Chapter of Proceedings book of The World Congress of Philosophy_ The Philosophy of Aristotle
(WCP2016), Volume II. Athens 2018.
António
dos Santos Queirós
Center
of Philosophy of the Faculty of Arts of University of Lisbon
Alameda da Universidade
1600-214 Lisboa Portugal
Ethics and Moral
The Wittgenstein's distinction between
ethics and moral is 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 from
subjectivity of each individual person, does not have universal value.
However why not to dispute such
principles from its 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 to 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 global bioethics?
Inquiring those aporias leads to
revisit the history of philosophy, not in a chronological logic but in
dilemmatic logic.
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.
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 dimensions 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 his 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 result 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. [1]
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 its 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 all the recognition of the intrinsic meaning of life
liberated from the heuristics of fear ... of death. And other concepts of moral
also has prevailed in the East and China, as the morals rules of Confucian and
Tao. [2]
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, Jên
(benevolence) and Yi (rightness),
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 its 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 wrote earlier:
“Since the publication of the pages
of Spinoza's Ethics, there are two juxtaposed conceptions of the world in
philosophy: the Universe of Imagination, dominated by an anthropomorphic
conception of God, prolonged the Aristotelian and scholastic world
representation, and the Universe of Reason, which, according to Bento de
Espinosa, is the manifestation of another concept of God, God Substance unique
or God Nature, naturam naturantem and also the intelligible reason of Nature
natura naturata.
Spinoza's
God is not the omniscient Being, omnipotent, creator and transcendent to the
world, all merciful, Lord of Heaven and of Hell and Supreme Doomsday Punisher.
Their conception of the world is not based
on the beliefs of any church and its dogmas. The meaning of life is inherent to
human nature and man's destiny is to adjust their thoughts and action to the universal
order that is inherent to the world. The ontological existence of beings and
the phenomenology of the universe are the manifestation of a single being ontologically
infinite, with infinity attributes, from which, we, humans beings, recognize
essentially two: thoughts, or reason for the intelligibility of the things and
the extension or material reality, the natura naturata.
This ontology and this epistemology, this
pantheism of reason not from the representation of nature, that configures its
conception of the universe, become inseparable from ethical of life and cost to
Espinosa the excommunication and the inquisitorial epithet of "vomiting of
hell". The "Hell are the others", wrote Sartre in the 20th
century. “The Hell, we are ourselves," replied Lévi-Srauss. : "... we
are the link between the animal and man truly human", wrote Konrad Lorenz.
And a common philosophical question: how to live peacefully, until the end of
life, and, probably, be happy? The Espinosa answer cross three centuries:
"must be taken by useless only what contribute for the supreme perfection
of the human being”.
The
fundamental intuition of Espinoza, according to which God is Nature developing
itself in accordance with the laws that are intrinsically necessary corresponds
to the last great discoveries in Astrophysics and Cosmology according to the
modern scientific reason. Hubert Reeves states that the universe, which is not
eternal and will be fifteen billion years old, is also not static and continues
its evolution from the primordial chaos, formless and without organization.
The history
of the universe is the story of the growing complexity in the cosmic scale, a
progressive structuring of the cosmos, with its physical forces governed by
strict and universal laws. Such laws already had, since the beginning, the
ability to develop the complexity, life and consciousness.
According to quantum physics, beyond a certain value,
the concepts of temperature and density of matter lose their conventional sense.
About the birth of life, we have greater scientific
certainty, which she appeared on Earth three thousand and five hundred million
years ago.
Therefore,
we return to the "unknown land" and to the relativity of knowledge,
but not necessarily to a theological explanation of the origin of the Universe
and Life. ” [3]
We can now conclude that one of the
alternative routes of philosophy and ethics evolution, which come from Epicurus
and the Orient, 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 Mechanicism 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
The controversy of Antero with Haëckel
Philosophy on the XIX century, the "metaphysical speculation",
following Antero de Quental analysis, was in debit to the amazing progress of
"natural sciences" and "social sciences", increased by the foundation of new subject areas and
new scientific branches, and our philosopher, with humility, recognized its own
limited capacity, but also of any other scientist or intellectual from the new
epochal, to encompass such a large immensity of knowledge.
