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The Environmental Perspective: Metaphor and Empathy in Leopold’S Land Ethic

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The Environmental Perspective: Metaphor and Empathy in Leopold’S Land Ethic THE ENVIRONMENTAL PERSPECTIVE: METAPHOR AND EMPATHY IN LEOPOLD’S LAND ETHIC A THESIS Presented to The Faculty of the Department of Environmental Science Colorado College In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Bachelor of Arts By Jonathan Harmon May/2012 1st Reader Signature 2nd Reader Signature 2 Table of Contents Ch. 1: Introduction…….………………………………………………………………….4 Ch. 2: Metaphor, Empathy, and Their Overlap in the Natural Experience………………8 Ch. 3: A Sand County Almanac: An Illustration………………………………………...24 Ch. 4: Situating Metaphor and Empathy in Environmental Ethics and the Resulting Implications……………………………………………………………………………...35 Ch. 5: Conclusion………………………………………………………………………..48 References……………………………………………………………………………….52 Appendix I……………………………………………………………………………….55 Appendix II……………………………………………………………………………...57 3 ABSTRACT Aldo Leopold’s land ethic takes root in both metaphor and empathy. The use of metaphor and empathy in cultivating the land ethic has profound implications for our relations with the environment, both personal and political. I hope to show that these implications are positive and help us to realize the ethical extension vital to ensuring human harmony with nature. In pursuit of this, I first provide a deeper look into metaphor, empathy, alterity, and their overlap. I then put these ideas into the context of Leopold’s land ethic as described in A Sand County Almanac. Then I dissect the philosophical implications of metaphor and empathy in an environmental ethic. Finally, I suggest representation as a pragmatic instantiation of the ethic prescribed by metaphor and empathy. At the end of all, I think, is a compelling case made for the vital integration of more subjective modes of inquiry into the realm of ethics. 4 Ch. 1: Introduction Although an ecologist by trade, Aldo Leopold is probably best known for his foray into moral philosophy. In his seminal work A Sand County Almanac, Leopold takes as a starting point that all ethics rest upon the premise “that the individual is a member of a community of independent parts.” (1949, p. 203) Tracing the genealogy of this conception of ethics back, Leopold posits that the ethics we find embedded in our society are the result of a constant evolution that constitutes extensions of our moral sensibilities from our immediate kin, to progressively more distant communities. In Leopold’s eyes the next extension in this ethical lineage will encompass the natural community, or the Land as he denotes it. However, as science will attest, evolution takes its time. Leopold’s prose is rich with a sense of urgency. Half a decade later, this sense of urgency hits very close to home. Results of studies continue to make us aware of the exponentially increasing speed with which we approach a critical point in terms of resource availability. At this point, it seems that we can no longer wait for evolution to do its thing. Our relationship with the Land must change if human life is to continue in the way we have come to know it. And it must change in a way that affirms the position of the natural community in the human realm of obligation. To this end, Leopold outlined the land ethic. The land ethic states, “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” (Leopold, 1949, p. 225) It provides a sort of moral measuring stick to guide our actions. Unfortunately this is the bumper sticker land ethic, albeit for a very big bumper. The actual concepts underlying Leopold’s land ethic are far more compelling. 5 Furthermore, they provide a building point from which we can work to realize the ethical extension Leopold endorses. In light of this dire situation, a promising and natural point of departure for achieving this ethic is the ethics that we use in our interactions with other humans. It is my belief that of all the ways we engage our fellow humans, empathy is the strongest and most inclusive. We arrive at an obstacle, however, when we try to adapt empathy to an environmental ethic. Empathy, at least traditionally and in practice, is exclusive to human-human interactions. Metaphor can be employed in order to overcome this obstacle. A close look at Leopold’s writings reveals that the underpinnings of the land ethic, the praxis that led Leopold to the land ethic, are characterized by an inclination to view nature metaphorically in a way that facilitates empathy. In his paper on the land ethic Michael Nelson makes an important point. “Long lasting ethical change can only be effected by means of the modification of one’s worldview, the way one conceptually visualizes the world.” (Nelson, 1998, p. 742) The metaphorical nature of the land ethic ensures the