The nature of value and the value of Nature: a philosophical overview BEN ROGERS You don’t have to be a philosopher to philosophize about our relation to Nature. Most of us, at one time or another, have probably found ourselves wondering, if not whether we should have a concern for the natural world, then why. We all stumble over certain puzzles. Why care about the preser- vation of species or ecosystems, as distinct from individual animals? Why does the extinction of a species as a result of human activities seem so much more deplorable than the extinction of a species as a result of natural developments? Why fret over the fate of non-sentient species, mineral reserves, mountain ranges, rivers, coastlines and the like? Does the natural environment have an intrinsic value, or is it valuable only in relation to us? Can we do justice to its importance without recourse to mystical ideas of God or spirit? Indeed, does the idea of ‘Nature’ have any content at all? These are profound, perplexing issues, which go to the very heart of philosophy. But they press themselves on us for other reasons too. The natural world is being transformed by human activity: species are disappearing, weather patterns are changing and natural resources are being destroyed at a dangerous rate. It is often suggested that these developments are an expression, at the most *fundamental level, of the shortcomings of ‘Western philosophy’—of character- istically modern, ‘instrumentalist’, ‘individualist’ or ‘alienated’ views of Nature. It has, on the other hand, equally been claimed that the Green movement’s flirtation with anti-modern, alternative values has alienated it from the main- stream, thus limiting its effectiveness.1 Or, more extremely, that the movement is in some way illiberal or fundamentalist. Either way, while we might not need philosophers to raise these questions and make these claims, it is not too much to hope that they can help us think more clearly about our response to them. Philosophy’s record here is, it has to be admitted, rather mixed. None of the great Western philosophers has, as far as I am aware, written at any length on our duties to the environment. The Green movement does not have its Augus- tine, Locke or Marx. (This, perhaps, is hardly surprising: it is only recently, after 1 For a recent example of this claim see Michael Jacobs, Environmental modernisation, the New Labour agenda (London: Fabian Society, 1999). International Affairs 76, () ‒ 315 76_2/07.Rogers 315 9/3/00, 2:38 pm Ben Rogers all, that problems of conservation have become at all urgent. Throughout most of its history, humanity has had relatively little capacity to effect the natural world, for better or worse.) Moving into the present era, the philosophy of the environment or ‘environmental ethics’ remains very much a minority concern, in part no doubt because it is not easily accommodated by the language of rights, utility and justice that most contemporary moral and political philo- sophers speak. The most important English-language political philosopher of our times, for instance, John Rawls, has virtually nothing to say on the matter, merely holding out the hope that his own theory of social justice can be fitted, without too much revision, into a ‘theory of the natural world and our place in it’.2 Nevertheless, the subject has not been entirely neglected and is gradually moving into the mainstream. Various journals devoted to environmental philosophy have been established and a number of leading moral philosophers have written on the issue.3 It is perhaps a sign of the times that David Wiggins, Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford University, chose to devote his recent address as President of the Aristotelian Society to a discussion of ‘Nature, respect for nature, and the human scale of values’.4 Where should an environmental ethic begin? We need first to close off two avenues of argument, which, although they look promising, turn out to lead to dead ends. It is sometimes suggested, or at least often used to be suggested, that the value of conservation derives from the benefits it brings us. On this account, environmentalism is just an expression of enlightened self-interest. Now, there is no doubt that the prudent conservation of natural resources is in our long- term interest and environmentalists are, of course, well advised to emphasize this. Yet is seems clear that the natural world is not just an instrumental good in any narrow sense. Its value cannot be justified entirely in terms of what it contributes to some other value like economic well-being. There are, if we are honest, many endangered species and threatened landscapes that do not contribute, even indirectly, to our material happiness. It is similarly clear that an ethic of conservation cannot be founded solely on a concern for animal welfare. A number of philosophers have recently developed powerful criticism of our mistreatment of animals, most famously Peter Singer.5 But while conservationists do tend, as a matter of sociological fact, to support measures to relieve the suffering of animals in factory farms and the like, the cause of conservation itself is concerned not with the treatment of individual sentient animals, but with the preservation of species and other natural things, sentient or otherwise. Thus an environmental ethic need have nothing to say about the right or wrongs or eating animals, where the practice does not threaten 2 John Rawls, A theory of justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 512. 3 See, notably, Bernard Williams, ‘Must a concern for the environment be centred on human beings?’, in his Making sense of humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 4 David Wiggins, ‘Nature, respect for nature, and the human scale of values’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100, part 1, 2000. 5 Peter Singer, Animal liberation, 2nd edn (New York: Pimlico, 1990). 316 76_2/07.Rogers 316 9/3/00, 2:38 pm The nature of value and the value of Nature the survival of a species, while an animal liberationist can offer no grounds for discriminating between the value of the endangered corncrake and a seagull. The instrumentalist approach and that of the animal liberationists are individualistic in that they take the welfare of individual beings as their measure. (Indeed, the second approach is properly understood as an extension of the first: Peter Singer, for instance, is quite explicit in presenting his arguments as an elaboration of traditional utilitarianism from the human to the animal world.) Perhaps the best-known environmental philosophy, however, comes from the opposite direction. The ‘Deep Ecology’ championed by the Norwegian Arne Naess and others is a modern ecological version of traditional mysticism. It promises ‘self-realization’ through communion with Nature understood as a seamless whole.6 This position, in more or less philosophical form, is very popular with environmentalists. Prince Charles and Al Gore, for instance, both seem to subscribe to it. Nor is it hard to see why this should be so. Environ- mentalists fear that without a belief in ‘a whole that is greater than us’, we have no reason to value nature ‘for itself’. How can a purely secular ethic, their argument goes, do justice to our concern for the preservation of things for their own sake rather than for the pleasure they give us? Nevertheless, this too seems a route best avoided. Put negatively, its claims seem either nonsensical or, at best, highly unrealistic. It is hard to know what is meant by the suggestion that Nature is a single whole, spiritual or otherwise. In any literal sense it is certainly not true. And it is difficult to believe that a gradual broadening of one’s emotions so as to arrive at an identity with the cosmos is possible. Even if it were, it would appear to involve as much loss as gain: how is one supposed to reconcile one’s commitments to friends and neighbours, or indeed oneself, with a commitment to everything? The criticism, however, can be put more positively. For the concerns that lead the mystics and pantheists to adopt their positions are quite misplaced. It is true that we are bound to care only about things that matter to us. That is a tautology. But that is not the same as caring only about human matters. We just are the sort of creatures who value things for their own sake—who discern an intrinsic worth in things—and among the things we value in this way is the preservation of the natural world. ‘The human scale of values’, as David Wiggins puts it, ‘is not uniformly human centred.’ Nature ‘simply entrances, moves or disturbs us independently of our concern for our own welfare or contentment.’7 The distinction in question here—between what matters instrumentally and what matters intrinsically—is a central feature, some would say the central feature, of our nature as ethical, valuing beings. As the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor has often argued, our valuations fall into two categories, ‘weak’ and ‘strong’. Some end is weakly valued when it derives its value entirely from 6 Arne Naess, ‘The shallow and the deep, long range ecology movement’, Inquiry 16, 1973. 7 Wiggins, ‘Nature, respect for nature’, pp. 8, 11. 317 76_2/07.Rogers 317 9/3/00, 2:38 pm Ben Rogers its use to the valuer. It is strongly valued when ‘we acknowledge that its being an end for us is not just contingent on our happening to desire or need it’— when, in other words, we allow that we would be a lesser being if we should cease to want or need it.