World Philosophy Congress on the Philosophy of Aristotle, under the Auspices of the President of the Hellenic Republic and with the support of the International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
ARISTOTLE’S
ETHICS
António dos
Santos Queirós
Center of
Philosophy of the University of Lisbon
Alameda da Universidade
1600-214 Lisboa
Portugal
Title: Critique of Environmental Ethics and Moral in the 21st century
Abstract
This paper
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.
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.
This paper
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.
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.
Our
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.
Keywords: Environment,
moral, ethics, anthropocentrism, ethnocentrism, alienation
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.[1]
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.
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
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. [2]
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.
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. [3]
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.
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 their 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 all the 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: 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." [4]
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)
The critique of anthropocentrism
We can
finally focused our attention in an historical and unknown fact: Antero and
their companions of the Portuguese 70 Generation (XIX century), analyzed and
evaluated the philosophy of nature proposed by Ernest Haëckel[5]; this "philosopher" and the
"naturalist" Ernest Haëckel are the same people, internationally
recognized as the founder of modern Ecology. [6]
What Antero critique in
Haëckel thought, as we saw earlier, is that ignore "... 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)”. (our parenthesis
between)
And what share
with the creator of Ecology and their scientific contribution to found the
Environmental Ethics, is the critique of the principle of anthropocentrism. Haëckel
himself, evoked as concetor 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 their 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 the environment in determining the adaptations of all types of
organisms of the philosopher and French naturalist Lamarck (1809) 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 coperniana world system theory, in the early of 16th
century; the second by the genealogical theory of Lamarck, in the early of 19th
century. "[7] (our
underline)
From
those fundamental theses, answer Haëckel 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 are
also those who make up the mass of other planets, the Sun and the stars more
distant." [8]
And so ...
"... the
unity of forces of nature in the universe ... the law of substances as '
fundamental ' cosmological law". [9]
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, and 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." [10]
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." [11]
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." [12]
One last
note about the stigma of racist, declare against the philosophy of Haëckel. If
their 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
lucidity politics, makes distance from her 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." [13]
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 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, 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
is something that needs to be transcended. Where others see antagonism, we
glimpse a complex dialectic.
The environmental reason
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 its diversity.[14] .
The environmental
reason creates its own ethical principles and applied ethics, based on the
critique of anthropocentrism and the critique of ethnocentrism.
On
the basis of these two negative axioms she incorporates new moral concepts, from Land Ethics and Animal Ethics, which extend the concept of
community to all beings of nature and extend the concept of person, at least to
animals that have capacity to feel and suffer, in particular of those who are
closest to us in the evolutionary chain.
The
environmental reason also incorporates a Global Bioethics, which relocate the
man inside the Nature, but without any privileged status. And attach to the
species of homo sapiens the higher moral value
( and responsibility), for his paradoxical ability to create and destroy
biodiversity.
The
environmental reason recognize to each individual “human being” a status of
moral equality between its multiple persons and a unique (ancestral) family:
all the people have the same mitochondrial mother and the same chromosomal father. And, one more time according to and beyond
modern science, the supreme duties to preserves Life before Man and Earth
before Life, what means conserve biodiversity with the man and the abiotic factors
of life.
The environmental
reason also includes a new Political Ethics and a new critical view of
alienation of citizens. A new Political Ethics policy that elaborated the
principle of common home“… the man has two homelands, his own and planet Earth”[15], founding a new
international order (ethics and political order) with the principle of
planetary Community and planetary solidarity, the basis of the principles of
sustainability, solidarity and equity. A Political Ethics with two new
categorical imperatives, the “imperative of the dignity” and “the imperative of
perpetual peace” which goes far beyond the Kantian concept of peace.
Let
us then to develop the genesis and the maturation of the concept of environmental
reason.
From the conservationist paradigm 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. [16]
The
critique of environmental philosophy queries our civilization mode, in the
perspective of environmental reason. Nature shall be included in our field of
moral reflection. Our duties, before limited to human beings, must be expanded
to the domains of the “Land Ethic” and “Animal Ethics”.
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 ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to
include soils, water, plants, and animals, or, collectively: the land “[17]
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“. [18]
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.
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.
Those principles build a first frontier line with the cultural and
political perspective of ethnocentrism.
The ethical imperative of dignity and the imperative
of peace, from Kant to Jorge de Sena
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.
The world
of Kant is not our world. The philosophical and practice dimension of the
problems assumes now a tragic magnitude. 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; structural unemployment, new pandemics and major
famines occur on multiple continents, as a consequence of economy globalization
and financial crises.