At the same time, Antero claims that the new
philosophy should penetrate, step by step, into the consciousness of his
citizen’s fellows and involving all Humanity.
There is a key passage in the essay Tendências da Filosofia no Século XIX
(Tendencies of Philosophy in the 20th century), where this new
paradigm emerges in thesis:
"The synthesis of modern thought, prepared by philosophers, must be the
collective work of cultured humanity. Only by this way could embrace the
character of a historical phenomenon and a great human fact." [4]
Antero proclaims the necessity of a
new Music and a new Poetics, face the exhausted esthetic of romanticism, and
postulates the inevitability of a new Philosophy, announced in the Sonetos (Sonnets) and in Odes Modernas (Modern Odes); a new cultural view to the end of century metamorphosis of the XIX-XX, which would be the critical contributions
from the Portuguese intellectual “Generation of 70” to the modernity and will
inspire Miguel Unamuno and the Spanish “Generation of 98”.
Then, closed the cycle of philosophical
poetry, emerges the philosophic essays of Antero de Quental, as a critical
vision of anthropocentrism, in defense of a holistic view of nature and to
promote the moral conscience of all the people.
Against Haëckel philosophy, Antero
wrote:
“The horror puerile to metaphysics and the illusion that claims to found
a positive philosophy of nature exclusively architected in the field of science
lead Haeckel (and many others after him or with him) unknown the importance of
the idea of finality and undermine what precisely should serve as a first pillar
for the building which raised ".[5]
Antero’s critique of philosophy of sciences
considers “theory of evolution” valid only for the areas "where the
historical element represents a prominent role", like the social sciences,
biological sciences and astronomy, but it excludes the physics and chemistry.
In their global conception of nature,
reserve for science the role of key of phenomenology comprehension but signs
its limits:
According Antero philosophy, the roll of the human reason is necessary to
full the moral void that the scientific view would leave in the Universe if will
be reduced to a scientific significance, without any moral finality.
Antero considers that the emergence of the rule of “the law” in the
evolution of the societies and the personal ideal of holiness, expresses the
higher level of human consciousness:
"…(The Right)... is already unconscious animal's aspiration: but only in
the human societies effectively can preside the law." [7](our parenthesis between)
"...(The Right is) the highest point of the
evolutionary series of things. The facts of human consciousness are not only
positive facts, but the pinnacle of positive facts”. [8] (our parenthesis between)
Antero believes on the finality
"immanent to substance" as the true explanation of the cause of the
spontaneity of all the movement and evolution.
"So, a philosophy of nature, such as I conceive, a philosophy of nature
elevated at the level not only of the great century of natural sciences, but at the great century of
Kant and Hegel, she don't have to reject universal determinism and evolution,
as the mechanical form of this determinism.
But it should not stay there. Determinism and
evolution are only the starting point, the universal formula of phenomenology,
which providing them a scientific capability of generalization (discovering
scientific laws), which philosophy must analyze and interpret. Only by this way
will be satisfied not only the speculative reason (the philosophical thoughts),
but no fewer imperative demands of human consciousness (moral imperatives)." [9] (our parenthesis between)
One of the original ideas of Antero,
about the modern concept of nature, opposed to the vulgar opinion, is that the
general theory of evolution not emerges as a discovery of natural sciences in
the XIX century, but as a result of philosophical speculation.
"…speculative (philosophical) elaboration, since three centuries, was
projected in the field of science.” [10]
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 ... "[11] (our parenthesis between)
And postulate, about the dialectic of
science and philosophy:
"Universe isn't created by speculation: he exists before them, and there
is the experience that provides philosophical speculation; but provides them as
an obscure symbol, that speculation (philosophy) must to interpret on the light
of concepts elaborate by consciousness.
As well consciousness explains the sensation, the starting
point of science, only spiritualism that departs from consciousness can explain
the mechanical conception of the Universe, the last discovery of scientific thought. "[12] (our parenthesis between)
Considering every being of nature on
its autonomy and diversity (and its internal causality, not only in its internal
reaction mechanics to outside forces, such as rock falls, the molecule that
joins to the other, the water vaporized), the thought of Antero open the way
not only to overcome the vision of a passive and static nature, but also for
the affirmation of spontaneous freedom that seeks to accomplish their own
finality.
