism and critique of anthropocentrism
The
struggle to differentiate ethics from morality, that the common sense
understand as normative ethics (what we ought to do) from philosophical or
meta-ethics (what is the nature of the Good), cannot be exceptionally simple.
If normative ethics is something the common people call "ethics", what
is the nature and objet of this conceptualization of "ethics” and what is
the nature and object of meta-ethics?
The modern consensus about the two questions is that ethics emerges of subjectivity of each individual
human being and moral is placed in the domain of the rules and social
conventions. We are in disagreement with those
dominant thesis.
First,
analyzing this conceptual construction, on the light of environmental
philosophy, we must interrogate ourselves if we stay in
the framework of the anthropocentrism or not!?
Second,
Moral, in our view, is a cultural expression determined by social dominance and
historical context, who gives them a sectary and transitory character. We needs
a moral theory (that I call ethics) that could be universal, transtemporal
(project in the present and in the future) and available to light human individual
conduct and the human science as well as their political ideologies and
practices, without considering man as the
final zenith of Life.
The
opposition between individual ethics-universal ethics, universal ethics- moral contingents
are something that needs to be transcended. Where others see antagonism, we
glimpse a complex dialectic.
If
the Kantian concept of an absolute normative ethics is a single intellectual
exercise or doesn’t could be applicable to the social practice, is because all
the ethics practices depends at the same time from a philosophical aporia concerning the complexity and
dualism of the human existence and from the real historical context with the conflict
of classes, cultures and civilizations.
If
the ethical principles are impracticable in an historical context and process
and can’t respond to the new moral challengers about the nature of the Good, if
we can’t transform those principles in universal normative codes, the human thought
pushes them to the heritage category and research for new principles.
Environmental ethics is supported, in our opinion, by
two new principles: the critique against anthropocentrism and the critique
against ethnocentrism, giving a universal answer to the macro moral problems of
our era - environmental, social, economical and political crises, war and mass
destructive weapons - and contributes to rebuild the human activities in all domains
of individual and social life; this is the case of the Bioethics Code, for
instance.
The
critique of ethnocentrism and the critique of anthropocentrism are the founding
principles to surpassing the dualism from which moral stay in the order of the
rules and social conventions and settled ethics in the field of personal
experience.
The "environmental reason" formulates a new categorical
imperative for human action, beyond the Kant maximum of forming individual
ethics of acts with the principle of a universal law, a new ethical framework,
which stems from the need to configure the human conduct within the limits that
safeguard the continuity of life and their diversity. (Jonas, 1979)
As in the philosophy of Espinosa (XVI century), later
of Antero de Quental (XIX century) and Hans Jonas ( XX century), the
fundamental impulses of the environmental philosophy reflection were the
ethical issues and the moral problems
From The
Imperative of Responsibility In Search of an Ethic for the Technological Age(1979),
emerges a new categorical imperative for human action, beyond the Kantian
imperative ethic of the conformation of individual acts with the principle of a
universal law. He designs a new ethical framework:
Act so that the effects of your
action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life. (Jonas, 1979)
Amongst this ethical principle we are at the
border of the humanism, but still remain at the frontier of anthropocentrism.
From this perspective we could rethinking the
concept of reason enlarging their meaning to the concept of “Environmental
reason”, a critical reason enlighten by the principle of anthropocentrism and
by the principle of ethnocentrism.
If the object
of science is to explain the world machinery, then scientific laws are amoral,
and the answer to the categorical imperative of "how to live in the world” belongs to the domain of philosophy
and of ethics (Espinosa,1677,). It’s in this sense that the environmental
ethics inquiries the value of science and of social development, not only in an
anthropocentric dimension: Life before Man and Earth before Life, according to
modern science and beyond modern science.
The concept
of landscape has had to be stretched in many directions: from an object to an
area, from a visual experience to a multi-sensory one, from natural scenery to
the whole range of human-made transformations of nature. This expansion of the
idea of landscape is further complicated by the fact that landscapes are never
stationary but are constantly in transition.” (Berleant, 2011)
The Land Ethics: enlarging le concept of community
The Principle
of community of Aristotle has focused on the city-state, because the human good life depends on the community not only for material
necessities but also for moral education and civic education;
and the classic dilemma of human perfection-worst animal (without laws and
justice), returns to the modern framework of ethics and moral, with a new
significance, a new object of justice, and new rules face nature.
