What Reviewers Say about Robin’s Books
Fiction, Ethics, and the Environment
We have just received a review by Martin Hodson of Robin's latest book, published in spring 2021:
How did we get where we are?? What is behind the ethical and theological positions we take on the environment? Robin Attfield is a leading environmental philosopher and ethicist, and has been at the forefront of these areas for many years. Here he writes something slightly different, but related, a history of environmental thought. It is a very good book, is easy to read, and fills in a lot of the background to an awful lot of topics. The scope of the book is vast, and it is not a massive tome, so inevitably some topics are given little space, and others are missed out altogether (see below). But where else would you find Empedocles, Charles Darwin, David Bellamy, James Lovelock, Aldo Leopold, Arthur Tansley, Jürgen Moltmann and Gerard Manley Hopkins all in one volume? Rather amazingly, JRI gets its own mention: “Thus, when Lynn White (1967) effectively challenged the Christian world to rediscover the attitudes of St Francis, one central response was to reaffirm the teachings of advocates of stewardship, not least through the inauguration of the John Ray Initiative (founded 1997).” I take this to refer to the thinking of our founders, Professor Sam Berry and Sir John Houghton, who were both strong advocates for Christian stewardship. But this is not primarily a theology book, but a history book, although environmental theology does figure in a number of places.
Quite deliberately, Attfield speeds through his material to begin with, and we only have two chapters before we reach Darwin. What I really liked was that reading the book gave me an overview of a huge amount of topics and linked them together in my mind. As an undergraduate I studied ecology, and I was introduced to concepts like ecosystem, hydrophytes and xerophytes, succession, climax vegetation, plant communities, and population cycles. But I never quite worked out where they came from or who was behind them. Maybe I wasn’t listening that well, but I think the concepts were largely taught divorced from their history. I have actually published academic papers in the journal, New Phytologist, but I never knew its origins- I do now! I have friends who are senior editors of the Journal of Ecology and the Journal of Animal Ecology. Again the history of the journals was unknown to me.
For years now, I have been interested in environmental ethics. I co-led a module on it for Oxford Brookes University with my wife, Margot, and together we wrote the Grove booklet, An Introduction to Environmental Ethics. I have loved getting to grips with this topic, and then linking the ethics with my science and my faith. Attfield, not surprisingly, has the history of environmental ethics at his fingertips. We look at George Perkins Marsh, John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau- the American Debate as Attfield has it. And they all kind of led up to Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson. We see anthropocentric, biocentric and ecocentric views all competing with each other in some respects. Religion is often involved, but often not.
The later part of the book considers topics such as ecofeminism, environmental justice and green political movements. We end by considering the environmental issues the author considers to be most crucial: pollution, biodiversity less and climate change.
But what is missing? Attfield has ranged over a huge amount of material, but what would I have added in if there was room?
I found it slightly odd that although Islamic views on the environment get some coverage, Jewish views beyond biblical times are almost entirely absent. Spinoza does get a mention, but he was expelled from the Jewish community because of his controversial ideas, and he is certainly not in the mainstream of Jewish religious thought. But Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) is a towering figure in Jewish religious and philosophical thought, and he rejected anthropocentric views of the world. His work was hugely influential even beyond Judaism, and Thomas Aquinas refers to Maimonides in a number of his works. Perhaps less well known is kabbalist Isaac Luria (1534-1572) who developed the doctrine of zimzum, a self-limitation of God. This idea has been taken up by a number of Christian theologians, and Jürgen Moltmann has a whole section of his book, God in Creation, on it where he uses it to expand on the idea of creatio ex nihilo(creation out of nothing). Rabbinic ideas have had more influence on environmental thinking than is often realised.
One fairly big omission, in my mind, is that there is no mention at all for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or for the preceding Millennium Development Goals. Yet there is plenty on sustainability, and development comes up in a number of places as well. The SDGs are a major plank in the United Nations plans for environmental sustainability, but sadly they just don’t get the attention they deserve even in an academic context like this. I was also surprised that there was no space in the chapter on the environmental crisis for the Planetary Boundaries concept, which certainly is a dominant theme within scientific discourse on this topic.
But the truth is that almost anyone reading this book who has any knowledge of these topics will say “what about this person?” or “what about that idea?” It is just not possible to fit everything in. If I had tried to write this book I would have done far worse. There are whole areas that I had only sketchy ideas about until I read Environmental Thought. Robin Attfield is to be congratulated on his excellent book. It deserves a wide readership.
Dr Martin J. Hodson
Operations Director, JRI
Environmental Thought. A Short History by Robin Attfield is published by Polity Presss (Cambridge, 2021)
Environmental Ethics: An Overview for the 21st Century (Second Edition) review by Piers H G Stephens
“Though broadly philosophical reflections on nature and our place within it can be tracked to antiquity, the development of the field of environmental ethics as a distinct sub-discipline within contemporary academic philosophy has a far shorter history. Its landmark moments include the 1968 publication of Lynn White Jr’s influential critique of Christianity’s environmental record “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis”, J. Baird Callicott’s teaching of the world’s first course in environmental ethics in 1971 at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, the pathfinding papers “Is There a Need for a New, an Environmental, Ethic?” and “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement: A Summary” by the Australian philosopher Richard Routley and the Norwegian Arne Naess respectively in 1973, and the founding of the journal Environmental Ethics in 1979. The field slowly grew with a range of now well-known voices such as Holmes Rolston III, Bryan Norton and Carolyn Merchant first making themselves heard through the 1970s to 1990s, and the development of specific positions such as ecofeminism, deep ecology, and various forms of ecocentric theory, until at last these concerns became mainstream within the academy over the past 20 years. Such is the relatively familiar story of the field’s development as frequently taught to undergraduate students.
But one thinker who significantly contributed from an early stage in this process has received rather less international attention than might be merited. The British philosopher Robin Attfield responded to the reflections of Lynn White Jr. and of John Passmore in his 1983 book The Ethics of Environmental Concern, in which he elaborated and defended the Christian stewardship tradition with reference to study in the history of ideas, and then went on to examine issues in intergenerational justice, population problems and interspecies morality. Attfield’s careful analytical approach looked conservative and mild in the radical early days of the field’s development, which may explain why his work’s impact was not immediate, but his influence has grown with the years. Like Holmes Rolston, his work operates at the interfaces of practical ethics, religion and ecology, and after further books dealing with globalism, meta-ethics, and issues of value and obligation, Attfield published the first edition of Environmental Ethics: An Overview for the Twenty-First Century in 2003. This second edition, with scholarly updates and a whole new concluding chapter that deals with the ethics of climate change, is tailored both to researchers and undergraduate students: it aims to “explain the relevant concepts and issues, and to contribute to their discussion and development”, as well as hopefully to “foster the kind of campaigning which the study of this subject often encourages and, for some, makes possible” (xi-xii). In keeping with the status of a volume that seeks to be simultaneously a research contribution, a field summary, an informative call to arms and a textbook, the work includes a helpful glossary of key terms, intermittent text blocks that urge reflection on particular questions after conclusion of a themed section, helpful concluding chapter summaries, and the ongoing development and application of a particular moral perspective. This last is Attfield’s trademark biocentric consequentialism, which runs through much of the book as he cashes out particular issues against which to test it and ways in which it may help us generate coherent normative conclusions and policies.
