Environmental Philosophy

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Lecture 1 – Environmental Philosophy: An Introduction

1. WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?

Philosophy (etymologically, the love of wisdom [philo (love) + sophia (wisdom) in Greek] is the
enquiry into the broadest and most fundamental questions regarding existence (what is real?),
knowledge (what can be known?), and value (what should be done?). Let me elaborate on these three
important areas of philosophy.

 The broadest and most fundamental of all human enquiries centers on the question ‘what does it mean
to exist or what is real?’. This enquiry in philosophy is called metaphysics (meta/before/beyond physics
or the physical) or ontology (study of being or existence). What do metaphysicians discuss? For
example, they ask what exactly is the nature of the human being; is this nature something permanent
(atman in Vedanta) or something transient and impermanent (kshenika according to the Buddha,
leading to the theory of anatman). There are several theories on these matters. Many modern
philosophers say, well, we don’t know whether there is any permanent or impermanent substance
underlying our being. All that we can know is: we are embodied conscious beings with a mixed bag of
at least four wonderful basic abilities (or faculties) – reason, passion, will and language.
 The second most fundamental study within philosophy centers on the question ‘what does it mean to
know something?’. The enquiry concerning knowledge is called epistemology (theory of episteme or
knowledge). Logic (the study of correct argument or thinking) and the study of methodologies of other
branches of knowledge like natural and social sciences are branches of epistemology. What do
epistemologists discuss? For example, they ask: do we have any direct access to what we perceive?
How can we say we are sure that there is a world out there from what we perceive with our senses?
What is the nature of certain or true knowledge and of false knowledge? What do we human beings can
come to know at all?
 The third central part of philosophy is the study of value (axia) or axiology. Metaphysics, epistemology
and the sciences concern with facts and the truths of facts; they ask what is real, what is knowledge,
what is a chemical, physical, biological or social phenomenon? But axiology concerns with value and
the good. The questions of axiology are: what should be done (or the study of right human action or
ethics/morality)?, what should be appreciated for its beauty (or aesthetics)?, what should be the basis of
sharing power and governing human society (or politics)? What do axiologists discuss? For example,
the moral philosopher asks whether there is a single principle to decide the goodness of human action,
say divine order, happiness, rational sense of obligation or duty, or whatever.

When Isaac Newton wrote the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Philosophiæ
Naturalis Principia Mathematica) in 1687, physics was still thought to be a branch of philosophy. In
fact, before the modern era every subject currently listed in universities would have been considered
philosophy. It is when new methods of enquiry like experiment, observation, explanation, verification,
and evidential reasoning developed that philosophy was considered different from other fields of
study. But still, these branches of human enquiry, which are narrower in their scope than philosophy,
begin from philosophical assumptions (metaphysical, epistemological and even ethical assumptions)
usually not discussed in those subject areas. For example, physics assumes that we can know the
external world through measurable concepts like time, space, mass, motion. Many of these concepts
cannot be clarified through further use of the scientific method and hence philosophy is taken recourse
to. So we have further branches of philosophy like the philosophy of biology, the philosophy of
technology, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of economics and so on. Further still, there
could be ethics of biology, ethics of technology and so on.
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The most basic method of doing philosophy is logical reasoning and critical thinking usually
without much reference to empirical methods. Hence it is a completely conceptual exercise.
Conceptual clarification and clarifying various approaches to undertaking a particular study—this is an
important and relevant area of philosophy. Philosophy may question reason itself, but by the use of
reason. We must remember that philosophy (and the sciences as well) is a plainly human endeavor.
Philosophy is not based on holy books and extra-human authority, though one can philosophize about
matters of religion. This is called philosophy of religion, which again is a human endeavor.

2. SIGNIFICANCE OF PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES

We should not be fooled that a particular philosophical perspective is an absolutely objective and final
answer. Philosophical perspectives are particular ways in which we think about ourselves, our world
and whatever is important to us at particular times and places in history. It is our way of making sense
of and understanding our reality. It is on the basis of such understanding that we relate to reality
(ourselves, the world and other humans). Hence, these perspectives and scrutinizing them
philosophically is extremely important.