All human ethics theories are based on a premise: that the person is a
member of an interdependent community. The Land Ethics extend the concept of
community:
…The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the
community to include soils, water, plants, and animals, or, collectively: the
land.
…Water, like soil, is a part of the energy circuit.
Industry, by polluting water or obstructing it with dams, may exclude the
plants and animals necessary to keep energy in circulation…” …Conservation is a
state of harmony between men and land…The image commonly employed in
conservation education is «the balance of nature»...this figure of speech fails
to describe accurately what little we know about the land mechanism. A much
true image is the one employed in ecology: the biotic pyramid. ( Leopold, 1949).
From the reading of this work, a Sand Count
Almanaque, would break the theorization of bioethics by American oncologist Van
Ressenlaer Potter
The acknowledgment of the economic value of using biodiversity could
still a way to refuse the autonomous land ethic values.
The land-relation is still strictly economic,
entailing privileges but not obligations.(Leopold, 1947)
This usually leads to confining nature conservation to parks and
reserves, to the species potentially useful to humans and to the action of the
State, giving complete freedom to private enterprise. This approach comes from
the scientifically false premise that the elements with economic value of the
biotope can exist in nature without the presence of other elements
This isn’t about applying pre-existing moral theories to new objects,
such as nature. Nature shall be included in our field of moral reflection, our
duties, which were previously limited to human beings, and will now be extended
to other natural beings - the concept of an enlarged community of natural
beings. But also enlarging the concept of person (in the common sense, human
being) to others animals. That is the enlarged perspective of the critique to
the anthropocentrism.
Animal Ethics: enlarging le concept of person
Principle of
perfection of Aristotle understands good and evil in terms of an
anthropocentric teleology. However too recognizes that is a good when nature operates for one's good of an end, like the animals natural
behavior.
Australian
Peter Singer and American T. Regan emphasizing the feelings and the rights of
animals face the brutality of modern production processes: genetic cloning,
cages, feedstuffs based on ground meat from dead animals and saturated
hormones, systematic violation of natural rhythms and needs of animal life, all
this in terms of maximum profit. Invoking the principle of equality, the two
authors refuse the concept of the superiority of the human species that compare
to racism, for violating that principle, censoring to the human beings the non-recognition
of the capacity of feeling and suffering of animals. In their works they claim
that animals are subjects of interest by not suffering and also, add Regan, are
subjects of law, are subjects of a life experience that has intrinsic value.
Departing from this approach they propose extend the concept of person:
I propose the use of 'person' to beings rational and
self-conscious, to incorporate the elements of the common sense of human being
that are not covered by member of species Homo Sapiens. (Singer, 1989)
Based on the thesis that ... some
non-human animals appear to be rational and aware of himself, conceiving itself
as distinct beings that have a past and a future..., proposes a gradualist
ethics against the killing of animals, which in its upper level extends to
chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans the same protection due to human beings.
Certainly the revelations and complaints of environmentalists could also
generate the defense of ecological extremely values in confrontation with the
classical humanist values. (See Rolston III, H. Philosophy Gone Wild, 1986. Callicot, J.B. In Defense Of the Land Ethic, 1989).
Therefore they propose is to extend the concept of the use of the term
"person" in the sense of a being rational and self conscious, to
incorporate other animals far way the members of the species Homo Sapiens .(Singer, 1993,
pp.s 88-99)
They also make clear that exists, between world hunger and brutal
killing of animals, a standard common model of civilization, the consumption
society and its amoral production and exchange of merchandises.
Biocentrism (Earth first!, Greenpeace, Wilderness Society, ...) assigns
an intrinsic value to any living entity and Aldo Leopold’s Ecocentrism focuses
on our duty towards the biotic community, which we are part of .
This isn’t about applying pre-existing moral theories to new objects,
such as Nature. Nature shall be included in our field of moral reflection, our
duties, which were previously limited to human beings, and will now be extended
to other natural beings - the concept of an enlarged community of natural
beings and persons. This is the perspective of the critique to the
anthropocentrism.