Structurally the book consists of 7 chapters, with Chapter 1 devoted to the matter of clearly defining what makes a problem an environmental problem. Here Attfield focuses on these as being concerned with the problems caused through human interactions with the “objective encompassing system of nature” (2), such as pollution, deforestation, climate change, habitat and biodiversity loss, with environmental ethics defined as the “study of the ethics of human interactions with and impacts on such systems” (15). Though supportive of the biocentric view that “moral consideration should be shown to all living creatures”, Attfield rejects system-based views, holding instead that “systems matter because of the individual lives which depend on them and which they make possible” (9), and wraps up the chapter with some broad reflections on the various accounts of the causal roots of our current ecologically destructive dynamics. This takes the work neatly into the start of Chapter 2, in which Attfield first examines the debate over Christian dominion and stewardship traditions, then gives a potted history of the early days of environmental ethics and starts to outline the basic details of his own position. Maintaining that “not even the combined arguments of sophisticated anthropocentrism show it to comprise an adequate or acceptable normative ethic” (42), he argues that his biocentric consequentialism emerges from the “need to combine a biocentric understanding of moral standing with a form of consequentialism that recognizes the full range of capacities whose development or fulfilment comprises the good of various creatures including human beings, and which also recognizes the greater value of the interests that relate to complex and sophisticated capacities such as autonomy” (44). Attfield then examines non-consequentialist alternatives to his position and some meta-ethical debates (cognitivism vs non-cognitivism, objectivism vs subjectivism, modernism vs postmodernism) before finishing the chapter with a thoughtful appendix on ecofeminism. The latter is one of the most significant second edition upgrades here, as are Attfield’s engaging treatment of environmental virtue ethics, both of which were wholly absent from the original edition.
With the general scene-setting thus done, Chapters 3 and 4 deal respectively with critiques of environmental ethics and with questions about our obligations to the future and its inhabitants, both human and nonhuman. Here matters become rather more philosophically substantial, and Attfield’s varied arguments against the different anthropocentric ethical approaches taken by John O’Neill, David Cooper and John Benson (in Chapter 3) and Bryan Norton (in Chapter 4) are well worth specialist examination. The core of his anti-anthropocentrist case is that indirect protection of the components of nonhuman nature via a broadened conception of human wellbeing or long-term self-interest simply won’t do the necessary work: “the particular argument from natural goods being constitutive of the flourishing of current human beings cannot supply grounds for preserving enough non-human creatures” (76). This argument, aimed largely at O’Neill, Cooper and Benson, also spins off to contribute to Attfield’s rejection of Bryan Norton’s convergence hypothesis between anthropocentric and nonanthropocentric policies, as he maintains that future human interests in Norton’s model “fail to underpin sufficiently strong policies on biodiversity preservation, population levels, colonization of the earth’s surface, and probably genetic engineering” (124). The question thus naturally arises as to whether or not similar applicability problems might afflict his own scheme, and so Chapter 3 also examines a brief series of possible critiques of biocentric consequentialism. It ends with a brief discussion of the charge made by Alan Carter that Attfield’s scheme would imply maximizing the number of humans who have most of their essential capacities (e.g., autonomy, self-consciousness) to some degree developed even if doing so caused some non-human species extinctions, since higher intrinsic value is granted to satisfying the basic needs of creatures with self-consciousness and autonomy. (This is in fact part of a longer ongoing exchange on this topic between Attfield and Carter, and readers wishing to learn more should see their competing essays in Hiller, Ilea & Kahn, 2014). Attfield responds by denying the assumption that what holds for the present generation will hold for all future generations, and argues that since humans and other terrestrial species with complex capacities could become extinct long before other species, the value of those other possible future creatures “is relevant to current decisions about whether to colonize or otherwise take over the habitats of their current counterparts (their possible ancestors), and would not be outweighed by conflicting human interests from the same generation” (95-6). Chapter 3 thus ends on a note exemplifying the fabled trait of ethical consequentialism – its admirable flexibility or its pernicious slipperiness depending on your philosophical orientation – and leads to the next chapter’s concerns with duties to the future and what has come to be called sustainability. Here Attfield espouses universalism and rejects contractarian and communitarian groundings to obligations, repudiates the idea of discounting the future other than in cases where particular significant constraints apply (such as uncertainty), and opposes the familiar identity problems excavated by Parfit: “there can be obligations with regard to whoever lives in a certain future period, despite their identity being currently unknown and hitherto undetermined, and hence… obligations are not invariably owed to someone or something in particular” (104). There are thus clear moral grounds, in Attfield’s view, for caring about posterity, and interestingly he attaches the concerns of the environmental justice movement to this area, since current environmental injustices also tend to ripple into affecting the future prospects of unjustly treated groups. Concern for justice, however, does not exhaust the list of agents’ psychological motivations for attending to future obligations. Inspiration here may come from several sources, with the human concern for self-transcendence being significant amongst them, and for this second edition, Attfield has added a brief but informative section on developments in environmental aesthetics and their motivational significance.
Having set up the philosophical core, Attfield next moves on to the matter of institutional instantiations and debates around current practice. Chapter 5 deals with sustainable development (including the thorny issue of population), competing conceptions of sustainability, the sustainability-liberal democracy relationship, the precautionary principle, and the challenges posed by genetic modification and synthetic biology technologies. As one might expect, Attfield explains the familiar distinction between weak and strong sustainability, and on his account the former refers to sustainability that involves sustaining a particular economic level via human made capital being routinely and continuously substituted for natural resources, whilst strong sustainability must be embraced “if such unlimited substitution would undermine either natural systems or social systems” (144), and it thus mandates a stress on preserving more natural resources in their present form. I confess that I think Attfield’s implication here that weak sustainability advocates might be defined by their embrace of “unlimited substitution” is a little misleading; I know of no economist who goes that far, and indeed as Attfield himself states on the next page, insofar as “the question of substitution can be asked about natural resources (construed as natural capital), the answer must surely be that there are limits to substitution, at least in practice” (145). Quite so, but if that is the case then the defining ideal character of weak sustainability is going to be a position that nobody actually holds. A less fuzzy way of putting the distinction might have focused on competing normative views of the acceptability of substituting natural capital by technology, and this would also have had the advantage of fitting in with the ethical critique that Attfield advances towards much sustainability discourse. Here he is on much stronger ground, as his biocentric consequentialism leads him to question the anthropocentrism that is frequently presupposed even in many accounts of strong sustainability. The problem with the economic debate about sustainability, he protests, is that the language of natural capital and resourcism ignores “the fact that trees, whales and tigers are living creatures with a good of their own, and cannot be regarded as nothing but resources”, whereas a proper ethically engaged biocentric model would support “the preservation of intrinsically valuable natural creatures, and thus of as many species and habitats (some of them as wilderness) as possible” (146-7). Given likely possible impacts on wider interests, Attfield goes on to make his biocentric view of strong sustainability here cohesive with his embrace of a radical interpretation of the precautionary principle, and this in turn gets connected to his perspective on genetic modification technologies and synthetic biology. Eschewing the ontological revulsion felt by many greens at these new deep technologies, he opts to deal with them instead via a scientifically informed “case-by-case consideration informed in part by the Precautionary Principle, as well as by other relevant ethical principles including principles of human wellbeing, of human and animal rights, and of justice” (165).