longevity of it, as metaphor invites us to change the way we conceptually view the world. It may be the case that the causal link between metaphor and better treatment of the environment is murky. Metaphor is not restricted to just rhetoric but also cognition. And how we cognitively interpret our world dictates how we act in it. I return to Nelson’s article for a concise demonstration of this point. “When we perceive of the world as a machine we apprehend nothing wrong in treating it like one.” (1998, p. 742) And it is this metaphor of the natural world as a machine that has caused much of the abuse. Our understanding of machines does not map well to the reality of the natural world. Humans make machines and thus have some sense 6 of privilege in manipulating the working parts. Most obvious is the instrumentality of the machine. The machine has a purpose for which it was designed. The machine ceases to have worth the moment it can no longer realize this purpose. All of these attributes of the human-machine relation implicit in the metaphor are problematic for our ethical treatment of the environment. If we want to answer the call that Leopold has made, we must not only rethink the current metaphors we use to understand nature but also tread new ground with them. We must embrace metaphor as a tool to constantly turn our perspective on its side in order to see the world, and our place in it, in novel ways. Emmanuel Levinas is appropriate to invoke at this moment. Levinas noted, “ethics is an optics” (1969, p. 23). I think he means this in two ways, the first being that ethics provides a lens through which we can look at the world. But ethics can also constitute a new perspective entirely. Leopold’s land ethic calls for the cultivation of “ ‘perception,’ a blend of training, hermeneutic skill, and identification with the natural world.” (Hinchman, 1995, p. 225) Once we identify with the natural world, we can empathize with it. Empathy mobilizes Leopold’s own ecological definition of ethics as “ limitation on freedom” (1949, p. 202). At first, such a definition might seem unattractive at best and undemocratic at worst, but the definition of freedom we use changes this visceral reaction. Levinas defined freedom as the maintenance of “oneself against the other, despite every relation with the other to ensure the autarchy of an I” (1969, p. 46) If we substitute this definition into Leopold’s assertion we come to understand ethics as an invitation to allow the autarchy of the I to take secondary importance. We open ourselves up to empathically take the perspective of nature. Empathy has us pause in this struggle of assertion against the other. Empathy has 7 us transcend the boundaries between self and other, to the benefit of all. Empathy as the dialogue between self and other “involves a calling into question of oneself, a critical attitude which is itself produced in face of the other and under his authority” (Levinas, 1969, p. 81). Self-critique in this moral experience leads to expanded notions of moral community and our place in it as well as personal growth. The use of metaphor and empathy in cultivating the land ethic has profound implications for our relations with the environment, both personal and political. I hope to show that these implications are positive and help us to realize the ethical extension vital to ensuring human harmony with nature. In pursuit of this, I first provide a deeper look into metaphor, empathy, alterity, and their overlap. I then put these ideas into the context of Leopold’s land ethic as described in A Sand County Almanac. Then I dissect the philosophical implications of metaphor and empathy in an environmental ethic. Finally, I suggest representation as a pragmatic instantiation of the ethic prescribed by metaphor and empathy. At the end of all, I think, is a compelling case made for the vital integration of more subjective modes of inquiry into the realm of ethics. 8 Ch. 2: Metaphor, Empathy, and Their Overlap in the Natural Experience Metaphor Metaphor can be described as a method through which we understand the more abstract realms of reality in terms of the things that are more easily comprehended. In its most simple form, metaphor appears as an “x=y” statement, where x and y share some similarity, or the relation between x and y brings into view patterns that can augment our understanding of one or both entities. In most cases, metaphors are discussed strictly as poetic devices. One might say, for example, “my love is an ocean”. In this case love is the abstract concept (target) that is being understood in terms of the ocean (source), a concept that is more immediately describable. The reader of this line is then invited to draw from their understanding of what makes an ocean an ocean, and apply that understanding in order to better grasp the abstract concept of love.
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