The biodiversity of Life, including human life, only represents the actual
pinnacle of the evolution of Cosmos, the matter of Cosmos that thinks them,
creating the human consciousness or spirit, but we don't know if our species,
born on Earth, represents the final link of cosmological evolution. For that
reason we must preserve not only all the forms of
Live but the conditions for live continuity and biodiversity.
So the ethical imperative to preserve Life and not only the Man specie
and save Life biodiversity before the Man specie, and the Land/Earth,
birthplace of cosmic Life and for now the only cradle, must win moral force in
human societies. No, we doesn’t appeal to a new
anti-humanism with the principle “Life before Man”: this principle means that
life emerges before man’s specie and all species made a contribution to the
birth and conservation of human species,
not only the animals and plants useful to the civilization.
While the Man is both predator and creator of new biotopes and being
today the human species the most complex form of life, their extinction could
block the expansion of diversity itself, for what and in that perspective, a
new Humanism returns to the center of the philosophical thoughts of
Environmental Philosophy and Environmental Ethics.
And, following this way, we need to reintroduce the question of
Political Ethics, as new component of environmental reason.
Economics Globalization AND
Environmental crisis
The principles of common home and community and
planetary solidarity
From
the first UN environmental conferences, held in Stockholm in 1972, emerged the
principle of a common house… man has two
homelands, his own and planet Earth; the principle of a planetary community
and solidarity, founders of a new international order (political and ethical
order) and the principle of defending life on the planet and its biodiversity
before humanism. (UNCHE 1972).
Those
principles build a first frontier line with the cultural and political
perspective of ethnocentrism.
The
critical perspective of environment philosophy toward the ethnocentrism claims:
Ethnocentrism is an emotionally
conditioned approach that considers and judges other societies by their own
culture’s criteria. It’s easy to see that this attitude leads to contempt and
hate of all ways of life that are different from that of the observer. (Dias,
1961)
The
critique of ethnocentrism not only justifies the respect for all national
cultures and all forms of classical and popular cultural expression, but also
rejects any notion of superiority from a certain model of society, race or
ethnicity.
In convergence with this philosophical view,
philosophical critique against anthropocentrism inquiry the religious vision
that gives to man, elected creature by God to preside over the divine creation,
the absolute right to take ownership of nature for their purposes, without any
limit or restriction.
In the historical context of the industrial revolution
and contemporary technical and scientific revolution, Christian and Judaic
philosophy allows to accept without serious moral restrictions the primacy of
economic growth over sustainable development.
However scientific discoveries only allow us to be sure that the balance
of ecosystems favorable to life depends on a multitude of physical, biological
and geological factors and recognize that the higher the position occupied by
organisms in the food chain ( remember the biotic pyramid of Aldo Lepold), the
more vulnerable they will be, as well as some species, whose destruction would
dramatically affect the entire system.
In coherence, we must also consider that the multiple links between all
forms of life (and even these with the abiotic environment), require, in
addition to the duty of preservation of our species, to preserve the diversity
of beings and their environmental niches, from whose dynamic balance, all
depends.
Emerges a new
paradigm of tourism
Environmental
Tourism, in our concept and in the synthesis of Philosophy, is really the
integration of nature and culture in the concept of landscape, and their
metamorphosis in Cultural Tourism and Tourism of Nature (Ecotourism).
Environmental Tourism includes material and immaterial patrimony, physical an
metaphysical values (aesthetical and ethical values).
However, this perspective of tourism as an economic phenomenon, but also
anthropological and socio-cultural, conduce to a third dimension, historic and
politic. In the national heritage and social consciousness of humanity and in
their collective unconscious, is recorded the journey of the early hominid
crossing the Mediterranean from Africa, passing the Bosporus and journeying to
America and the Arctic polar ice; the memory of the first hunter-gatherers who
followed the march of the rivers and valleys open by tectonics of Earth; lather
builders of “dolmen and menhirs”, which limited the journey to surrounding
agricultural and pasturing lands, in a eternal return; already in the modern
age, navigators and explorers from all corners of the planet, with the birth of
capitalism and those successive globalizations.
After be created political and social conditions, with the advent of
modern democracies and socialisms, the conquest of social leisure by new social
classes, and the containment of war, all the humanity continue his historic
walk and made global world the place of
trampling of human animal.
Involving the others three dimensions, we arrive to a fourth dimension
of human being, in the perspective of
the philosophy of nature and the environment philosophy: the human being
separate from Nature and distinct human
cultures by the anthropocentric and ethnocentric conceptions, has a common origin and belong to the same and
single Human family.