After a broad concluding endorsement of the capacity of liberal democratic regimes, in principle, to accept and move towards sustainability, Attfield turns to issues of global community and citizenship in Chapter 6 before examining the largest single current global environmental problem, climate change, in Chapter 7. He advocates a form of global cosmopolitan citizenship, and in perhaps the most significant formulation in the book, explains what this means in ethical and political terms: every “bearer (present or future) of moral standing, or considerability… is thereby a global citizen (in a broader sense) but where citizenship implies responsibility it is restricted (short of the arrival of intelligent extra-terrestrials) to human beings and (derivatively) their institutions”. In this sense of collective global citizenship, “the resources of the planet may be regarded as the common heritage of mankind” and “humanity is not justified in deploying its resources for human good alone”, for “the current generation inherits the responsibility to protect natural goods for the benefit of present and future generations of all species” (196). Accordingly, there needs to be radical reform and democratization both of current governments and of international bodies like the WTO, and few topics illustrate this need better than the vexed problem of climate change, to which Attfield dedicates his new concluding chapter. Here he gives a straightforward and effective overview, drawing on the work of Simon Caney especially, and outlines a solidly argued if unexciting set of recommendations: responsibility for action lies centrally with governments and corporations but all of us have obligations as part of our collective responsibility, the most promising international policy model is probably a modified version of Contraction and Convergence, and some milder forms of geoengineering technologies might be acceptable to supplement mitigation efforts but the more radical versions should be ruled out, and the real danger that unrealistic technofix promises could undermine ethical and political imperatives in this area should not be underestimated.
Such is the book’s content, and all of this is well and good so far as it goes. Attfield has, however, been quite horribly unlucky in the timing of this second edition and its release so far as the climate ethics issue is concerned, especially given that the new chapter on that topic is the single most significant substantive upgrade from the book’s first edition. For the unfortunate fact is that since 2011 we have seen the publication of 3 different volumes which already appear likely to be classics in the climate ethics literature, namely Stephen M. Gardiner’s A Perfect Moral Storm, Dale Jamieson’s Reason in a Dark Time and most recently J. Baird Callicott’s Thinking Like a Planet, and the timing of the composition and publication of this revised edition was such that Attfield’s work contains references to none of them. The upshot is that this expanded edition rather misses its target in precisely the area where it aimed to remake itself as especially newly relevant, and those who might be tempted to use the book as a class text – a role for which it is well suited – would probably be best advised to supplement the book with other climate ethics readings. The book is still well worth reading, but it is unfortunate for the author that a fine effort is thus sadly undermined by the vicissitudes of fortune.”
Piers H G Stephens
Structurally the book consists of 7 chapters, with Chapter 1 devoted to the matter of clearly defining what makes a problem an environmental problem. Here Attfield focuses on these as being concerned with the problems caused through human interactions with the “objective encompassing system of nature” (2), such as pollution, deforestation, climate change, habitat and biodiversity loss, with environmental ethics defined as the “study of the ethics of human interactions with and impacts on such systems” (15). Though supportive of the biocentric view that “moral consideration should be shown to all living creatures”, Attfield rejects system-based views, holding instead that “systems matter because of the individual lives which depend on them and which they make possible” (9), and wraps up the chapter with some broad reflections on the various accounts of the causal roots of our current ecologically destructive dynamics. This takes the work neatly into the start of Chapter 2, in which Attfield first examines the debate over Christian dominion and stewardship traditions, then gives a potted history of the early days of environmental ethics and starts to outline the basic details of his own position. Maintaining that “not even the combined arguments of sophisticated anthropocentrism show it to comprise an adequate or acceptable normative ethic” (42), he argues that his biocentric consequentialism emerges from the “need to combine a biocentric understanding of moral standing with a form of consequentialism that recognizes the full range of capacities whose development or fulfilment comprises the good of various creatures including human beings, and which also recognizes the greater value of the interests that relate to complex and sophisticated capacities such as autonomy” (44). Attfield then examines non-consequentialist alternatives to his position and some meta-ethical debates (cognitivism vs non-cognitivism, objectivism vs subjectivism, modernism vs postmodernism) before finishing the chapter with a thoughtful appendix on ecofeminism. The latter is one of the most significant second edition upgrades here, as are Attfield’s engaging treatment of environmental virtue ethics, both of which were wholly absent from the original edition.
With the general scene-setting thus done, Chapters 3 and 4 deal respectively with critiques of environmental ethics and with questions about our obligations to the future and its inhabitants, both human and nonhuman. Here matters become rather more philosophically substantial, and Attfield’s varied arguments against the different anthropocentric ethical approaches taken by John O’Neill, David Cooper and John Benson (in Chapter 3) and Bryan Norton (in Chapter 4) are well worth specialist examination. The core of his anti-anthropocentrist case is that indirect protection of the components of nonhuman nature via a broadened conception of human wellbeing or long-term self-interest simply won’t do the necessary work: “the particular argument from natural goods being constitutive of the flourishing of current human beings cannot supply grounds for preserving enough non-human creatures” (76). This argument, aimed largely at O’Neill, Cooper and Benson, also spins off to contribute to Attfield’s rejection of Bryan Norton’s convergence hypothesis between anthropocentric and nonanthropocentric policies, as he maintains that future human interests in Norton’s model “fail to underpin sufficiently strong policies on biodiversity preservation, population levels, colonization of the earth’s surface, and probably genetic engineering” (124). The question thus naturally arises as to whether or not similar applicability problems might afflict his own scheme, and so Chapter 3 also examines a brief series of possible critiques of biocentric consequentialism. It ends with a brief discussion of the charge made by Alan Carter that Attfield’s scheme would imply maximizing the number of humans who have most of their essential capacities (e.g., autonomy, self-consciousness) to some degree developed even if doing so caused some non-human species extinctions, since higher intrinsic value is granted to satisfying the basic needs of creatures with self-consciousness and autonomy. (This is in fact part of a longer ongoing exchange on this topic between Attfield and Carter, and readers wishing to learn more should see their competing essays in Hiller, Ilea & Kahn, 2014). Attfield responds by denying the assumption that what holds for the present generation will hold for all future generations, and argues that since humans and other terrestrial species with complex capacities could become extinct long before other species, the value of those other possible future creatures “is relevant to current decisions about whether to colonize or otherwise take over the habitats of their current counterparts (their possible ancestors), and would not be outweighed by conflicting human interests from the same generation” (95-6). Chapter 3 thus ends on a note exemplifying the fabled trait of ethical consequentialism – its admirable flexibility or its pernicious slipperiness depending on your philosophical orientation – and leads to the next chapter’s concerns with duties to the future and what has come to be called sustainability. Here Attfield espouses universalism and rejects contractarian and communitarian groundings to obligations, repudiates the idea of discounting the future other than in cases where particular significant constraints apply (such as uncertainty), and opposes the familiar identity problems excavated by Parfit: “there can be obligations with regard to whoever lives in a certain future period, despite their identity being currently unknown and hitherto undetermined, and hence… obligations are not invariably owed to someone or something in particular” (104). There are thus clear moral grounds, in Attfield’s view, for caring about posterity, and interestingly he attaches the concerns of the environmental justice movement to this area, since current environmental injustices also tend to ripple into affecting the future prospects of unjustly treated groups. Concern for justice, however, does not exhaust the list of agents’ psychological motivations for attending to future obligations. Inspiration here may come from several sources, with the human concern for self-transcendence being significant amongst them, and for this second edition, Attfield has added a brief but informative section on developments in environmental aesthetics and their motivational significance.
