Virtue and Respect for Nature: Ronald Sandler's Character and Environment

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Notes 1 See Taylor (1986 Taylor, P. 1986. Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar). 2 See Bennett (1976 Bennett, J. 1976. Linguistic Behavior, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar, p. 45). Roughly, the idea is that all living things have structures and functioning that aim at their eventual death in much the same way that their structures and functioning aim at the preservation of life (earlier on) and reproduction. 1 Sandler does offer arguments against such a 'qualified-agent' view, but his objections are focused on a qualified-agent view of right action (Cf. CE 87 ff.). Here I am suggesting a qualified-agent view of human flourishing, which may not be open to the same objections. 2 On Paul Taylor's view, see Sandler (2007 Sandler, R. 2007. Character and Environment, New York: Columbia University Press. Google Scholar, pp. 63–70). The quote is from Sandler (2007 Sandler, R. 2007. Character and Environment, New York: Columbia University Press. Google Scholar, p. 27). 3 The first sense of 'agent independent' is explained by O'Neill (1992 O'Neill, J. 1992. The varieties of intrinsic value. The Monist, 75 April reprinted in A. Light & H. Rolston III (Eds) Environmental Ethics: An Anthology (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003) Google Scholar, p. 137). The second is Bernard Williams' sense of internal reasons for action (1981 Williams, B. 1981. "Internal and external reasons". In Moral Luck, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crossref , Google Scholar). 4 It is likely human flourishing requires 'a breadth of goods'. Sandler quotes O'Neill approvingly on this point: 'For a large number of individual living things … we should recognize and promote their flourishing as an end itself. Such care for the natural world is constitutive of a flourishing human life. The best human life is one that includes an awareness of and practical concern with the goods of entities in the nonhuman world …' (Sandler, 2007 Sandler, R. 2007. Character and Environment, New York: Columbia University Press. Google Scholar, p. 52, italics added). 5 Consider Foot's rejection of the Kantian conception of practical reasons' normative force (Foot, 1972 Foot, P. 1972. Morality as a system of hypothetical imperatives. The Philosophical Review, 81(3) reprinted in her collection Virtues and Vices, pp. 157–167 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002)Crossref , Google Scholar, p. 9). 6 Here again I appeal to a qualified-agent view, to which Sandler has offered objections. While space does not permit consideration of it here, the qualified-agent view of reasons for action I am discussing may avoid the objections Sandler raises to a qualified-agent theory of right action. 7 How are 'noneudaimonistic' values supposed to be ends that are connected with our species-specific, natural form of life? Or, put another way: if noneudaimonistic ends are those that are 'rightly seen as good', how does this judgment track the commitment to goodness as an attributive adjective? Respecting this grammatical point (which the natural goodness approach is committed to) seems to require that any morally relevant goods only have a place in providing explanations of human natural goodness, or that is, within a eudaimonistic framework.