It is useful to consider that knowledge is produced through the operation of at least two
definitive factors:

 the structure of the human mind: It is through our consciousness that we access realities outside our
mind; we do not have any direct access to things as they exist outside us. The German philosopher
Immanuel Kant makes this distinction in the following way: the thing-in-itself or noumena [to which
we have no access], and the thing as it appears to our consciousness or phenomena [which is the only
thing we access]. To clarify this point, think of it that many animals cannot see certain colours like red,
and the reality of those colors are not accessible to them. They see the world in different shades than us.
Also, they relate to the world in a very different fashion. We use complex technology to intervene in
our world, to make it suit human purposes. Animals, if at all, use very rudimentary forms of
technology, say, the nests that birds make.
 the cultural, imaginational, historical elements that influence our way of looking at reality. Scientific
knowledge too is a product of the human mind, but extraneous cultural influences on this type of
knowledge could be considerably reduced through scientific methodologies.

In short, we need to remember that ‘objectivity’ is plainly a ‘human objectivity’. It is very

difficult to say we know things really are as we know them. ‘Objectivity’ is a function of the finite
mind of the human subject. ‘Reality’ does not speak to us and reveal its fundamental nature to us, but
we deal with ‘reality’ and impose our perspectives on it. If the Vedic Indian thought that nature was
‘spirit’, it was certainly a perspective of nature, which allowed her/him to relate to nature in a
particular way. Without the understanding of nature as matter obeying certain universal laws, modern
science was not possible. Medieval Europeans did not think so. They were shocked when this ‘new
story’ began to emerge. You know the story of Galileo and how he came into conflict with the Church,
which was still under the spell of the medieval worldview.

So the message is: if we, for example, want to save nature today, it is rather important that we
examine how we understand nature, what value we attach to it, and, if need be, think about a
perspective-change or paradigm shift. Whether we like it or not we live our lives on the strength of
certain established stories, perspectives or narratives, and on the strength of the rejection of certain
others. These big stories (‘metanarratives’ as some contemporary philosophers call them) dominate
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for a time and could give way to other stories in time. They are called “metanarratives” because they
have explanations for everything under the sun, right from matter to mind, within a coherent system. It
is altogether another matter whether these explanations can stand the scrutiny of independent
questioning, but within the system (that is, if we accept the system’s internal logic and basic
assumptions) things do fall in place rather coherently. Historical examples of metanarratives include
religions, and ideologies like Marxism and modern science.

It is very important to realize the power of these mega stories on our day-to-day lives. We can
also call these mega stories cultural or philosophical filters – that is, we access reality not in any
pure, absolutely objective way but in accordance with certain rules already set. It is as if we look at
things always through a colored pair of glasses. Reality comes to meet us not in an untainted,
unadulterated fashion but as already filtered and philosophically conditioned. Underline that this is not
a lack or deprivation (or something evil we can overcome); rather, it is the way we are. Such is the
human condition. Think of it, without having at least a popular (as against strongly theoretical and
mathematical) understanding of modern science, it is so very difficult to understand what it means to
say that the earth is spherical and not flat because such an understanding contradicts our common
experience. People before the modern era took the earth as flat and even conducted their science
(natural philosophy) under that assumption.

So, what I am trying to tell you is: humans in their recorded history did not always relate to
Planet earth as we moderns do. Early human beings thought of themselves as integral parts of nature
unlike people of the scientific era, who think of her as a manipulable machine from which humans are
separate and distinct and over which they ought to establish mastery. This amounts to say that we see
the environment through a cultural and philosophical filter and behave towards nature accordingly.