The human being, settled in the
highest degree of that spontaneity, by the conscious of the spirit, is moving
towards the fullness of freedom.
Exists’ in the cosmovision of Antero
one growing march of matter and material life to the spirituality as an
inexorable destiny. The emergence of human nature embodied this inevitable walk
and compelling the human being to a noble mission.
Antero proclaims:
"The
soul! Yes: that is what literature’s needs, in the place of applause that pass
and the interests that reducing, having as unique and noble ambition to raise,
to improve the slaughtered spirits, go in the vanguard showing the hidden
routes of good, accomplishing the epochal moral needs, giving a healthy and
strong food to the craving, hunger and thirst of knowledge and feeling, being
national and popular in the big and beautiful sense of the word. "[13]
In a single sonnet, Evolution (Evolução),
Antero gives a synthesis of its thought about the philosophy of nature, viewed
as a physical and spiritual whole, in its march to freedom, Supreme Good.
“EVOLUTION
Dedicated to Santos Valente
In past time, I was rock, and was, in the ancient
world,
In the unknown forest a trunk or a branch.
Where, foamed, breaking me in the edge
Of granite, the ancient enemy.
I roared, beast maybe, seeking shelter
In the cave that projects shadows over heather and
broom;
Or, primitive monster, I lift my forehead
In the oozy swamp, green-gray grazing land...
Today I am a man _ and in huge shadow
I see at my feet, the steps multiform,
Which descend, on spirals, in the immensity...
I wonder the infinite and sometimes cry...
But, extending my own hands in the vacuum, I adore
But what means the concept of the
supreme Good of Humanity, at the beginning of the 20th century?
The position of the human being on
the Antero’s philosophy, the place of human consciousness, on the top of the
true nature, doesn’t mean that he is the Lord of all beings and all things,
contrasting with the Judeo-Christian metaphysical that divinized human
beings.
The intrinsic value of nature is
stated in the sonnet Dialogue (Diálogo):
"The cross said to the land where was based,
To the Dark Valley, mount rough and change:
_ What It's you, abyss and cage, where everything
Lives in pain,
fighting blind and hard?
…/…
I am the spirit, the light! ... you're sadness,
The dark sludge and vile! _ But the land
Following Antero thought, the 18th century
science, its physics mechanistic and the heliocentric concept of the universe
gives to Philosophy and human reason consciousness of themselves, not just
about a mechanical and a physical dimensions but also of the immanence of the
human spirit; human conscience that the pantheism of Spinoza enlarged as
infinite and immanence ("God is the immanent cause, but not transitive of
all things"). And later enlightened reason, that reveals the scientific
laws of nature (but also the relativity of knowledge, because even the reason
only "imperfectly knows himself" (Antero). The human reason that understand
its own finalistic development and recognize the infinity virtuosity of the
human being marching to its own fullness and perfection. The dissolution of the
"myself" of Antero on the “the entire” universal, its denial of
selfish and social selfishness, is the departing point for a new Ethic of Life
and the Land Ethics, that the expressed in a remarkable synthesis of
Lévi-Strauss:
“… The
true humanism does not start by itself, and should put the world before life,
life before man and respect for others before self-love... ”
We are now in the position to discuss
the issue of fundaments and principles of Antero philosophy of nature,
considering the necessity and inevitability of the emerging of a new philosophy
that prophetically predicts.
The critique of anthropocentrism
We can finally focused our attention
in an historical and unknown fact: Antero and its companions of the Portuguese
70 Generation (XIX century), polemics and evaluated the philosophy of nature proposed
by Ernest Haëckel[16]; this "philosopher" and the "naturalist" Ernest
Haëckel are the same people, internationally recognized as the founder of
modern Ecology. [17]
What Antero critique in Haëckel
thought, is that he ignores "... the importance of the idea of finality
..." and "... The horror puerile to metaphysics ... " which is
considered by Antero the primary source of construction and evolution of modern
scientific thought ( and philosophy)”.
And what share with the creator of
Ecology and its scientific contribution to found the Environmental Ethics, is
the critique of the principle of anthropocentrism.
