Note: This is a pre-print, draft manuscript of Toby Svoboda, Duties Regarding Nature: A Kantian Environmental Ethic (Routledge, 2016). If citing, please consult the published version, which contains substantial revisions. Duties Regarding Nature: A Kantian Environmental Ethic Draft of Complete Manuscript Toby Svoboda Table of Contents • Introduction: Kant and Environmental Ethics • Chapter 1: Traditional Approaches to Environmental Ethics • Chapter 2: Kantian Approaches to Animal Ethics and Environmental Ethics • Chapter 3: Indirect Duties, Moral Perfection, and Virtuous Dispositions • Chapter 4: Teleology and Non-Human Flourishing • Chapter 5: A Kantian Environmental Virtue Ethic • Conclusion: Advantages of the Kantian Environmental Virtue Ethic • References Introduction, 1 Introduction: Kant and Environmental Ethics Why Environmental Ethics? I have set out in this book to develop and defend a Kantian approach to environmental ethics. This immediately raises a question: why should we want an environmental ethic at all, much less a Kantian one? Human beings face serious environmental problems, such as those associated with climate change, loss of biodiversity, and air pollution.1 It seems clear that these problems have various ethical dimensions, given that they threaten to increase human mortality rates, cause substantial harm to present and future generations, and exacerbate socio-economic injustice.2 Moreover, the impact of human activities on the environment, such as ocean acidification due to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases, threatens to cause substantial harm to many non- human natural entities, such as individual organisms, species, and ecosystems.3 Presumably, it is imperative that human beings respond in appropriate ways to these various environmental problems. This need is perhaps best expressed by two questions: (1) what environmental policies should human beings collectively adopt, and (2) how should individuals lead their lives with respect to the environment? Unfortunately, it is not immediately obvious how to answer these questions, and there is substantial disagreement regarding what particular policies or actions ought to be taken. 1 See Osvaldo E. Sala et al., "Global Biodiversity Scenarios for the Year 2100," Science 287, no. 5459 (2000); C. Arden Pope, Majid Ezzati, and Douglas W. Dockery, "Fine-Particulate Air Pollution and Life Expectancy in the United States," New England Journal of Medicine 360, no. 4 (2009); Tom Regan, "Broadie and Pybus on Kant," Philosophy 51, no. 198 (1976). 2 See John Broome, "The Ethics of Climate Change," Scientific American 298, no. 6 (2008); Beate Ritz et al., "Ambient Air Pollution and Risk of Birth Defects in Southern California," American Journal of Epidemiology 155, no. 1 (2002); Susan L. Cutter, "Race, class and environmental justice," Progress in Human Geography 19, no. 1 (1995). 3 O. Hoegh-Guldberg et al., "Coral Reefs Under Rapid Climate Change and Ocean Acidification," Science 318, no. 5857 (2007). Introduction, 2 An environmental ethic provides a framework for thinking through our moral obligations vis-à-vis the natural environment, thus providing resources to address both (1) and (2). Such a framework seems desirable given uncertainty about how to address the many environmental problems we currently face. Potentially, a well-crafted environmental ethic can assist us in answering difficult questions, such as who bears moral responsibility for certain kinds of environmental impacts, whether we have duties regarding non-human entities, what weight such duties have compared to duties to human beings, and so on. Such an ethic could provide helpful guidance both in policy-making and in leading an ethical life as an individual. Careful consideration about our obligations vis-à-vis the natural environment could help us both to craft ethically informed environmental policies and to make individual choices that are ethically conscious. It is, for example, a pressing question what policies ought to be adopted collectively for responding to climate change, but it is also a pressing question whether it is morally permissible to consume meat as part of one’s diet. An environmental ethic provides a way to think through the various normative and evaluative dimensions of both kinds of question. While the environmental ethic I develop in this book is plausibly taken to be relevant for matters of environmental policy, I shall focus on the question of how one ought to live with respect to non-human nature. As I discuss below, it is intuitively plausible to think that one’s interaction with non-human nature has moral significance of some kind, even when that interaction has no impact on human interests. It is difficult to deny, for example, that animal