And stay ecologically linked to the biological, geological and
cosmological environment, connect to all beings and things.
The prosperity of a region-destination must be based on the raising of
the target audience of middle-middle class and upper middle class, considering
his economic relevance and social influence capacity and her role as
"modeler social consumption".
Their young people are spreading the new paradigms of cultural tourism
and tourism of nature in society and face others juveniles class groups.
And their teachers are the first vehicles for information and training
of social taste and the most important “informal tourism agents", when
they promote and organize the scholar study trips, during every studies cycles.
The weight of this middle class and their cultural level and education,
emerges in parallel with the emancipation of women by the job, a youngness
increasingly educated and info educated and the anticipation of active reform
in middle-class segments, generating a change in "motivation" of the
travels: the social concept of "taste" is the key to understand those
new middle class, ethical and esthetical
values of environmental philosophy overcame
face the individual paradigm of
unlimited and blind entertainment.
Capital of tourism: genesis of value, reproduction and
circulation
The concept
of “tourism industry" has led to search for local resources - biological
and geological, livestock and forestry, etc. as their basic material. In fact
the first are used and processed by other industries, and in many cases require
its conservation. And as for the second, its consumption is shared between
residents and travelers.
What
constitutes a tourist resource is the cultural landscape. Reading and
interpretation of the cultural landscape is the basis for the creation of the
tourist product and its first metamorphosis of value.
It’s the
“ecology of the landscape” (material heritage) and its “metaphysics of
landscape” (immaterial heritage), which constitute the essence of tourist
resource, but only when their interpretation and reading gives it a new
increase in cultural and economic value, transforming use value on in a
exchange value:
The landscape is not an open book, intelligible
empirically. Their transformation into a tourist product goes through its
readability, which gives it a used value; it’s a metamorphosis that generates
economy value, and it’s also a process of cultural literacy, mediated by the
construction of a language for tourist communication; the result of this
process changes the shape and the essence of traditional concepts of resources
and tourist products.
(Queirós, 2013: 109 a)
What today is dramatic, is the rhythm at which biodiversity is being lost,
the destruction of natural resources, energy and the multiplication of
polluting effects that reach not only the whole lithosphere, the hydrosphere,
the cryosphere, the atmosphere and the biosphere, but also, with unpredictable
consequences, the fundamental genetic material, the DNA, which conserves and
reproduces the codes of life..
In this perspective, nobody can imagine today what will be the link of
the chain of life where the evolutionary leap will occur, as nobody dreamed
before that the grandfather of our human condition was an insignificant rodent
that survived the widespread extinction of dominant species at the end of the
Mesozoic Era (67 million years ago). But, at the same time, the preservation of
the human being returns to the centre of environmental ethics, in a new ethical
perspective, without unlimited domain and
privileges against “the other” nature (critique of anthropocentrism).
So, unlike the common history of philosophy, whose thought is focused on
the Human Being, environmental philosophy directs the human thinking to the
“Raison d’ Être” ( the sense of existence) of the world and their
Phenomenology, for the discovery of the uniqueness of the “Substance” in all
its manifestations or "modes", in the vocabulary of our Bento de Espinosa,
without becoming and anti humanist philosophy.
Now
we can revisit our initial postulate: The global concept of environmental
reason emerges from a World that is very different from the old Kantian world.
For the first time along the History, not only the Humanity, but Life and
Earth, can be deadly damaged by the nuclear war, the biological and chemical
weapons, the environmental crisis and the global crises of capital market: the fall
of the empires on the XXI century could call the true Apocalypse horses. The
imperative of perpetual peace assume a new moral and political significance.