Having set up the philosophical core, Attfield next moves on to the matter of institutional instantiations and debates around current practice. Chapter 5 deals with sustainable development (including the thorny issue of population), competing conceptions of sustainability, the sustainability-liberal democracy relationship, the precautionary principle, and the challenges posed by genetic modification and synthetic biology technologies. As one might expect, Attfield explains the familiar distinction between weak and strong sustainability, and on his account the former refers to sustainability that involves sustaining a particular economic level via human made capital being routinely and continuously substituted for natural resources, whilst strong sustainability must be embraced “if such unlimited substitution would undermine either natural systems or social systems” (144), and it thus mandates a stress on preserving more natural resources in their present form. I confess that I think Attfield’s implication here that weak sustainability advocates might be defined by their embrace of “unlimited substitution” is a little misleading; I know of no economist who goes that far, and indeed as Attfield himself states on the next page, insofar as “the question of substitution can be asked about natural resources (construed as natural capital), the answer must surely be that there are limits to substitution, at least in practice” (145). Quite so, but if that is the case then the defining ideal character of weak sustainability is going to be a position that nobody actually holds. A less fuzzy way of putting the distinction might have focused on competing normative views of the acceptability of substituting natural capital by technology, and this would also have had the advantage of fitting in with the ethical critique that Attfield advances towards much sustainability discourse. Here he is on much stronger ground, as his biocentric consequentialism leads him to question the anthropocentrism that is frequently presupposed even in many accounts of strong sustainability. The problem with the economic debate about sustainability, he protests, is that the language of natural capital and resourcism ignores “the fact that trees, whales and tigers are living creatures with a good of their own, and cannot be regarded as nothing but resources”, whereas a proper ethically engaged biocentric model would support “the preservation of intrinsically valuable natural creatures, and thus of as many species and habitats (some of them as wilderness) as possible” (146-7). Given likely possible impacts on wider interests, Attfield goes on to make his biocentric view of strong sustainability here cohesive with his embrace of a radical interpretation of the precautionary principle, and this in turn gets connected to his perspective on genetic modification technologies and synthetic biology. Eschewing the ontological revulsion felt by many greens at these new deep technologies, he opts to deal with them instead via a scientifically informed “case-by-case consideration informed in part by the Precautionary Principle, as well as by other relevant ethical principles including principles of human wellbeing, of human and animal rights, and of justice” (165).
After a broad concluding endorsement of the capacity of liberal democratic regimes, in principle, to accept and move towards sustainability, Attfield turns to issues of global community and citizenship in Chapter 6 before examining the largest single current global environmental problem, climate change, in Chapter 7. He advocates a form of global cosmopolitan citizenship, and in perhaps the most significant formulation in the book, explains what this means in ethical and political terms: every “bearer (present or future) of moral standing, or considerability… is thereby a global citizen (in a broader sense) but where citizenship implies responsibility it is restricted (short of the arrival of intelligent extra-terrestrials) to human beings and (derivatively) their institutions”. In this sense of collective global citizenship, “the resources of the planet may be regarded as the common heritage of mankind” and “humanity is not justified in deploying its resources for human good alone”, for “the current generation inherits the responsibility to protect natural goods for the benefit of present and future generations of all species” (196). Accordingly, there needs to be radical reform and democratization both of current governments and of international bodies like the WTO, and few topics illustrate this need better than the vexed problem of climate change, to which Attfield dedicates his new concluding chapter. Here he gives a straightforward and effective overview, drawing on the work of Simon Caney especially, and outlines a solidly argued if unexciting set of recommendations: responsibility for action lies centrally with governments and corporations but all of us have obligations as part of our collective responsibility, the most promising international policy model is probably a modified version of Contraction and Convergence, and some milder forms of geoengineering technologies might be acceptable to supplement mitigation efforts but the more radical versions should be ruled out, and the real danger that unrealistic technofix promises could undermine ethical and political imperatives in this area should not be underestimated.
Such is the book’s content, and all of this is well and good so far as it goes. Attfield has, however, been quite horribly unlucky in the timing of this second edition and its release so far as the climate ethics issue is concerned, especially given that the new chapter on that topic is the single most significant substantive upgrade from the book’s first edition. For the unfortunate fact is that since 2011 we have seen the publication of 3 different volumes which already appear likely to be classics in the climate ethics literature, namely Stephen M. Gardiner’s A Perfect Moral Storm, Dale Jamieson’s Reason in a Dark Time and most recently J. Baird Callicott’s Thinking Like a Planet, and the timing of the composition and publication of this revised edition was such that Attfield’s work contains references to none of them. The upshot is that this expanded edition rather misses its target in precisely the area where it aimed to remake itself as especially newly relevant, and those who might be tempted to use the book as a class text – a role for which it is well suited – would probably be best advised to supplement the book with other climate ethics readings. The book is still well worth reading, but it is unfortunate for the author that a fine effort is thus sadly undermined by the vicissitudes of fortune.”
Piers H G Stephens
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS
reviewed by Jonathan Prior
“Discussions about ethics bubble under the surface of environmental policy debates, but too often remain hidden; normativity is implied, rather than openly discussed. This impoverishes the ways in which we discuss environmental problems and can lead to dangerously seductive solutions shorn of any consideration of their implications for social or ecological justice. Think, for instance, of the remarkable ascent of the marketization of nature in environmental conservation circles, which ignores the just distribution of resources and sharpens the tools for enclosing the commons. In this second version of his book Environmental Ethics, Robin Attfield clearly and eloquently outlines a range of ways in which ethics is of fundamental importance to contemporary environmental problems, even when not recognized as such, and in doing so why the normative dimensions of policies should be brought to the fore more often.
In Chapters 1 and 2, Attfield provides an overview of a broad sweep of concerns circulating through environmental ethics scholarship. Here, he outlines different strains of environmental ethics, and usefully demystifies concepts that can be challenging to grapple with, such as biocentrism and environmental meta-ethics.
Chapter 3 sees Attfield defending the very usefulness of developing environmental ethics theory by asking: can thinking about environmental ethics really change anything? This is a question that environmental ethicists have been repeatedly forced to answer, not least by environmental ethicists themselves. Attfield provides specific examples of where a link can be made between values and pro-environmental actions, namely through ethical consumption practices, and the work of campaigning NGOs and lobbying organizations.