The good news is: these cultural filters are changeable and are usually rather different in
different cultural settings. So: if we today think that there is a problem with our way of relating to the
environment, there are possibilities of questioning, improving or changing our cultural filter. This is
neither easy nor quickly achievable, but still possible. We can gradually weave new stories, new
narratives, and, as it were, begin to wear a different pair of glasses.

Figure 1: The Cultural Filter

PERCEIVED ENVIRONMENT
FILTER
ENVIRONMENT IN-ITSELF
HUMAN
BEING

3. PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE AND THE ECOLOGICAL DISASTER

Sixth Century BCE (before common era; CE=common era) of the Axial Age (the period 800-200 BCE
that was the ‘axis’ for later human culture), was an important period for philosophy. (The idea of the
Axial Age is from the book The Psychology of Worldviews by the German philosopher Karl Jaspers
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[1883-1969]). In fact, this period was the time when in different parts of the world philosophical
thinking started independently (without any cross consultation or dialogue): the pre-Socratic thinkers
like Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in Greece, the Vedic and Upanishadic sages, the Buddha
and Mahavira in India, Lao Tzu and Confucius in China, Zoroaster or Zarathustra (founder of
Zoroastrianism/Parsi religion) in Persia (today’s Iran), and the Jewish prophets in Judea (in today’s
Israel). According to Jaspers, the spiritual and intellectual foundation for later humanity as we know in
history was laid during the Axial Age.

Before philosophical thinking began in the Axial Age, ‘myth’ was the mode of thinking.
Myths are tales narrated in poetic form, easy for committing to memory and presenting orally, which
stood for people’s beliefs about fundamental matters like, for example, the origin of the world,
religious beliefs and ethical values. Myths, however, contained thought as well, without claiming so
much that these could be rationally justified.

Philosophy in India and Greece (western philosophy begins from Greece) began by thinking
about nature. (Here we discuss only Indian and Western philosophy because they are the philosophies
that concern us most, but we must remember that there are other philosophies as well, for instance,
Chinese and African philosophies, as well as tribal and non-mainstream philosophies of India.) The
Vedic Indian’s attribution of divinity to powerful natural forces was an attempt to understand the rta
or order/law of nature. This somewhat spiritual understanding of nature survives in all the Indic/
Dharmic religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism. Similarly, the earliest Greek thinkers
began with the question ‘what is the ‘stuff’ or first principle (arche) out of which the whole of reality
is made?’. Both these philosophical traditions, thus, began by asking about the fundamental law or
principle of the world. (Please mark that early Greek philosophers took a route different from the
accepted spiritual and mythical perspectives available in their societies, unlike in India. They posed
philosophy in distinction from spiritual enquiry. This is not the case with India, where philosophy and
the spiritual enquiry are considered integrally or holistically.)

But Socrates of fifth century BCE Greece, one who is credited with properly founding western
philosophy, turned away from philosophy’s concern with nature. In Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus (Plato
wrote his books in the form of dialogues), Socrates is quoted as saying: “Landscapes and trees have
nothing to teach me, only people do.” For him, philosophy was a matter only of the inner world of
human beings. In a sense, this turn of events is remarkable: when philosophical thinking in India and
China were nature-oriented in the Axial Age, the human revolution began in Greece, which led to all
the developments in the west, right from the scientific revolution to the many political revolutions.
Socrates’s was a definitive revolt against the contemporary Greek indistinctness between the divine
and nature. In the ninth century BCE, Homer (author of the first literary classic of the west, the epics
Iliad and Odyssey) did not clearly distinguish between nature and the gods; rather, they are fused
imaginatively. The gods both exist in nature and are nature. In fact, the pre-Socratics began rejecting
the traditional explanations of nature as divine. It was an era of the decline of the prevalent religious
beliefs in the Greek world. Socrates advanced what was supposed to be the more progressive way of
thinking: unambiguous separation between nature and spirit.