Global Code of Ethics for
Tourism
The Global
Code of Ethics for Tourism, adopted in 1999 by the General Assembly of the
World Tourism Organization, its acknowledgement by the United Nations two years
later clearly encouraged the Organization to promote effective follow-up of its
provisions. Although not legally
binding, the Code features a voluntary implementation mechanism through its
recognition of the role of the World Committee on Tourism Ethics (WCTE), to
which stakeholders may refer matters concerning the application and
interpretation of the document. (UNWTO, 2012)
The Code of Ethics, adopted in 1999, remains a list of non-binding
guidelines, or a soft-law instrument. For this reason,
the UNWTO General Assembly decided in 2015 to initiate the process for
converting the voluntary Code of Ethics into an international legally-binding
convention open to ratification of Member States with the intention to enhance
its application
The text of
the Convention was approved by the UNWTO General Assembly in September 2017,
A/RES/707(XXII). The Convention on Tourism Ethics, once it obtains the
first ten required ratifications and enters into force, will create duties and
obligations for States Parties, including the obligation to reflect the said
ethical principles in domestic legislation and relevant policies as well the
obligation to periodically report on the implementation of those principles to
the World Committee on Tourism Ethics. We will see!?
The hedonistic vision inspired by Jeremy Bentham, identifying the
profile of the contemporary tourist with the individual freedom and pleasure.
In this period emerged a new ethical framework, environmental ethics:
The Code includes some guidelines for sustainable tourism, but their
perspective remains essentially anthropocentric.
In the field of philosophy, the relationship between tourism and ethics
is engaged by two central concepts: ontology and epistemology. However, it is
also associated to the Ethics and Aesthetics values, virtue and good practices.
This axiom is supported by the fact that tourism creates innumerable
negatives costs (impacts) that stem from the pursuit of primarily hedonistic
ends.
The position of tourism research from an ethical standpoint, especially
in the light of a better understanding of human nature, might open up new
possibilities for better grounding and many new forms of alternative or
responsible tourism (Fennell, 2011).
But in the heat of the dispute, some authors led to raise controversy
“against” the ethics of tourism (Butcher, 2011), particularly emphasizing the
contradictions between mass tourism and ecotourism. We think that cannot reduce
the debate to these issues.
The ethical imperative of perpetual peace, guarantee
of international tourism
The world of
Kant is not our world. The philosophical and practice dimensions of the
problems of categorical imperatives assumed now a tragic magnitude. Far way the
Kantian moral imperatives:
Act only according to that maxim by which you can at
the same time will that it should become a universal law." (Ibid.,
422)2."Act as though the maxim of your action were by your will to become
a universal law of nature." (Ibid). 3.Act so that you treat humanity, whether
in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means
only." (Kant, 1996,
429).
In our historical and environmental context, humanity is confronted for
the first time with the danger of its own extinction, as a result of environmental
disaster or as the tragic outcome of a biological or nuclear war; and pandemics
and major famines of medieval Europe occur again but now on multiple
continents.
In this framework, the peaceful and negotiated resolution of conflicts
is the first political corollary of Environmental Ethics, conduced to a new categorical
imperative, the “imperative of perpetual peace":
In the strange fortune of doom,
[...] this strange fortune, from which light comes
oh just
harmless powder, I pray
to myself not
to lose the memory,
for you, for you should always remind
that everything is lost when we lose peace,
and first of all freedom is lost.
(Sena,1984 )
This “light” on the poem, was the light of the nuclear bomb of Hiroxima.
The state of war, considering the lessons of the History of liberal
democracies and Socialist democracies, is incompatible with the preservation
and deepening of democracy and contributes to creating the conditions for its
limitation and degeneration.
If we refuse the ethical imperative of destruction of the entire atomic
arsenal and of biological and chemicals arsenals and not create the
sustainability of our economy and financial system, modern war will came as a
continuation of the economic dispute by other means, and then, we will find “damn peace” in the Holocaust of the children
of our children. The perpetual peace is thus the main political corollary of Environmental
Ethics.
However, to the "categorical imperative of perpetual peace",
Jorge de Sena, engineer, poet and philosopher, joins a new ethical imperative,
“the imperative of dignity". Another categorical imperative of
Environmental Ethics trying to answer to the global crisis that liberal
democratic or socialist politics and their economies and markets failed to overcome
and the blind science also promoted.
“The imperative ethical of dignity”, from Jorge de Sena, proclaims the moral rule and ethical principle
that, we (persons, nations, entrepreneurs,
governments…) ought to live be sure that nobody is less alive, or suffer or dies to benefice our quality of life
and life time.
The absolute value of life face the absolute
lost of the end of life, give to the ( limited) time of life an ethical
dimension (the joy of life) that nothing and nobody can ignore and establish a
gradualistic morality: Act so that you treat another person and humanity (and nations) without no less life ( the oppose of a full life), no
suffer, not damages that anticipate or bring the die. And if associated
to the critique of anthropocentrism, we can extend this categorical imperative
to Life and Earth.