Haëckel himself, evoked as creator of
Ecology Science, is ignored as precursor of environmental philosophy and even
linked to racism, from their thesis "ontogeny recapitulates
phylogeny".
So, is necessary making a brief
review of his thought, limited to the themes under analysis, focused on its
original books.
In the work The Enigmas of the Universe, Haëckel note the importance of the
"law of substances" completed by the "theory of evolution",
like the keys of the enigma, because the permanence of energy and matter in the
universe explaining its evolution, constituting the essence of monistic
philosophy.
His philosophical and scientific
matrix was built, at the time, from the premonitory work of Goethe about the Metamorphosis of Plants (1799), the
theory of French naturalist and philosopher Lamarck (1809) postulating that environment determine the adaptations of
all types of organisms and the theory of evolution by Charles Darwin (1859).
In the History of the Creation of Beings Organised According to the Laws of
Nature emerges a clear critique of anthropocentrism, in the context of the
defense of "scientific materialism and morality":
"... first the geocentric
error, which made the Earth the center of the world, around which turn the Sun,
the Moon and the stars; after 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 Copernican world system theory, in the early of 16th century; the second by
the genealogical theory of Lamarck, in the early of 19th century. "[18]
From those fundamental theses,
Haëckel answer to the "... great enigma of the universe: “the place of the
man in nature" and the question of its “natural origin ".
As scientist Haëckel symbolize the
19th century progress of the knowledge of nature and human nature, the biology
with the cell theory, physics, with the optics and acoustics, the theory of
magnetism and electricity, the mechanics and the theory of heat, the physics of
stars and the chemistry, revealing the carbon as “the basis of life chemistry”
and allowing to discovery
"...
that the same materials that make up our
planet and living beings that inhabit them are also those who make up the mass
of other planets, the Sun and the stars more distant." [19]
And so ...
"... the
unity of forces of nature in the universe ... the law of substances as '
fundamental ' cosmological law". [20]
Along the cited work we can find a
global critique to the anthropocentric philosophy. Not only the critique
against the anthropocentric dogma, which conceives God as the image of man, but
also the “anthropological” dogma, generator of duality body-decomposable versus
soul-immortal.
Concluding about the ethical
imperative to "renounce this unacceptable illusion of grandeur" that
placed man as absolute ruler of nature.
Analyzing the relationship between philosophy
and natural sciences, on the light of controversy among philosophers and
naturalists, invokes Schiller and calls every one to search the truth, stating
the need of convergence of the heritage of the idealist philosophy, from Plato
and Hegel and the realistic philosophy of Bacon and Mill, concluding:
"The exclusive supremacy granted to empiricism is a mistake no less
harmful than the opposite error which gives supremacy to speculation."
[21]
At this point that philosophy makes an
approach to the thought of Antero de Quental. It's not the scope of this paper
to examine the thought of Haëckel in all philosophical, scientific and
political dimensions. But we cannot fail to point out, in our context of research,
the defense of a Pantheism inspired by Bento de Espinosa, the relationship,
citing Humboldt, between monistic philosophy and naturalist art, particularly
the painting of landscape, not only in the aspect of scientific representation
but also in their intellectualizing and spiritualization, which leads to
theorize the "modern love by nature" as a source of aesthetic
pleasure and ethics elevation of human
being, when he recognizes the sense of things and its relationship with the
other parts of nature, wonder, bewilderment and stupor.
"... which are together elements of our soul life’s’ that are integrated
under the name of natural religion." [22]
And so proclaims, about the present
and future life:
"Our monism teaches us that we are children of the Earth, mortals who will
not have more than one, two or more than three ' generations ', to enjoy in
this life the splendors of our planet, to contemplate the inexhaustible wealth
of its beauty and enjoy the wonderful game of its forces." [23]
One last note about the stigma of racist,
declare against the philosophy of Haëckel. If its conceptions about the “laws
of natural selection” led them to reject contemporary ideals of socialism, is
sure that argued for equality between men and women, recognizing their equal
value and dignity, and himself, with remarkable politics lucidity, makes
distance from their future detractors:
"We do not underestimate the risk that exists to carry so brutally
scientific theories to the domain of political practice. The complex conditions
of our civilization require to the man dedicated to the policy activates a
cautiousness so enlightened, a strong historic preparation, a critical sense so
delicate, that does not permit applied such a ' natural law ' to the practice
of social life, otherwise under the largest reserve." [24]
The environmental reason: critique of ethnocentrism
and critique of anthropocentrism
The struggle to
differentiate ethics from morality, that the common sense understands 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 theses.