To my mind, Attfield misses an opportunity here to argue against such a narrow interpretation of the role of ethics. From identifying a problem to implementing a solution, all environmental decisions implicate certain values, so a more pertinent task is to assess why there are such power differentials in terms of who gets to make decisions beyond, say, purchasing organic or fairly traded produce.
Chapter 4 addresses the role of ethics in deliberations about future human and non-human generations, which covers interesting terrain including whether we have different responsibilities for immediate and non-immediate future generations, the role of aesthetics in ‘motivating environmentalist commitment’ (p. 120) into the future, and the inheritance by future generations of existing environmental injustices.
In Chapter 5, Attfield scrutinizes ‘sustainable development’. He argues that the primary focus of ‘sustainability’ is on sustaining capital (including ‘natural’ capital) but is cautiously optimistic about the ability to interpret ‘sustainable development’ in broader terms to also accommodate social justice issues, such as the distribution of resources and the full participation in decision-making processes of those who are ultimately affected, as well as promoting the view that non-human nature is of value beyond direct human utility. This is an important discussion, but I am left wondering whether such accommodation is possible simply because ‘sustainable development’ is one of the most nebulous terms in the environmental lexicon.
Attfield examines the ‘global’ nature of environmental challenges in Chapter 6, positioning environmental resources as the ‘common heritage of humankind’ that need to be managed through international cooperation. In turn he posits the emergence of a ‘global’ environmental ethic, and the development of ‘global citizens’, as a necessary response to such challenges. He argues that the latter is best exemplified—and further developed—through channels already well embedded within representative democratic frameworks, including international NGOs, governmental agencies such as the UN, and news and media outlets, rather than anything more radical. This focus on the global, which pervades the whole book, does not stem from any sense that the particular or the ‘local’ is not important; rather, for Attfield the development of a global environmental ethic is one that recognizes the trans-boundary nature of contemporary environmental problems, but more importantly (from an ethics perspective) helps inoculate people from only acting on behalf of those near and present, rather than distant and future.
A concern for environmental ethics at a global scale is carried through to the final short chapter (which is the most substantial addition to the book in its second iteration), wherein Attfield examines the ethics of climate change. He covers a lot of ground here, such as international and intergenerational responsibilities for climate emissions, and the desirability and feasibility of contraction and convergence, or carbon budget approaches to addressing climate change. He also contemplates the role of geoengineering, arguing that ‘less risky’ forms, such as carbon sequestration through afforestation, could buy time for the implementation of the much larger social and political steps that are necessary to keep below an average surface temperature increase of two degrees centigrade (as compared to the pre-industrial average temperature).
Throughout the book, Attfield makes his own normativity be known, particularly in regard to how to address specific environmental issues in a way that places social and ecological justice front and centre. Nonetheless, the book aims for an inclusive and accommodating overview of environmental ethics, and so stops well short of didacticism. Even if one is not persuaded by Attfield’s arguments—and I certainly have my reservations—a reader becomes acquainted with how different ethical positions relate to one another, which is useful for those who may only be tentatively dipping their toes into the environmental ethics field. Attfield also provides reading lists and websites relevant to the contents of each chapter, a glossary of key terms, and a series of questions dotted throughout the book that would form the basis of interesting class discussions. The book would thus make an excellent core text for undergraduates on environmental studies, geography, politics, or planning courses, who are grappling with the significant social and ecological crises we collectively, though unevenly, face."
Jonathan Prior | Lecturer in Human Geography, Cardiff School of Planning and Geography, Cardiff University, UK
To my mind, Attfield misses an opportunity here to argue against such a narrow interpretation of the role of ethics. From identifying a problem to implementing a solution, all environmental decisions implicate certain values, so a more pertinent task is to assess why there are such power differentials in terms of who gets to make decisions beyond, say, purchasing organic or fairly traded produce.
Chapter 4 addresses the role of ethics in deliberations about future human and non-human generations, which covers interesting terrain including whether we have different responsibilities for immediate and non-immediate future generations, the role of aesthetics in ‘motivating environmentalist commitment’ (p. 120) into the future, and the inheritance by future generations of existing environmental injustices.
In Chapter 5, Attfield scrutinizes ‘sustainable development’. He argues that the primary focus of ‘sustainability’ is on sustaining capital (including ‘natural’ capital) but is cautiously optimistic about the ability to interpret ‘sustainable development’ in broader terms to also accommodate social justice issues, such as the distribution of resources and the full participation in decision-making processes of those who are ultimately affected, as well as promoting the view that non-human nature is of value beyond direct human utility. This is an important discussion, but I am left wondering whether such accommodation is possible simply because ‘sustainable development’ is one of the most nebulous terms in the environmental lexicon.
Attfield examines the ‘global’ nature of environmental challenges in Chapter 6, positioning environmental resources as the ‘common heritage of humankind’ that need to be managed through international cooperation. In turn he posits the emergence of a ‘global’ environmental ethic, and the development of ‘global citizens’, as a necessary response to such challenges. He argues that the latter is best exemplified—and further developed—through channels already well embedded within representative democratic frameworks, including international NGOs, governmental agencies such as the UN, and news and media outlets, rather than anything more radical. This focus on the global, which pervades the whole book, does not stem from any sense that the particular or the ‘local’ is not important; rather, for Attfield the development of a global environmental ethic is one that recognizes the trans-boundary nature of contemporary environmental problems, but more importantly (from an ethics perspective) helps inoculate people from only acting on behalf of those near and present, rather than distant and future.
A concern for environmental ethics at a global scale is carried through to the final short chapter (which is the most substantial addition to the book in its second iteration), wherein Attfield examines the ethics of climate change. He covers a lot of ground here, such as international and intergenerational responsibilities for climate emissions, and the desirability and feasibility of contraction and convergence, or carbon budget approaches to addressing climate change. He also contemplates the role of geoengineering, arguing that ‘less risky’ forms, such as carbon sequestration through afforestation, could buy time for the implementation of the much larger social and political steps that are necessary to keep below an average surface temperature increase of two degrees centigrade (as compared to the pre-industrial average temperature).
Throughout the book, Attfield makes his own normativity be known, particularly in regard to how to address specific environmental issues in a way that places social and ecological justice front and centre. Nonetheless, the book aims for an inclusive and accommodating overview of environmental ethics, and so stops well short of didacticism. Even if one is not persuaded by Attfield’s arguments—and I certainly have my reservations—a reader becomes acquainted with how different ethical positions relate to one another, which is useful for those who may only be tentatively dipping their toes into the environmental ethics field. Attfield also provides reading lists and websites relevant to the contents of each chapter, a glossary of key terms, and a series of questions dotted throughout the book that would form the basis of interesting class discussions. The book would thus make an excellent core text for undergraduates on environmental studies, geography, politics, or planning courses, who are grappling with the significant social and ecological crises we collectively, though unevenly, face."