From the long poem Letter to my
kids about the shootings of Goya we chose the philosophical nucleus of
verses:
…/…
Believe me that no world, that anything or anyone
Is more important than a life, or the joy of life,
This is what is the most important - this joy.
Believe me that the dignity they will tell you so much
about
is nothing more
that joy that comes
from being alive and knowing that anytime someone
is less alive or suffer or dies
for that one of you resist a little more
to the death that is of all and will come…
(Sena, 1984)
After writing these thoughts, that put in question the legitimacy of the
war and the exploitation of man by man, a hundred works of political
philosophy, became as that unnecessary and long-winded.
Practical ethics and political alienation
In the XIX
century Feuerbach and Marx focused the debate about the concept of alienation
on the religion issue. Feuerbach’s analysis postulates that belief in religion
was an intellectual error that could be correct by education. Marx’s criticizes
Feuerbach to fail understanding why people fall into religious alienation.
Marx’s thesis was that religion is a response to alienation in material life;
their main corollary was the struggle for changing material life, the pathway to
emancipate human consciousness from all alienation.
Lukács' understanding alienation as a historical loss of totality that
we can already find on the historical trajectory of institutions of social
life, creating a “second nature” were the individual person can´t find the
world meaning. When Lukács applies this concept to the history of intellectual
representation, looking to the Grecian movement from epic poetry to
tragedy and then to philosophy, notes that the source of significance became progressively
more transcendent to immediate life and individual consciousness. Considering
the modernity, he proposes a renewed relation between individual conscience and
the knowledge of world where meaning can again be found, rebuilding a new
totality, new forms of art and communication.
The possibility to recognize that utopia on a good sense, the unity of
the global representation of the word with the citizen consciousness,
postulates the opposed possibility, the full alienation of the individual
person, manipulated by a global power, economic, political and ideological. The
concept of double negation employed by Marcuse is a critical response to negation
of personal freedom by an oppressive/repressive socio/economic system and to
the development of individual-critical consciousness.
When analyzes the concept of alienation we don’t want obliterate the
ontological issue and the philosophical contribution of existentialism, as a plural literary-philosophical phenomenon crossing
two centuries. The core of this study is not the fundamental debate about the
“meaning of being”_ the paradoxical presence of God, from Kieergard, the challenge of nihilism, “God is
dead,” from Nietzsche, the “Dasein,” (“being that we ourselves are”), from Heidegger, “the existentialism is a new humanism,”
from Sartre…We wants to discuss the political dimension of the human being, and
what means the good and the devil, for the moral of XXI century polices.
Utilitarian ethics of Jeremy Bentham and Stuart Mill, assumes that
"not only any action of a private individual, but all the Government
measures (Benthan, 2014, I 1.3) must improve the well-being and reduce
suffering. Far away the primacy of duty (eudainomia)
from Aristotle, he based morality of action on benefits back to their subject
and/or in the principle of less suffering caused to the "other".
Utilitarian philosophy inspired the first tourism globalization and the
paradigm of sun and sand,
The classic example of resolving an ethical dilemma on the basis of the
principle of utilitarianism, is the political and moral debate concerning the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, approved by the UN in December 10, 1948
(A/RES/217). Drafted primarily by J. P. Humphrey, of Canada, had Dr. P.C. Chang,
representative of the People’s Republic of China_ PRC and the positions of the
Asian countries, the main mediator of the consensus established around its 30
articles.
We must emphasize that not one of the articles of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights defends the supremacy of the model of liberal
democracy. And Human Rights not can be
reduced to the question of formal "political freedoms". What the
article 21, the core of political Human Rights prescribes, is the path to
citizenship and to the diversity of democratic regimes.
Article 21.
(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government
of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public
service in his country.
(3) The will of the people should be the basis of the authority
of government; this should be expressed in periodic and genuine elections by
universal and equal suffrage and should be held by secret vote or by equivalent
free voting procedures.
All other 29 articles which provide the fundamental democratic rights,
as the right to employment and social protection, equality of gender and face
the law, have the same political dimension and are subordinate to two ethical
imperatives that the Declaration proclaims, the “imperative of the dignity” and
“the imperative of peace”:
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the
equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the
foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.