As a result, a philosophy that separates humans from nature and places them on a higher
pedestal in the hierarchy was born. So, Greek philosophy of nature, on which is western thought as
such is broadly based, was dualistic (separating the human from the natural) and hierarchical (the
human is higher in the ladder of priority).
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The Greeks thought of nature or ‘phusis’ (physics) as indifferent poiesis (bringing forth or
emergence from/by itself—from which we have words like ‘poem’) threatening to overwhelm
everything. Opposed to phusis is another type of poiesis called techne, which is human-assisted
emergence as different from phusis or self-emergence. Techne challenges and tames phusis. During
the Greek era techne meant only gentle taming of natural forces. But it is remarkable that this concept
is pulled to extreme dimensions in the modern era, where technology means indiscriminate
manipulation of the natural.

Western philosophy showed remarkable fidelity to its origins in Socrates and Plato. It began to
consider the human mind as the powerful spiritual world, separated radically from the material world
or nature, which the intelligent being was to tame, conquer and use for the purpose of human
advancement.

Let me take a moment to remind you that we are tracing the intellectual history leading to the
environmental crisis. I am now going to add one more trail of thought that came from another
intellectual history and joined with Greek philosophy to produce the modern western culture. During
the medieval times (the Medieval Age, also called negatively as ‘dark ages’ for its blind beliefs), the
Judeo-Christian religious ethos came to be established in Europe – conclusively by fourth century
CE, when the Roman Emperor of the time (Theodosius the Great), declared Christianity, the
persecuted and derided sect until then, as the state religion. Judeo-Christianity is a Semitic tradition of
the Middle East which travelled to Europe and became a dominant stream of European culture. Judeo-
Christianity places the human being at the centre of creation (in the first book of the Bible, Genesis,
God blesses and tells the first human beings after creating them: “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth
and subdue it.” Genesis 1:28). For the medieval Europeans, nature was ordered creation, and they
looked at the overwhelming nature (the skies and the seas, the natural forces, and wildlife) as
manifestation of the glory of God. That is, the medieval Europeans understood nature as theophany
(manifestation of the divine) or divine epiphany. But during the medieval times, the separation
between the visible (earthly) and the invisible (heavenly) worlds became watertight, and the invisible
world was privileged over the visible. They also understood the hierarchy of beings with God at the
top, followed by humans, and nature (non-human living beings and inanimate beings) was placed
below the hierarchy of intelligent beings (God+humans). Hence, the eastern view of nature as imbued
with the divine and worthy of respect never really came to be established in the west.

Matthew Arnold, the nineteenth century English poet and cultural critic, writes in his book
Culture and Anarchy (1869): “Hebraism (Judeo-Christian culture) and Hellenism (Greek culture), —
between these two points of influence moves our world.” Now, the cultural development of the
meeting of Hebraism with Hellenism only furthered the radicalization of the western understanding of
the strenuous separation between humans and nature. Hence, what is called ‘anthropocentrism’
(anthropos is Greek for man), the centrality of human beings in the world, got firmly established in the
west. You need to mark that this development was very gradual, and during the ancient Greek era
itself there were only tendencies towards the modern triumphalist humanism. At that time there was no
notion of extreme exploitation of nature. Similarly, consider this: though the cultural ethos of the
Medieval Christian era was anthropocentric, the 10-12 centuries of the middle ages gave no real hint
of the ecological crisis about to come with the four centuries of the Age of Reason since the
seventeenth.
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4. THE MODERN SCIENTIFIC WORLDVIEW AND THE ECOLOGICAL CRISIS

I am now going to trace a brief history of the scientific worldview which came to be environmentally
so destructive (and, of course, humanly speaking very liberative!). With the gradual rise of modern
science, the western view of nature came to be established in most parts of the world. If during the
medieval times learning and education was considered important for securing salvation or life in the
‘next’ world, during the modern era learning began to be considered a tool for making life in this
world more comfortable. Knowledge is to be acquired for its earthly use. FRANCIS BACON (1561–
1626), an English statesman and philosopher, was the first to make this argument seriously in his book
The Advancement of Learning (1605). The saying “Knowledge is power” is attributed to Bacon.