Jonathan Prior | Lecturer in Human Geography, Cardiff School of Planning and Geography, Cardiff University, UK
Environmental Ethics – A Very Short Introduction reviewed by Workineh Kelbessa
“Robin Attfield discusses the environmental problems that humanity is facing today, and the contribution that environmental ethics can make to ethical and sustainable management of our environment. He argues that the human community has to act now – in a range of more or less radical ways - to avert environmental catastrophe. His primary aim is to establish the conclusion that human beings have a direct moral obligation to care for the environment. He defends the claims that we are “stewards” or “trustees” of the earth – and that the idea of stewardship is compatible with a secular conception of morality (in particular with biocentric consequentialism and perhaps other views too) as well as with the three great world religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Attfield further aims to show that the same conclusion about a direct obligation to care for the earth can be supported by or at least can cohere with many other incompatible worldviews or philosophies (religious and secular). His philosophical project is important because the environmental crisis affects the whole earth and requires a response from the whole human community.
One attractive feature of the book is the way in which its eight chapters address or draw on each other. Chapter 1, “Origins,” outlines environmental problems, the origin of environmental ethics and major themes and issues arising in environmental ethics. It is to be recalled that philosophical ethics before the 1970s tended to neglect practical issues and to focus on the analysis and clarification of concepts.
The work of Aldo Leopold in 1949, Rachel Carson in 1962, and others influenced environmental thinkers and philosophers to reconsider the human-nature relationship. Consequently, environmental ethics began as an academic subject in a cluster of writings of the early 1970s. Most of these writings advocated moving from anthropocentrism (an approach which accords moral standing to human beings alone) to a non-anthropocentric approach (which recognizes the moral standing of non-human beings).
Chapter 2, “Some Key Concepts,” analyses different concepts relevant to environmental ethics and other ethical fields. Chapter 3 focuses on future generations, identifying and analysing different theories about their moral standing. Following Derek Parfit, Attfield argues persuasively that the non-identifiability of most future people should not prevent the current generation from having responsibilities to whoever will live in the foreseeable future, as its future-related duties are not owed to particular individuals only. He also argues that humanity should pay attention to the needs of non-humans, partly because they can outlive humanity, and contribute to the preservation of life on earth if and when humanity has left the scene.
Chapter 4 explains a series of different accounts of right action and evaluates these competing accounts. He discusses how different theories (the contract model, virtue ethics, deontological ethics, and consequentialism) deal with future generations, inter-species equity, and the well-being of non-human animals and other creatures. According to Attfield, among normative theories, consequentalist versions of biocentrism are better grounded to address the concerns of future generations than deontology, contractarianism, or virtue ethics. It should be noted that Attfield defends biocentric consequentialism over egalitarian biocentrism. He explains clearly why egalitarian biocentrism makes the survival and life of human beings impossible, as they cannot even protect themselves from dangerous animals and viruses.
Most biocentrists including Attfield hold the view that only individual living beings have intrinsic value. However, Holmes Rolston III, John Baird Callicott and other ecocentrists do not accept this view. Some ecocentrists including Rolston think that individual living creatures, species and ecosystems have intrinsic value.
In Chapter 5, Attfield turns to “Sustainability and Preservation”. After briefly explaining the meaning of the term “sustainability” and the achievements of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), he briefly outlines the conditions that led to the establishment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. Attfield advises all parties to use the Precautionary Principle which states that we should act so as to avoid preventable disasters even in the absence of scientific consensus. Attfield also states that global citizenship should be in place to address “the worldwide and systemic nature of environmental problems” (p. 70).
Under the section on “Forms and Limits of Preservation”, Attfield discusses restoration of an ecosystem to its condition prior to human intervention. Although his proposal that newly introduced species which threaten the continued existence of the species present before their introduction in different countries should be removed (p.75) is theoretically acceptable, it is important to appreciate that there are many cases in which such a policy would cause very serious social problems. In Ethiopia, for example, eucalyptus and other species could not be removed without introducing alternative species. Many peasant farmers in Ethiopia have used eucalyptus trees as an important source of income although they have been environmentally destructive. The most important question here is: what should we do when the need to alleviate poverty clashes with the need to respond to environmental problems?
Chapter 6 briefly explores the contributions of some social and political movements including Deep Ecology, Ecofeminism, Social Ecology, the Environmental Justice Movement, and the Green movement to environmental ethics. Attfield concludes that the above mentioned social and political movements can serve as correctives to each other and contribute to the well-being of non-human creatures, intra- and intergenerational justice, and obligations to future generations and to the non-human world.
Chapter 7, “Environmental Ethics and Religion”, discusses the place of nature in different world religions. Attfield claims that Christianity is not a human-centred religion. He defends his position by citing the Old Testament and Jesus’ concern for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. After citing various examples, Attfield concludes that Christianity, Judaism and Islam have adopted stewardship.
Attfield also acknowledges that celebrations of nature are found in different religions including in Confucianism, Buddhism, African and indigenous American religions. Unlike colonial anthropologists and other Western environmental philosophers, Attfield has acknowledged the contribution of African religion to environmental consciousness.
Perhaps the last chapter on “The ethics of climate change” is the most interesting chapter of the book. Attfield makes a compelling case about the consequences of climate change and ethical principles that can help humanity to address this problem. One virtue of this chapter is that it provides an incredibly detailed survey of arguments against and for the reality of increases in levels of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere, the allocation of entitlements to emit greenhouse gases and responsibilities to pay for mitigation, adaptation, and compensation, climate engineering and grounds for climate action.
Attfield is seeking a conception of our relation to nature that can be shared by people who endorse widely different worldviews – and on which we have moral obligations not only to each other and to certain kinds of non-human animals, but to all life-forms and to the natural environment itself. He takes this to be an important project because he takes genuinely united actions against, for instance, climate change and poverty to be pre-conditions of success in responding to environmental problems.
This book is an engaging, accessible book, one that both academics from various disciplines and environmental ethicists will appreciate and benefit from; it offers something of value for everyone who hopes to contribute to a socially and environmentally sustainable and peaceful world. In particular, this book will be essential reading to environmental ethicists, development ethicists, practitioners and students engaged in the fields of environment, development, global governance, climate change and climate justice. Environmental Ethics therefore constitutes a timely intervention and provides a broad platform to inform and stimulate further debate and research.” Workineh Kelbessa | Department of Philosophy, Addis Ababa University
The work of Aldo Leopold in 1949, Rachel Carson in 1962, and others influenced environmental thinkers and philosophers to reconsider the human-nature relationship. Consequently, environmental ethics began as an academic subject in a cluster of writings of the early 1970s. Most of these writings advocated moving from anthropocentrism (an approach which accords moral standing to human beings alone) to a non-anthropocentric approach (which recognizes the moral standing of non-human beings).
Chapter 2, “Some Key Concepts,” analyses different concepts relevant to environmental ethics and other ethical fields. Chapter 3 focuses on future generations, identifying and analysing different theories about their moral standing. Following Derek Parfit, Attfield argues persuasively that the non-identifiability of most future people should not prevent the current generation from having responsibilities to whoever will live in the foreseeable future, as its future-related duties are not owed to particular individuals only. He also argues that humanity should pay attention to the needs of non-humans, partly because they can outlive humanity, and contribute to the preservation of life on earth if and when humanity has left the scene.