This dignity will be protected…
…if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a
last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights
should be protected by the rule of law…
And will only be defended with…
… the development of friendly relations between
nations.
However the political debate about Universal Declaration of Human Rights
is today reduced to the issue of formal liberties.
Those are the problems of political alienation and the absence of critical
information in the mass media.
We could also refer to the ethical dilemmas arising from the fact that,
in times of crisis, as the current, budgets for health be reduced, but the
services of financial debt are met strictly by Governments.
These examples are useful as a demonstration that the practical
application of ethics, and ethics practices, such as bioethics, need to be
addressed in conjunction with the conceptualization of a new global policy
ethics, without which the discussion of ethical dilemmas risk to being predetermined by the hidden
power of political alienation.
CONCLUSIONS
A global policy ethics rooted by the environmental philosophy and
The ethical dimension of societies
and modern State and its Governments may
be evaluated by the respect for the principles of political ethics, universal
and permanent, which recognize all individuals as citizens with two homelands,
their own and the Earth (United Nations Conference on the Environment,
Stockholm, 1972), to all human cultures a status of equality (critique of
ethnocentrism) and re-introducing the human community on the pyramid of life
and biodiversity without any status of domain or privilege (critique of
anthropocentrism), evaluate especially in times of crisis.
The principles of citizenship or dignity
of its citizens and peaceful (political) solution of conflicts (Sena), applied
together with the subordination of the economy to the environmental ethics
policy, determines the State's duty to guarantee its citizens the right to
peace, the right to work, the right to education, the right to health and
assistance in old age, the right to access the justice, the right to the
conservation of biodiversity and the right to freedom, and yes, freedom is
placed in this order, because she disappears with the war and remains a smaller
value
without job, homeless and other social rights. And the consequences of
destruction of life diversity would be that human communities have no future.
Without peace, everything will be
lost, and firstly, freedom will be lost.
At least, we can re-thinking the
complex origin and nature of our common Western Culture.
The critical perspective of
anthropocentrism considers the culture Judeo-Christian as responsible from the
arrogant attitude of the human being against others species and nature. T he
concept of human being elected by God to chair the divine creation induced the
take over of nature for their purposes, without any limitation or restriction,
and an amoral or utilitarian ethical perspective.
The rationalist enlightenment, to
assign to the human condition to succeed not only about the obscurantism and
ecclesiastical and aristocratic society, but also to decipher and control the
forces of nature, open the way for unrestrained use of natural resources and to
the emergence of environmental crisis.
However, we think that this relationship
is not linear. The enlightenment of Christian orientation also intended the
existence and preservation of creatures as a continuity of the creator act, a
moral duty face to the creation of the Lord.
In spite of the struggle of same philosophical
currents that wanted to reconcile metaphysics with scientific laws of the
universe, we might be tempted to assign to positivism and scientism the
responsibility of the new regard against the holy vision of a natural word that
we must preserve. Again, we believe that
this relationship is not linear.
We think that the exploit of natural
elements as objects of commercial use is associated with the birth of a new
ideology of modern capitalism, which in the end of 19th century did advance to the
latest frontiers of market, shared in the Berlin Conference of 1885: the
partition of colonial spaces and virgin lands, accomplishing its integration in
the sphere of European and American metropolis.
The natural resources and the man, woman or child, elder, masterpiece of
God's creation, were transformed into a merchandise and the human condition reduced
to the status of mercantile "workforce".
And a new ethics (or non-ethics)
emerged slowly from the beginning of 16th rural capitalism to the 18th century
and 19th century industrialization: the denied of sacred nature of human
condition.
In the context of the capitalism
economy, stripped definitely from the stigma of medieval Christian censorship
against profit that was tolerate by the creation of purgatory, born in the beginning of primitive capitalism
to redeem them, a new “ideology of freedom” postulates now that everything is
permissible and legitimate to accumulate capital. And this procedure, to obtain more capital
gains through the increasing concentration of industrial and financial capital
it becomes “natural”, pervade the whole legal order of the State and the
spiritual and cultural environment of all nations, and proclaim the new
relations of production and exchange as the end of history, the pinnacle of
progress and civilization, to be eternally reproduced and expanded by the
future evolution of society.