For this, Bacon suggested, the assumption that all knowledge was available in the sacred texts
and ancient philosophical works had to be abandoned, and the moderns should observe phenomena
and plan experiments with them, in order to arrive at new, useful knowledge. Hence, Bacon, in a way,
inaugurated the scientific methods of observation and experiment. In order to know the world of
phenomena, Bacon advocated the study of their causes (not their ultimate cause or first cause, which is
God according to the medieval philosophers, but their empirical or secondary causes) through
observation and experiment. Bacon used a sexist imagery while arguing for aggressive science: the
new sciences are supposed to be generative/virile, masculine and useful, whereas the pool of
philosophical knowledge of his time, he thought, was sterile, feminine and useless.

So Bacon won the battle against sacred, other-worldly knowledge and aggressively set in
motion the search after useful scientific knowledge. His even more illustrious contemporary, RENE
DESCARTES (1596–1650), a French philosopher and mathematician, called the father of modern
philosophy, advocated a new way of thinking about the mind (the intelligent principle) and matter
(the physical principle) in terms of absolute separation between them. The Greeks and the medieval
philosophers believed that everything, even material things, actually had a non-material form. Plato
called it the ‘idea’ or ‘form’, and Aristotle called it simply ‘form’. Plato believed that the idea (or
concept) of a thing existed separately and it was more significant than the actual thing. Aristotle
thought that the form could only be conceptually separated but in reality it always existed along with
things. But Descartes argued on the contrary that the universe is composed of two radically separate
elements: matter which is extended in space in terms of shapes and sizes, and mind which is non-
extended in space but is intelligent and understands the shapes and sizes of matter. Descartes could
not really explain how these two radically separated principles could come together in humans, but his
attractive explanation established the thinking mind of science as the privileged aspect of the human
being.

If Bacon gave importance to observation and experiment, the mathematician Descartes thought
that mind is the storehouse of knowledge and the basis of all knowledge is not the senses (as Bacon
thought) but the human mind. Hence, Descartes is called a rationalist (as he emphasized the
significance of reason and the mind) and Bacon is called an empiricist (as he emphasized the
significance of the senses and experiment). What Descartes has done is he gave a rational basis for the
higher significance the western intellectual culture had already placed on the human being. The
rational human mind thus was seen as the conqueror of everything external to it, even in the practice
of observation and experiment. Also the idea came to be accepted that everything in the universe can
be made intelligible through the human mind and basing on its principles of reason. Descartes, thus, is
the champion of the Age of Reason.
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There was also another strain of thought at this time which justified private property and the
European capitalist ventures, leading to colonialism. JOHN LOCKE (1632–1704) was the English
philosopher and political thinker who first argued on the background of the English colonization of
North America that an individual had the right to acquire and own land if she/he leaves enough and as
good land for others. This is called the ‘Lockean Proviso’ (Locke’s provision). This is Locke’s answer
to the question ‘how can one appropriate unowned resources without denying other people’s equal
claim on them?’ His conditions for acquiring property are: (i) one can appropriate as much as one
could use well, (ii) one must leave “enough and as good” for others, and (iii) one may appropriate
property only through one’s own labour. Actually, as the argument progresses, Locke makes too many
exceptions on each of these restrictions to the acquiring of property so that an unrestricted capitalist
system is thereby justified. It is evident that such appropriation creates the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’.
Locke favoured this because, he thought, even if the ‘have-nots’ have lost access to property, they
have access to more goods/commodities now. So, their overall condition, he said, is bettered by
others’ appropriation of resources. With this, Locke is also justifying private property and the
colonization of continents by his enterprising compatriots.