Chapter 4 explains a series of different accounts of right action and evaluates these competing accounts. He discusses how different theories (the contract model, virtue ethics, deontological ethics, and consequentialism) deal with future generations, inter-species equity, and the well-being of non-human animals and other creatures. According to Attfield, among normative theories, consequentalist versions of biocentrism are better grounded to address the concerns of future generations than deontology, contractarianism, or virtue ethics. It should be noted that Attfield defends biocentric consequentialism over egalitarian biocentrism. He explains clearly why egalitarian biocentrism makes the survival and life of human beings impossible, as they cannot even protect themselves from dangerous animals and viruses.
Most biocentrists including Attfield hold the view that only individual living beings have intrinsic value. However, Holmes Rolston III, John Baird Callicott and other ecocentrists do not accept this view. Some ecocentrists including Rolston think that individual living creatures, species and ecosystems have intrinsic value.
In Chapter 5, Attfield turns to “Sustainability and Preservation”. After briefly explaining the meaning of the term “sustainability” and the achievements of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), he briefly outlines the conditions that led to the establishment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. Attfield advises all parties to use the Precautionary Principle which states that we should act so as to avoid preventable disasters even in the absence of scientific consensus. Attfield also states that global citizenship should be in place to address “the worldwide and systemic nature of environmental problems” (p. 70).
Under the section on “Forms and Limits of Preservation”, Attfield discusses restoration of an ecosystem to its condition prior to human intervention. Although his proposal that newly introduced species which threaten the continued existence of the species present before their introduction in different countries should be removed (p.75) is theoretically acceptable, it is important to appreciate that there are many cases in which such a policy would cause very serious social problems. In Ethiopia, for example, eucalyptus and other species could not be removed without introducing alternative species. Many peasant farmers in Ethiopia have used eucalyptus trees as an important source of income although they have been environmentally destructive. The most important question here is: what should we do when the need to alleviate poverty clashes with the need to respond to environmental problems?
Chapter 6 briefly explores the contributions of some social and political movements including Deep Ecology, Ecofeminism, Social Ecology, the Environmental Justice Movement, and the Green movement to environmental ethics. Attfield concludes that the above mentioned social and political movements can serve as correctives to each other and contribute to the well-being of non-human creatures, intra- and intergenerational justice, and obligations to future generations and to the non-human world.
Chapter 7, “Environmental Ethics and Religion”, discusses the place of nature in different world religions. Attfield claims that Christianity is not a human-centred religion. He defends his position by citing the Old Testament and Jesus’ concern for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. After citing various examples, Attfield concludes that Christianity, Judaism and Islam have adopted stewardship.
Attfield also acknowledges that celebrations of nature are found in different religions including in Confucianism, Buddhism, African and indigenous American religions. Unlike colonial anthropologists and other Western environmental philosophers, Attfield has acknowledged the contribution of African religion to environmental consciousness.
Perhaps the last chapter on “The ethics of climate change” is the most interesting chapter of the book. Attfield makes a compelling case about the consequences of climate change and ethical principles that can help humanity to address this problem. One virtue of this chapter is that it provides an incredibly detailed survey of arguments against and for the reality of increases in levels of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere, the allocation of entitlements to emit greenhouse gases and responsibilities to pay for mitigation, adaptation, and compensation, climate engineering and grounds for climate action.
Attfield is seeking a conception of our relation to nature that can be shared by people who endorse widely different worldviews – and on which we have moral obligations not only to each other and to certain kinds of non-human animals, but to all life-forms and to the natural environment itself. He takes this to be an important project because he takes genuinely united actions against, for instance, climate change and poverty to be pre-conditions of success in responding to environmental problems.
This book is an engaging, accessible book, one that both academics from various disciplines and environmental ethicists will appreciate and benefit from; it offers something of value for everyone who hopes to contribute to a socially and environmentally sustainable and peaceful world. In particular, this book will be essential reading to environmental ethicists, development ethicists, practitioners and students engaged in the fields of environment, development, global governance, climate change and climate justice. Environmental Ethics therefore constitutes a timely intervention and provides a broad platform to inform and stimulate further debate and research.” Workineh Kelbessa | Department of Philosophy, Addis Ababa University
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS - A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION
reviewed by Alan York
“This very readable book is a survey of the wide range of questions that faces anyone who thinks seriously about our environment and the future of the planet. Robin Attfield is a professor of philosophy at Cardiff University, and brings to the subject the depth of understanding and analysis of a professional philosopher, as well as the perspective of a Quaker - he is a member of Cardiff Meeting. If ethics is at least partly about the way we treat others, then the question arises, the author would say, as to what constitutes others: all of humanity is included. But does 'all' include future generations as well? Does it include all sentient beings - all animals, birds, fish, and then all living creatures such as insects, slugs and coral reefs? Do we include plant life, so that the net includes all living things? Attfield quotes the US philosopher Kenneth Goodpaster to distinguish between moral consideration and moral significance.
A tree, for example, may be something to be given moral consideration, but a tree may have less moral significance than a human child, say, or a squirrel. Attfield considers various key concepts in depth - nature, the environment and value - ranging across the ideas of various writers in the history of philosophy. He also looks at various social and political movements and their contributions to the discussion. Deep ecology, eco-feminism, social ecology, the environmental justice movement and green political movements are appraised. The influence of religion on all of this is also important. Judaeo-Christian attitudes to nature, where the world is sometimes seen as 'made for man', are counterbalanced by notions of stewardship which exist in Christianity, Judaism and Islam, as well as by parallel notions in Buddhism, Hinduism, and other religious traditions.
Climate change is the most serious ecological problem facing humanity. The risk exists of human activity bringing about catastrophic change, leading to further existential risks for future human generations and numerous other species of living things. We have, thus, a moral responsibility for what we have brought about. 'There is,' the author says, 'a strong ethical case for vigorous and concerted action to mitigate climate change.' Indeed, the fact of climate change is a key test-case for environmental ethics, exemplifying all the themes past philosophers have brought into the discussion. Anthropocentric ethics will not be enough. The future of the planet, says Attfield, and all its species, is at stake. Everyone interested in the environment and the possibility of impending catastrophe should read this book.”
Alan York
Patrick Riordan's review of
Environmental Ethics - a Very Short Introduction
“This is a timely addition to Oxford’s series of Very Short Introductions. The author, Robin Attfield, is a recognized authority in the field, with several books on environmental ethics to his credit. As befits an introduction, the material is presented in a manner designed to help the reader to gain an overview of issues and debates in the field. There are eight chapters, beginning with a brief history of the subject. Key concepts are explained in one chapter and others deal with future generations, moral theories, sustainability, social and political movements, the connection with religious perspectives, and the issue of climate change. With each chapter there is a brief list of references and suggestions for further reading.