Was this tremendous social change
that generated the modern culture and engendered the roots of different
ideologies, philosophical schools and aesthetic currents, not as a simple
reflex of superstructures of the new economic base of society, not mechanically
but dialectically.
The first protests against the
pollution of the industrial metropolis revalued the role of countryside;
generate doctrines of conservation of nature, from scientific or metaphysics
inspiration or searching its contemporary synthesis, preparing the downing of a
new level of human reason, the advent of environmental reason.
The 20th century was the century of
the triumph of national and international rights of the human people and
nations, now entirely in risk. The 21st century must be the century of environmental
ethics.
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KEY
TERMS AND DEFINITIONS
Alienation
In the XIX century Feuerbach
and Marx focused the debate about the concept of alienation on the religion
issue. Feuerbach’s analysis postulates that belief in religion was an
intellectual error that could be correct by education. Marx’s criticizes
Feuerbach to fail understanding why people fall into religious alienation.
Marx’s thesis was that religion is a response to alienation in material life;
their main corollary was the struggle for changing material life, the pathway to
emancipate human consciousness from all alienation.
Anthropocentrism
…the
error anthropocentric, which considers the human being as the Supreme and
preferred end of creation, the being to which all other nature was created.
These two mistakes were put down, the first by the coperniana world system
theory, in the early of 16th century; the second by the genealogical theory of
Lamarck, in the early of 19th century. (Haëckel, 1962, pp.29-30)
Aristoteles
Aristotle, Greek
Aristoteles (born 384 bce, 322, Chalcis, Euboea), ancient Greek philosopher. He
was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that became the
framework and vehicle for both Christian Scholasticism and medieval Islamic
philosophy. Even after the intellectual revolutions of the Renaissance, the
Reformation, and the Enlightenment, Aristotelian concepts remained embedded in Western
thinking.
Environment
We
conceptualize “environment” as the concept that expresses the relationship
between nature and culture, in the complexity and diversity of the cultural
landscape _ urban and rural landscape, fully humanized and wilderness (with
less human influence). Including in the concept of cultural landscape its
material and immaterial heritage, their cultural expression an forms, their
immeasurable emotional relationship with the countless human beings who have
been born and shaped them, becoming too transformed.
Espinosa
Baruch of
Espinosa, (1632–1677): Benedict Baruch of Espinosa was a Dutch philosopher with
Spanish and Portuguese Jewish origin. His thinking rejected the
anthropomorphization of God and a dogmatic interpretation of the holly books.
His family was persecuted by the catholic Inquisition and took refuge in
Holland, but the Jewish community of Amsterdam, excommunicated him for his
freethinking, that opened the modern reason and was premonitory in the holistic
and ethical vision of nature.
Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism is an emotionally
conditioned approach that considers and judges other societies by their own
culture’s criteria. It’s easy to see that this attitude leads to contempt and
hate of all ways of life that are different from that of the observer. (Dias,
1961)
Jonas
Hans Jonas (1903 – 1993): German Jew who immigrated
to Canada and USA. In “The Imperative of
Responsibility. In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age”, he formulates a new
categorical imperative for human action, to configure the human conduct within
the limits that safeguard the continuity of life and their diversity.
Landscape
The concept
of landscape has had to be stretched in many directions: from an object to an
area, from a visual experience to a multi-sensory one, from natural scenery to
the whole range of human-made transformations of nature. This expansion of the
idea of landscape is further complicated by the fact that landscapes are never
stationary but are constantly in transition.” (Berleant, 2011)
Leopold
Aldo
Leopold (1887–1948): American forester, conservationist, environmentalist and professor. In his book A Sand County Almanac (1949), he explains the concept of
community and moral duties enlarged to all natural beings.
Paradigm: The general definition of
paradigm comprises "a disciplinary matrix", a constellation of
beliefs, values and techniques shared by a Community.
Quental
Antero de Quental (1842-1891): Portuguese philosopher, writer and
poet, who globally rethought the concept of nature, introducing some
principles anticipating the modern concept of environment and their
philosophical and ethical values.
Sena
Jorge de Sena (1919-1978): Portuguese writer and
poet, essayist and professor (universities of Portugal, Brasil, EUA…). The
principles of environmental ethics cross his literary work
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