Now, property, despite its great use, brings about division, competition and even war. If you
have watched the nice 1980 classic satire The Gods Bust be Crazy (first part), the coca cola bottle
dropped accidently into the African bush tribe’s village from an American plane, becomes a cause of
discord among the bush people because the bottle is found to be a very useful commodity for them and
thus each family of the bush people wanted to possess it as ‘property’. The innocent tribes people had
no idea of property until then, and the commentator tells us that with the introduction of the notion of
property, there is discord among them. Not that Locke invented the notion of property; he justified the
colonial trend of his times philosophically. Armed with the notion of property, European merchants
thought they had the ‘right’ to conquer other lands and make these their property under the false moral
argument that they only knew how to make the best use of these resources and the natives did not.
Such is the history of planned colonialism which led to unsustainable western prosperity.
Unfortunately, today, this is the paradigmatic political model, whether for liberal democratic societies
like India or for communist systems like China.

However, the deterministic view of the mechanistic universe (the idea that everything in the
universe follows certain well-governed laws as in a machine), which is an integral part of modernism,
was the contribution of SIR ISAAC NEWTON (1642-1727), an English mathematician and physicist.
According to this view, whatever that occurs, wherever it occurs and whenever it occurs (space and
time), occurs in a regular, law-governed, mechanistic way. Newton successfully showed that the same
formulas covered the movement of bodies of all kinds wherever they are located in the universe. This
is the scientific worldview proper.

It is often argued by today’s environmentalists that there is a link between seeing the world as
made up of particles subject to universal laws like the gravitational force and regarding it as open to
unrestrained exploitation. Only what is fully understandable can be controlled and exploited
(“knowledge is power”); we have power only over predictable phenomena. Newton demystified
nature, and chased away its phantoms; in it there is no mystery or wonder. There is nothing out of the
box. Such understanding helped realize Bacon’s dream of knowledge that will aid humans to free
themselves from the domination of nature. Ecologically speaking, when science began to be applied in
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manufacturing processes in the nineteenth century, it transformed those processes into instruments of
globally destructive potential. There was no thought for the earth’s limits to replenish its resources.

During this strikingly revolutionary era, what changed most was the PICTURE OF THE
HUMAN BEING. The human being is no more thought to be a fragile being at the mercy of the
powers of nature, but the one having intelligent control over the fury of nature. For Descartes, the
human being is unique because it is a thinking thing, and the only such thing in the universe (other
embodied creatures cannot think, and the non-embodied thinking being, God, has no body, and so
cannot act in the world). It goes without saying that the thinking thing has dominion over non-thinking
things in the world. So this uniquely exceptional being is the centre of the universe.

It was also the era of the rise of the individual. Early societies were much more communitarian
than the modern, where the rights of the individual are asserted and he/she is considered in reference
to nothing else but her/his person. The first important aspect of this development was the freeing of the
person from the clutches of religious authority. The ideology of secularism, which came to be
introduced during this period, separated the church/religion from the state, which later came to mean
removal of religion from the common/public sphere. Secondly, the political principle of democracy
was established, with which human beings were freed also from violent, autocratic political power.
Liberty, equality, fraternity—were the watchwords of the free individual.

In his famous essay “What Is Enlightenment?” (1784), IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804), a

German philosopher, defined Enlightenment as maturing of the human mind, and the courage to use
one’s own judgment in accordance with the achieved maturity. Kant also argued that an individual is
the ultimate unit of moral judgment. The worth of the individual is so holy that nothing, not even
political authority, could impinge on the dignity of the person. The person owns his own self (self-
ownership), and hence she/he cannot be used for any utilitarian purpose like the common good. ‘I am
not the property of anybody. Without my consent I cannot be used for any social good.’ The image of
the modern individual is that of the atom in the scientific theory of matter. Unattached to anything,
anyone else, free and self-contained, individuals voluntarily come together to participate with other
similar atoms (individuals). This is today critically called the atomistic view of the individual.
Modernism and its political form, liberalism, have little patience for the social aspect of the person.