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, trans temporal (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, it 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, economic
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. [25]
Already in the philosophy of Espinosa
(XVI century), earlier 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)
Among
this ethical principle we are at the border of the humanism but remain at the
frontier of anthropocentrism, however project in the future and involving a
common responsibility of all human beings.
From this
perspective we could rethinking the concept of reason enlarging their meaning
to the concept of “Environmental reason”, a critical reason enlightens by the critic
of principle of anthropocentrism and by the critic of 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.
From
the paradigm conservationist of Nature to the concept of Environment. The new
ethics
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 and forms, their immeasurable emotional relationship with
the countless human beings who have been born and shaped them, becoming too
transformed. [26]
The Land Ethics: enlarging the 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 “[27]
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 other animals.
That is the enlarged perspective of
the critique to the anthropocentrism.
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.[28] 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 '. [29]´
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 themselves, 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.
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
more higher position is occupied by organisms in the food chain (remember the
biotic pyramid of Aldo Leopold), the more vulnerable they will be, those are
the cases of 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.
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.
If we consider the emergence of our
ancestors of the human species from 4 to 5 million years ago, inside the
framework of the biological time, which is immense, nothing can assure that, as
happened to the dinosaurs in the past (sixty-five million years ago), the
kingdom of mammals won't come to an end one day and other forms of more adapted
life will continue to perpetuate the music of life in the sidereal spaces.
However, considering the Paleontology
lay which posits the "irreversibility of evolution” , imaging the
extinction of Homo sapiens sapiens
and species associated with our evolution, a world of plants, microbes and
insects, would unlikely give rise again to the human species or even to
mammals.
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, contrasting the common history of
philosophy whose thought is focused on the Human Being, environmental
philosophy guides 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 an anti-humanist
philosophy.
Now we can revisit our
initial postulate: If every systematic philosophical construction is built on
an intrinsic foundation, a fundamental intuition or the attraction to the
objective, the starting point of philosophical renewal in the XXth century was
the concept of environment. Their supreme desideratum
is justify the moral imperative, supported by the modern concept of reason, that
environmental ethics must take precedence over the more advanced achievements
of blind science. And the environmental ethics must take precedence above the
values of the most democratic XX century socialist and liberal democracies, responsible
together for generating the environmental crisis. However, this concept of
reason is not the classic concept of the reason of Kant. We talk about a new
concept, the “environmental reason”.
Concerning the capital
questions that Spinoza's (Bento de Espinosa) work placed on the advent of our
modernity: how to think about the rational
explanation to the existence of man and the universe,
how to adapt the philosophical thinking to the
raison d' être of everything that exists and how to transform the
spiritual life in full understanding and peaceful enjoyment of life to its
limit!? The Philosophy of Nature and then the Environmental Philosophy allowed
the building of a new ontology in critique of anthropocentrism, a new
epistemology, founded on critique of the ethnocentrism and a new ethical
theory, with a universal value and practical content applicable to all the
social fields. From those foundations the concept of reason is enlarged and
transformed in the concept of “environmental reason”.
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 assumes a new moral and political
significance.
The ethical imperative of perpetual peace, from Kant
to Jorge de Sena and the imperative of dignity
Antero de Quental, in the end of XIX
century, claims for the advent of a new art, more universal, having the music as
a paradigm; It is therefore natural that the poetic literary nourish also the
new philosophy in the XX century, as in the work of Jorge de Sena. The world of
Kant is not our world. The philosophical and practice dimensions of the
problems of categorical imperatives assumed now a tragic magnitude.[30] 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.
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 loss 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 gradualist 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…”
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 to 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"[33] 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".
Ethical dilemmas
The classic example of resolving an
ethical dilemma on the basis of the principle of utilitarianism, is the
political and moral justification of the launch of the first atomic bomb on
Hiroshima and, later the second over Nagasaki, comparing more than 200.000
confirmed dead with the estimated more than one million others casualties, expected
by the military strategists, if the USA choose to invade and conquer Japan
using conventional weapons.
