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Durham E-Theses Justice, Environment and Virtue in Martha Nussbaum's Capabilities Approach: An attempt to reconcile a capabilities-based account of justice with the concerns of the environmental movement through the application of virtue theory NEWBROOK, ALEXANDER,WILLIAM How to cite: NEWBROOK, ALEXANDER,WILLIAM (2017) Justice, Environment and Virtue in Martha Nussbaum's Capabilities Approach: An attempt to reconcile a capabilities-based account of justice with the concerns of the environmental movement through the application of virtue theory , Durham theses, Durham University. 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Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Justice, Environment and Virtue in Martha Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach An attempt to reconcile a capabilities-based account of justice with the concerns of the environmental movement through the application of virtue theory Alexander William Newbrook Abstract: Martha Nussbaum has produced a compelling account of how we might do justice to non- human animals, but in doing so she seems to have committed us to a project of ‘policing nature’, which appears to be at odds with many of the ethical commitments of the contemporary environmental movement. Intervening to make the circumstances of wild animals more conducive to their flourishing may be in accordance with the principles of Nussbaum’s capabilities approach, but it is at odds with the concerns of environmentalists who wish to ensure the functioning of ecosystems and the survival of species as an ethical imperative. Superficially, at least, it appears that one cannot endorse the capabilities approach and simultaneously be an environmentalist. In this thesis, I attempt to reconcile these two positions through appeal to the exercise of the virtues. While many of the premises of the capabilities approach and of the environmentalist accounts of ethics that I discuss are mutually exclusive, I suggest that an environmental virtue ethic, such as that described by Ronald Sandler, can justify many of the ethical stances that the environmentalist wishes us to adopt. In particular, characteristics of the virtue of humility can inform the agent as to why extending justice to wild animals is not a warranted course of action. I also apply virtue ethical considerations to the issues of species extinction and ecosystem destruction, areas in which the capabilities approach seems to offer little guidance. Thus, I propose augmenting our capabilities-based account of justice with an environmentally conscious appeal to the virtues in order to produce more consistent moral guidance with regard to the non-human world. 1 Justice, Environment and Virtue in Martha Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach An attempt to reconcile a capabilities-based account of justice with the concerns of the environmental movement through the application of virtue theory by Alexander William Newbrook PhD Candidate in Philosophy Department of Philosophy Durham University 2016 2 Table of Contents Chapter Page No. Introduction 1 Chapter I: The Capabilities Approach: Its motivations, 14 principles and two initial concerns Chapter II: Supplanting nature 42 Chapter III: The predation problem revisited: Autonomy and humility 66 Chapter IV: Biocentrism and the capabilities approach 89 Chapter V: The capabilities approach and species 107 Chapter VI: The capabilities approach and ecosystems 129 Chapter VII: Justice and virtue 151 Chapter VIII: Concluding remarks 173 Bibliography 181 3 Abbreviations used Only one abbreviation appears throughout: Nussbaum’s book, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership, is abbreviated to ‘FJ’. 4 Statement of copyright: The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the author’s prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. 5 Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the help and patience of my supervisor, Dr. Simon P. James, who has provided me with personal and academic support from this project’s beginnings as a research proposal. I also acknowledge a debt to Dr. Simon Hailwood, for directing me to Nussbaum’s work on animals and the predation problem while I was studying for a taught Masters in philosophy at the University of Liverpool from 2009 to 2010. Finally, I would like to acknowledge those who have helped by providing questions and suggestions when material from this thesis was presented at various seminars, workshops and at 2015’s ISEE conference in Kiel, Germany. 6 In Memoriam Nigel William Newbrook (1956-2011) 7 Introduction This thesis represents an attempt to reconcile some of the preoccupations of contemporary environmental ethicists with the partial account of justice for non-human animals proposed by Martha Nussbaum and, more generally, with ethical theories that advocate the extension of direct moral concern towards animals. By examining several different areas in which these schools of ethics have been considered to give contradicting guidance - protection for wild animals; justice for non-sentient animals, ecosystems and species – and in each case attempting to discern whether there are any grounds for favouring one approach over the other, I analyse those respects in which they appear to come into conflict and offer a potential solution. Although my own position ultimately endorses Nussbaum’s account of justice for animals, I am motivated to seek some form of reconciliation between her concerns and those of environmental ethicists rather than assert the primacy of one theory over another. In part, this motivation stems from my own moral intuition: while I am largely convinced that the flourishing of non-human animals is a matter of justice, I am not comfortable with the assertion made by Nussbaum and others that such matters as species extinction or ecosystem degradation are reducible to the concerns of individuals. As a result, this thesis might be thought of as an exercise in what Rawls terms ‘reflective equilibrium’: the comparison of one’s rationally derived principles to one’s moral convictions, in the hope that attempting to bring these two sources of moral judgement into closer agreement will produce more satisfying moral principles (Rawls 1971, p.20, loc.497). The case Nussbaum provides for considering sentient animals to be meaningful subjects of justice seems to me to be a compelling one: like humans, animals appear to be agents pursuing their characteristic good, and if the pursuit of a human good is a matter of justice, then it seems reasonable to suggest that the same might be said for that of animals. But, to borrow a metaphor from Christopher Stone, the moral landscape possesses features that are not captured by the capabilities-approach map alone (Stone 1987, p.138). Just as a road map does not generally detail gradations in altitude, a purely capabilities- 8 based map omits certain features that nevertheless make up part of the moral topography, such as species (as I will argue in Chapter 5). The underlying objective throughout this inquiry is not necessarily to find one set of topographical features that defines the entire landscape: to extend the metaphor, one can often deduce where hills, mountains and cliffs are on a road atlas because the roads will be shaped to accommodate them, or be marked as tunnels where they cut through, but it is not the easiest way to locate them. Similarly, it may be possible to stretch one account of morality to accommodate forms of moral decision making or types of morally relevant entity that have previously been overlooked, but the result is not necessarily satisfying.1 Rather, I am aiming to at least begin to describe a map that can be used satisfactorily by both environmentalists and animal rights advocates, because it accommodates features that both find important. I have chosen to focus on Nussbaum’s capabilities approach as representative of the various accounts of the rights of animals available. This is because Nussbaum’s position brings into particularly clear relief the issues that are held to render an account of justice for individual animals incompatible with being a ‘serious’ or ‘deep’ environmentalist. In particular, Nussbaum suggests that if non-human animals are meaningful subjects of justice, then rather than limiting our attentions to cats, dogs, cows and chickens in our care, we ought to aim at “the gradual supplanting of the natural by the just”; we ought, in other words, to intervene in the lives of wild animals to protect them from the environment and from one another (FJ, pp.399-400). While one may be inclined to dismiss this proposal solely on grounds of its impracticability – and it seems likely that actually creating a world in which the lives of wild animals are regulated by justice seems to be the preserve of science fiction – I am more concerned with finding philosophical grounds on which to object to it. In a future world where we genuinely were able to protect deer from being eaten by bears without risking ecosystem 1 Although it sometimes is: one example where this approach seems to work well is discussed in Chapter 4, in which I suggest that the capabilities approach can describe the just treatment of non-sentient organisms with relatively little difficulty.