cruelty or wanton destruction of plant-life is morally problematic, and in a way that is not reducible to some indirect harm to human beings or interference with human interests. Many environmental ethicists seek to make sense of intuitions of this kind. As we shall see, one approach is to claim that human beings have direct moral obligations to certain non-human Introduction, 3 entities, such that cruelty to animals or wanton destruction of plant-life involves wrong-doing to those organisms themselves. This is certainly one way to make sense of the intuition that there is something morally problematic about such actions. However, as we shall also see, such direct duty views face some very difficult problems. We should therefore ask whether there is some way to make sense of the intuition that our interaction with non-human nature is morally significant while avoiding the problems encountered by direct duty views. The central claim for this book is that a certain indirect duty view can accomplish this goal, avoiding the problems of direct duty views while nonetheless grounding the intuitively plausible belief that our interaction with non-human nature is morally significant. Despite our lack of direct moral duties to non- human entities, I shall argue that we nonetheless have robust moral duties to treat them in certain ways, as well as excellent moral reason to value and promote their flourishing regardless of whether doing so also promotes human interests. Why Kant? Kantian approaches are notably absent within the environmental ethics literature.4 While some environmental ethical theories might be deemed Kantian in a minimal sense,5 very few explicitly engage with Kant’s moral philosophy. This seems strange, at least initially. In virtually any other field of ethics, explicit appeals to Kant’s moral theory are frequent, and some Kantian positions are influential.6 This is not to deny, of course, that Kant and Kantianism have critics in ample supply within these fields. Nonetheless, among the various sub-disciplines of ethics, the 4 For a rare exception, see Holly Wilson, "The Green Kant: Kant's Treatment of Animals," in Environmental Ethics: Readings in Theory and Application, fourth edition, ed. Louis Pojman (Wadsworth, 2004). See also Thomas Hill, "Ideals of Human Excellence and Preserving Natural Environments," in Environmental Virtue Ethics, ed. Philip Cafaro and Ronald Sandler (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005). 5 See, for example, Paul Taylor, Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). 6 See, for example, Onora O'Neill, Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics (Cambridge University Press, 2002). Introduction, 4 virtual absence of Kant in environmental ethics seems to be unique. This absence is perhaps best explained due to the fact that Kant’s moral theory, particularly its account of indirect duties regarding nature (6:442-3),7 is often taken to be inimical to the goal of grounding adequate moral concern for non-human natural entities.8 Specifically, since it limits the sphere of moral standing or considerability to rational entities alone, the project of developing a Kantian approach to anything but a narrowly anthropocentric environmental ethic might seem hopeless. One goal of this book is to show that, contrary to a widely held view, Kant’s moral theory does have the resources to ground a coherent and robust environmental ethic, and one that is not objectionably anthropocentric. Further, the Kantian environmental ethic I defend has substantial advantages over other environmental ethics. While the details on why a Kantian approach to environmental ethics is attractive must wait until the fifth chapter and conclusion of this book, I note now that pessimism regarding a Kantian approach to environmental ethics often rests on a traditional but faulty interpretation of Kant’s account of indirect duties regarding nature. According to this interpretation, Kant’s view is that it is advisable to abstain from animal cruelty and wanton destruction of flora, but only because such actions make us more likely to fail in our duties to human beings.9 On this account, there is nothing morally problematic in its own right about animal cruelty or destroying plant-life—rather, it is merely the case that such actions allegedly increase one’s propensity to violate duties to humans. Alternatively, I argue that Kant’s account sanctions much stronger moral requirements vis-à-vis non-human nature. In particular, I 7 Throughout this work, all parenthetical citations are to the volume and page numbers of the Academy edition of Kant’s collected works (Immanuel Kant, Akademie-Ausgabe: I. Kant, Gesammelte Werke, ed. königlich preußische (später deutsche) Akademie der Wissenschaften, 29