The most common moral objection against
the resolution of this ethical dilemma by nuclear holocaust of the Japanese people,
lies in the intrinsic value of human life, that in the Kantian categorical
imperative is an end in itself and cannot be used/annihilated as a means to
benefit others, even to get a higher benefit, in this case, reducing
casualties.
Placed the problem on that moral
equation, modern ethics and morality, in its practice, seems to become inconsistent
and in the theory a real paradox.
But in the weeks before the explosion
of the atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima., most of the scientists
who worked on the development of the atomic bomb, the Manhattan project, tried
to prevent his discharge directly over
the Japanese cities, proposing a strategy for the explosion in open space, in
order to demonstrate their destructive power. Confronted with that alternative
and with hesitancy of the leader's project, the military command resorted to
the threat, blackmail and manipulation of information. After the first discharge,
imposed the second, invoking the argument that the Japanese militarists didn't
want to surrender.
The secret military documents of the
time, which were declassified, show that there was a deliberate intention to
try the pump effect against the humans beings
and a second purpose, putting in respect the URSS triumphant and the new emerging
socialist States in the East and Asia: it had started the cold war!
Those scientists, conscious of the
dangers of the military use of nuclear energy, and the risks of new clashes
that could lead to the extinction of humanity, create a civic and political movement
called Movement of Scientists, who came to bring together 515 scientists from
Harvard and MIT in 1945, on the basis of a program that would be the support of
their speeches, books and articles and which wanted to lead the USA Government
to an international agreement with the URSS. Their final propose was that
nuclear weapons never more will be produced. Let's see their arguments:
1- Other Nations would soon be able to produce atomic bombs.
2- No effective defense was possible.
3- Mere numerical superiority in atomic weaponry offered no security.
4- A future atomic war would destroy a large fraction of civilization.
5- Therefore, “International cooperation of an unprecedented kind is
necessary for our survival”.
The “heuristics of fear” was his strategy
of propaganda, but the Government managed to dismantle it in 1947 and adopted
this speech exactly to the opposite end.
Let´s take two new issues: The Armed
Forces Museum of Paris, at the “Palais
des Invalides”, in the section dedicated to II World War, illustrate with a
tragic dashboard the number and nationality of his victims: at the top, the
USSR, with 26 million people. China suffered 12,6 million dead.[34] The
Germany and Poland share the same number of 6 million more 6 million dead. The
Japan follows them with 2,6 million. Yugoslavia 1,5 million. Philippines 1
million. France 580.000. Romania and Greece with 460.000 each one. Italy with
444,500. United Kingdom with 445.000. Czechoslovakia with 360.000. USA with
340.000. Netherlands with 240.000. Belgium with 100.000. India with 50.000.
Canada with 45.000. Australia with 21.000. Bulgaria with 20.000. New Zealand
with 18.000 closes this fateful scale of more than 50 million deaths, from
which more than 30 million were civilians.
This tragic balance concerning the
number and nationality of his victims is unknown for the common people. The
Nations and peoples of the world, but above all the peoples of the USSR and
China, gives those lives for the cause of freedom and national sovereignty by
the ideal of liberal or socialist democracy and for a hopeful and more just and
peaceful world.
And we speak about Nations winners
and won, because the fortune of war opened to all of them the right to choose
the social and economic regime and the kind of democracy where they would build
a common future.
So was written and adopted 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. And, in this context, recalling the recent (2014)
controversy between the Portuguese Minister of Health, which considered
“totally immoral” the price of a new drug for hepatitis C and the President of
the association SOS Hepatitis, who stated that ' immoral ' patients die without
new medicine. The case is that an American pharmaceutical enterprise wants to sell
a new drug in Portugal, with a high cure rate, by 48.000 Euros /patient.
The Portuguese Government,
considering the price established for the medicine “sofosbuvir” in Egypt (around 700 euros) and the respective GDP (5,93
times lower than the euro zone’s GDP), proposes the establishment of a joint
alliance of European Member States for the definition of a maximum price for treatment
with this medication 5,93 times higher than the price offered in the Egypt (around
4.100 € compared with 700 €).