Thus, the Baconian project of using the sciences for the improvement of the human
condition came to be established. What happened along with it was the complete transformation of the
physical environment where people lived and the unimaginable exploitation of natural resources all
over the world (through colonization). The atomistic individual could without any restraint freely use
resources of the world that he/she justly acquires.

Two types of ETHICAL PHILOSOPHIES were advanced during the modern period in an
attempt to rationalize human behavior in accordance with the rational temper of the times. The first
system of ethics (both for individual action and for social policy making) called utilitarianism, the
main proponent of which was the English philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), considered
happiness (or pleasure) as the main principle according to which every human action should be judged
for its morality. That is, if an action results in the maximum happiness for the maximum number of
people, then it is moral. Utilitarianism can be used to judge our actions towards animals since this
ethics is about pain and pleasure (of possibly all sentient beings). But in the nineteenth century,
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utilitarian moral arguments were used by the classical liberal philosophers for the support of the
freedom of the individual, for free market, and for private property (also for colonization).

But the most powerful ethical theory was that of Immanuel Kant. He argued that morality
should be grounded not on happiness but on commands, duties or rules that are based on reason. His
ethical theory is called ‘deontology’ because it is expressed in terms of rational duties (deon=duty)
which we are always obliged to fulfill as long as we are rational human beings. He has a few such
rational formulas of obligation, the most famous of which is: “You should always treat humanity in
your person and in the person of others as always an end in itself and never solely as a means.” That
is, a person should never be treated as means to achieve anything else, (not even for the sake of the
most hallowed goal or for achieving the utilitarian maxim of the happiness of the majority), for a
rational human person is an end in herself/himself. Nothing else is required, not even God, to justify
her/his dignity. We should remember that Kant’s ethics is the foundation for modern human rights
movements and the whole talk about individual rights. We cannot deny the contribution of deontology
in these fields.

But Kant’s ethics has done a severe damage to the environment. He sharply distinguished
between human beings and other entities. Cruelty to an animal is bad not because there is intrinsically
anything wrong about it (for only cruelty to humans, who are persons or rational beings, is intrinsically
wrong), but because it might remind us of cruelty to members of our own species. Ethics is strictly
species-specific. Such an ethical theory was the crowning point of the modernist picture of the
universe—everything is intelligible and ethical only in accordance with the human person; everything
else is there to help improve the human condition; to the other human person we are bound by ethical
duty.

HUMAN CENTRISM is figuratively similar to the heliocentric view of the universe. Every
being in the world revolves around the human being and is pulled towards this being, as if by an
unseen centripetal force. (Have a look at Figure 2 below.) This worldview is a problem when we
consider environmental philosophy.

5. NEED FOR A NEW ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY

From our discussion so far, I hope it is clear that the western perspective, which today has become
nearly the universal perspective under the banner of modernity, is not environment-friendly by any
stretch of the imagination. Scientific developments and the Age of Reason have been fantastic for
human beings, but a grave danger for nature, and indirectly for human beings as a whole, since we live
in and through nature, and are integral parts of nature.

So, we need to remember today that when we say there is a crisis of environmental thinking,
this crisis is an offshoot of the western paradigm, despite the many advantages this paradigm has
given to humanity. A critical and historical perspective is important to understand the environmental
crisis. Modernity is a product of the west, and with colonialism, modernity was blindly imposed on the
rest of the world without any room for critical and selective accommodation. The Age of Reason also
led to increase in western wealth primarily on account of colonization and imperialism. Another
remarkable aspect of these developments was the establishment of the western intellectual perspective
(its philosophy, sciences, methods and its store of knowledge) as the universal way of gaining
knowledge and the only depository of real knowledge. Lord Macaulay, credited with establishing the
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English system of education in India, said in 1835: “A single shelf of a good European library was
worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”

At the same time, we need not imagine that anthropocentrism was such a gross evil. From a
humanistic perspective, anthropocentrism was a great boon to humanity. Anthropocentrism speeded
up western development unlike never before. It led to the Renaissance and the Age of Reason; it led to
curious people discovering far off territories and traveling around the globe for the sake of discovery
and commerce; it led to scientific inventions and discovery of the laws of nature; it led to several
humanistic developments. Many political revolutions that unfolded in England, France and America
shaped the modern democratic ethos.