“The
imperative ethical of dignity”, from Jorge de Sena ( Portuguese writer), proclaims the ethical principle and moral 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. .
Poem: “Letter to my kids about the shootings of Goya”
…Believe me that no world, that nothing or no one
is more worth than a life, or the joy of having it.
This is what is the most important - this joy.
Believe that the dignity
they will tell you so much about
is nothing but that joy that comes
from being alive and knowing that anytime someone
is less alive or suffers or dies
so that one of you can resist a little more
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. “The ethical imperative of dignity”!
And if associated to the critique of
anthropocentrism, we can extend this categorical imperative to Life and Earth.
Jorge de
Sena, also rethink the Kant’s imperative of “perpetual peace”, choosing the
theme of the nuclear bomb and the connection between peace and liberty.
Poem: “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, always know how to remember
that everything is lost where peace is lost,
and first of all freedom is lost… “[20]
The categorical
“imperative of perpetual peace” try 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.
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"[21] 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".
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 over Hiroshima, and the second over Nagasaki. This was due to
the comparison made by military strategists: if the US chooses to invade and
conquer Japan with conventional weapons they estimated there would be one
million deaths instead of the more than 200,000 confirmed with the bombings.
The most
frequent moral objection against the resolution of this ethical dilemma by
nuclear holocaust of the Japanese people lies in the intrinsic value of human
life. In the Kantian categorical imperative, this is an end in itself and
cannot be used/annihilated as a means to benefit other people, even if to
achieve a higher benefit, which in this case is to reduce casualties.
Departing
from this framework, it seems that modern ethics and morals seem to be
inconsistent in practice and paradoxical in theory.
But in the
weeks before the nuclear attack against Hiroshima, most scientists who worked
on the development of the atomic bomb, the Manhattan project, tried to prevent
the bombing over the Japanese cities, proposing a different strategy: the
explosion should take place in open space, in order to demonstrate its
destructive power and save innocent life.
Confronted
with the hesitance of the leader of the project, the military on charge manipulate
information, resorting to threat and blackmail.
After the
first, the military comand demanded the second, by arguing that the Japanese
militarists wouldn't surrender.
The secret
military documents at the time, that are now longer considered classified, show
that there was a deliberate intention to try the nuclear weapon effect on
humans beings, but also a second purpose: to
the triumphant USSR and of the new socialist States emerging in the East
and in Asia: it was the beginning of the Cold War!
Those
scientists, conscious of the dangers of the military use of nuclear energy, and
of the risks of new clashes that could lead to the extinction of humanity,
promoted a civic and political movement called Movement of Scientists. This
movement would bring together 515 scientists from Harvard and MIT in 1945, who
defended a program that would be the inspiration to all subsequent books,
articles and speeches. Their objective was to lead the US Government to an
international agreement with the USSR, upon which they would agree that such
would no longer be produced. They argue five arguments:
Other
Nations would soon be able to produce atomic bombs
No
effective defense was possible.
Mere
numerical superiority in atomic weaponry offered no security.
A future
atomic war would destroy a large fraction of civilization.
International
cooperation of an unprecedented kind is necessary for our survival.
The
heuristics of fear was their propaganda strategy, but the US Government managed
to dismantle this movement in 1947 and adopted this speech exactly for the
opposite end.
This
example demonstrates that the practical application of ethics, and ethics practices,
needs to be formatted in the context of a new political ethics, and the
discussion of ethical dilemmas must be informed by all political facts and bright
by the critique of political alienation.
A global polical ethics rooted by the environmental
philosophy
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.
The
environmental philosophy built a new ontology from the critique of
anthropocentrism, but only their articulation with a new epistemology, founded
in the critique of ethnocentrism, could lead to a new theory of universal
ethics. .
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[1]
Cristina Beckert, “Ethics”, page 90.
[2] 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.
[3] 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.
[4]
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.
[5]
Quoted from our doctoral dissertation (2003).
[6] This 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.
[7]
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.
[8] Ernest Haëckel, « The Enigmas of the
universe », page 13.
[9] Ibidem, page 13.
[10] Ibidem, page 30.
[11] Ibidem, page 147.
[12]
Ibidem, page 147.
[13] Ernest Haeckel, Les
Preuves du Transformisme, page 112. Haeckel’s work have 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.
[16]
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)
[17] 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
.[18] Peter Singer,. Ética Prática.
.[18] Peter Singer,. Ética Prática.
[21]
J. Bentham, An Introduction to the
Principles of Moral and Legislation. Chapter I, 1.3.
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