Those five examples are useful as a
demonstration that the practical application of ethical principles, and ethics
practices, such as bioethics, need to be addressed in conjunction with the
conceptualization of a new global political ethics, without which the discussion
of ethical dilemmas risk to being
predetermined by the hidden power of political alienation.
[1] 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.
[2] 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.
[3] This part of the text, with successive renovations, was first presented at the international colloquium, “Philosophy in the twentieth century”, organized by the Center of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon, in 2012, under the title “The dawning of the Environmental Ethics in the 21st century”, at the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy, Athens, in 2013. And in the World Congress of Philosophy on the topic: “The philosophy of Aristotle, Critique of Environmental Ethics and Moral in the 21st century”, Athens, in 2016.
[4] Antero de Quental, Tendências Gerais da Filosofia, page 87.
[5]Antero de Quental, “A Filosofia da Natureza dos Naturalistas", in Obras Completas de Antero de Quental, Filosofia. Organization, Introduction and Notes by Joel Serrão, page 105. Unfortunately, seems to have missed to Antero and his illustrious contemporaries the opportunity to integrate in its reflection about the idea of finality the important contribution of Kant, in his Review of the Faculty of Judging (Kritik der Urteilskraft), 1790.
[6] Ibidem, page 101.
[7] Antero de Quental, Tendências Gerais da Filosofia, page 81.
[8] Ibidem, page 109.
[9] Ibidem, page 108.
[10] Antero de Quental, quoted by Leonardo Coimbra in “O Pensamento Filosófico de Antero de Quental, 1921”. In Antero de Quental, “A Filosofia da Natureza dos Naturalistas, Obras Completas de Antero de Quental, Filosofia:” Organization, Introduction and notes by Joel Serrão, page 111.
[11] Ibidem. Page 111.
[12] Ibidem, Page 243.
[13] Antero de Quental. “Textos Doutrinários”. In, A Questão Coimbrã. A Dignidade das Letras e as Literaturas Oficiais”, page 141.
[14] Antero de Quental, “Soneto, Evolução”, page 122.
[15] Antero de Quental, “Odes Modernas”, page 68.
[16] Quoted from our doctoral dissertation (2003).
[17] What means that Antero put his reflection on the philosophy of nature at the most advanced level of development of European thoughts of the epoch concerning the natural sciences and philosophy.
[18] Ernest Haeckel, « Histoire de La Création des Êtres Organisés D'après les Lois Naturelles », pages 29-30. Lamarck postulates the hypothesis that evolutionary change occurs due to the inheritance of acquired characteristics.
[19] Ernest Haëckel, The Enigmas of the Universe, page 13.
[20] Ibidem, page 13.
[21] Ibidem, page 30.
[22] Ibidem, page 147.
[23] Ibidem, page 147.
[24] Ernest Haeckel, Les Preuves du Transformisme, page 112. Haeckel’s work has a strongly influence in the philosophical thought of Nietzsche. View: Viriato Soromenho-Marques, the cosmology of the eternal recurrence, in Thinking the Portuguese culture-tribute to Francisco da Gama Caeiro, ed. Joaquim Gonçalves Cerqueira, Lisbon, Editions Colibri and Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, University of Lisbon, 1993, pages. 451-462.
[25] Remember Jonas, Hans. The Imperative of Responsibility. In Search of an Ethics for the technological Age.
[26] 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)
[27] 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. “ (Aldo Leopold, a Sand Count Almanaque, 1949).
From the reading of this work would break the theorization of bioethics by American oncologist Van Ressenlaer Potter.
[28] See Rolston III, H. Philosophy Gone Wild, 1986. Callicot, J.B. In Defense Of the Land Ethic, 1989.
[29] Peter Singer, Practical ethics, from the chapter “Take the Life of Animals”, pages. 98-99.
[30] 1."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." (Ibidem, page 429). The Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Mary Gregor. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
[31] Jorge de Sena. Poem “Peace”. In Thirty Years of Poetry.
[32] Jorge de Sena. “Letter to my kids about the shootings of Goya”, in Thirty Years of Poetry (Trinta anos de poesia).
[33] J. Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Moral and Legislation. Chapter I, 1.3.
[34] Chinese government records 35 million of causalities.
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