So, we need to remember that you and I are not less westerners in as much as our education
and training—and thus our perspectives—are rather westernized. We need to remember that several
aspects of our contemporary life, which we glorify and consider as great achievements are products of
the modern worldview. We need to remember that most of our favorite ideologies and ways of life are
thoroughly colored by modern philosophies. Just pick up one of your favorite modern ideology or
idea. It is rather easy to show how this idea is related to the modernist worldview. I have already
shown how modern science is a product of this worldview. For the sake of another example, let us
choose Marxism. How is it a modernist ideology? It believes that we achieve self-actualization
through our work; capitalism alienates us from our self because of its repetitive productive processes
and the bourgeois’ desire to earn profit; hence there is the contradiction of class interests (between the
class of the bourgeois or capitalists and the proletariat or workers) which leads to a revolution, a rule
of the leaders of the proletariat to establish efficient socialism (by maximizing production through the
abundant and efficient use of science and technology), and finally to ultimate communism of classless
society where all contradictions will dissolve and human beings will be free to self-actualize
themselves through their work. In this description of Marxism, it is clear that there is a strong
undercurrent of humanism running beneath it.

Figure 2: Human-Centric Worldview

 Environmental Philosophy
Autumn 2021 - Lecture-1: Notes – p.11

We also cannot forget the developmental angle of modernity and the western paradigm. In
fact, economic development everywhere has a thoroughly contradictory aspect and a profound
dilemma: economic and industrial development brings about human prosperity but the same
development affects the environment adversely; development increases human happiness and provides
us with better material conditions, but it destroys the environment. A completely poor and most
primitive human community is probably most friendly to the environment, but from a humanistic
angle how do we justify the inhuman conditions and abject poverty of that community? We may
blame the western paradigm with a sense of our own cultural parochialism, but are we ready to throw
away everything that modernity brings to us in order to be more friendly towards the environment?
That is the difficult question.

Western philosophy seriously forgot about nature for a long time. It was only in mid-twentieth-
century that there was a revival of the philosophy of nature, termed environmental philosophy, and
that too in response to (that is, forced by) what was widely perceived as the “ecological crisis” in the
1960s. The new environmental philosophy is an account of how human beings should think about the
natural world and their place within it, how we could imagine a new narrative. An important question
here is about value: do only human beings have value, or also non-human life has value? Is nature
intrinsically valuable just as human beings are?

Twentieth-century environmental philosophy is a recognition of several things, most

importantly the harm that total, absolute and blind acceptance of the technoscientific culture has done
to our Planet. This does not mean environmental philosophy is anti-science; rather, it means that
environmental philosophy, based on a critique of technoscience, demystifies science, and allows us to
look at nature more integrally, holistically. ‘Technoscientific culture’ does not mean a special attitude
among technologists and scientists, but it is a cultural phenomenon and a philosophy associated with
modernity. Modern environmental philosophy looks towards a harmonious relationship between
nature and humans. It argues for a cultural and philosophical revolution.

Modernism brought material prosperity and unprecedented health and development for the
human beings. It saw the world as full of resources for human beings, who are at the centre of the
world, to exploit, use and improve their condition. Human condition had marvelous improvement
during the modern age just as environmental condition deteriorated drastically. Hence, today’s
environmentalists argue, what we now require is a change of attitude, an honest appreciation of
nature and our place in it, and a lifestyle according to this changed attitude. If we have any sense of
responsibility for the future human generations, we cannot be blind to environmental concerns even
from a purely selfish human perspective. A Native American proverb made famous by
environmentalism says: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
Children.”

---END OF LECTURE ONE---