Like any introductory work on ethics the author is obliged to provide a survey of the principal moral theories to be found in the literature on environmental ethics, including contractarian, deontological, consequentialist and virtue ethics. While Attfield prefers a modified consequentialism, he acknowledges the positive contributions that can be made from the various perspectives and avoids the familiar trap of having to choose a single theory type as the correct approach. He emphasises the values at stake in environmental ethics and his consideration of the complexity of goods deserving respect modifies the consequentialism adopted. Intrinsic value is widely present in the wellbeing of both human and nonhuman creatures and should be considered in ethical decision making. If moral theory focuses on the consequences of action, the range of relevant impacts must be comprehensive and for this Attfield offers a discussion of intrinsic value (chap. 2). ‘Things are valuable when there are reasons to promote, preserve, protect, or respect them.’
While he surveys (56-59) the various relevant accounts of intrinsic value as a series of ‘isms’—anthropocentrism, sentientism (Singer), biocentrism and ecocentrism—it is noticeable that this selection contains a bias in favour of living things. A broader perspective such as that proposed by Scott A. Davison, On the Intrinsic Value of Everything (London: Continuum 2012), might be more fruitful for environmental ethics. As that title suggests, everything is considered to have intrinsic value, and this is coupled with the idea that intrinsic value is present in things in varying degrees. Davison supports Attfield’s basic position that an account of the goods in question has priority in environmental ethics, countering the predominance of moral theories. But the more comprehensive account of intrinsic value could be beneficial. It would provide a background theory of value to answer the questions raised by Attfield about the intrinsic value of ecosystems, which lack clear identity since they are always changing (58).
Attfield borrows from Holmes Rolston III’s 1975 essay ‘Is There an Ecological Ethic?’ a distinction between instrumental value and intrinsic value. ‘But Rolston was also drawing attention to the need for environmental ethics to adopt an understanding of value that does not stop short at what is valuable merely as a means (like money and resources), and instead goes on to identify what is valuable for its own sake’ (9-10). Does this distinction avoid the confusion identified by Kantian scholar Christine Korsgaard (‘Two Distinctions in Goodness’ The Philosophical Review XCII, 1983)? She draws attention to the common confusion of two distinctions, that between intrinsic and extrinsic goodness, and that between a thing sought for its own sake, and a thing sought for the sake of something else. The first distinction focuses on the source of goodness. Something is intrinsically good if and only if it is good in itself, whereas something is extrinsically good if and only if it receives goodness from another source. The second distinction is drawn in terms of ends and means: what is sought for its own sake is an end or final good, while what is sought for the sake of something else is a means, an instrumental good. The point is that these two distinctions become interwoven, when people define the intrinsically good as that which is sought for its own sake. Attfield’s environmental ethic would be strengthened by adopting Korsgaard’s clarification. It would enable an acknowledgment that those creatures we use instrumentally can also be intrinsically good and can require our respect.
Chapter three is devoted to the question of future generations and what is owed to them. This issue is labelled the non-identity problem and treated as problematic in philosophical discussions. The paradoxical nature of the issue emerges if one makes explicit the assumption that obligations are owed by persons to identifiable individuals. With future generations, however, there are at present no identifiable individuals. In addition, which individuals will come into being depend on policies and actions presently existing persons undertake. It cannot make sense to say that John now has a duty to care for the interests of possible individual, Mary, whom Peter and Anne may or may not beget, nor have any duty to do so. The contrast between the perspective of a rigorous philosophical argument, and the common sense perspective of those concerned about the quality of life they are securing or failing to secure for their grandchildren should drive us to question the assumptions of the philosophical argument. Perhaps the very different assumptions implicit in the stance taken by Pope Francis in his letter on Care for Our Common Home, referenced in this book (99), are more in tune with the engaged commitments of those who seek an environmental ethics. This book will be a valuable asset in their armoury.” Patrick Riordan | Campion Hall, Oxford
While he surveys (56-59) the various relevant accounts of intrinsic value as a series of ‘isms’—anthropocentrism, sentientism (Singer), biocentrism and ecocentrism—it is noticeable that this selection contains a bias in favour of living things. A broader perspective such as that proposed by Scott A. Davison, On the Intrinsic Value of Everything (London: Continuum 2012), might be more fruitful for environmental ethics. As that title suggests, everything is considered to have intrinsic value, and this is coupled with the idea that intrinsic value is present in things in varying degrees. Davison supports Attfield’s basic position that an account of the goods in question has priority in environmental ethics, countering the predominance of moral theories. But the more comprehensive account of intrinsic value could be beneficial. It would provide a background theory of value to answer the questions raised by Attfield about the intrinsic value of ecosystems, which lack clear identity since they are always changing (58).
Attfield borrows from Holmes Rolston III’s 1975 essay ‘Is There an Ecological Ethic?’ a distinction between instrumental value and intrinsic value. ‘But Rolston was also drawing attention to the need for environmental ethics to adopt an understanding of value that does not stop short at what is valuable merely as a means (like money and resources), and instead goes on to identify what is valuable for its own sake’ (9-10). Does this distinction avoid the confusion identified by Kantian scholar Christine Korsgaard (‘Two Distinctions in Goodness’ The Philosophical Review XCII, 1983)? She draws attention to the common confusion of two distinctions, that between intrinsic and extrinsic goodness, and that between a thing sought for its own sake, and a thing sought for the sake of something else. The first distinction focuses on the source of goodness. Something is intrinsically good if and only if it is good in itself, whereas something is extrinsically good if and only if it receives goodness from another source. The second distinction is drawn in terms of ends and means: what is sought for its own sake is an end or final good, while what is sought for the sake of something else is a means, an instrumental good. The point is that these two distinctions become interwoven, when people define the intrinsically good as that which is sought for its own sake. Attfield’s environmental ethic would be strengthened by adopting Korsgaard’s clarification. It would enable an acknowledgment that those creatures we use instrumentally can also be intrinsically good and can require our respect.
Chapter three is devoted to the question of future generations and what is owed to them. This issue is labelled the non-identity problem and treated as problematic in philosophical discussions. The paradoxical nature of the issue emerges if one makes explicit the assumption that obligations are owed by persons to identifiable individuals. With future generations, however, there are at present no identifiable individuals. In addition, which individuals will come into being depend on policies and actions presently existing persons undertake. It cannot make sense to say that John now has a duty to care for the interests of possible individual, Mary, whom Peter and Anne may or may not beget, nor have any duty to do so. The contrast between the perspective of a rigorous philosophical argument, and the common sense perspective of those concerned about the quality of life they are securing or failing to secure for their grandchildren should drive us to question the assumptions of the philosophical argument. Perhaps the very different assumptions implicit in the stance taken by Pope Francis in his letter on Care for Our Common Home, referenced in this book (99), are more in tune with the engaged commitments of those who seek an environmental ethics. This book will be a valuable asset in their armoury.” Patrick Riordan | Campion Hall, Oxford
Ethics: An Overview review by John Nightingale
"What makes Ethics: An Overview accessible is its clear style, based on its author's long teaching experience, with technical terms explained as they arise. Every chapter is divided into a sequence of related topics, each accompanied by its own study questions, reading lists and references. A related website carries notes, background essays and a series of PowerPoint presentations, which could be useful for lecturers, tutors and student study-groups.
The beginner is spared some of the grind of annotation, and so has more time for reflection, discussion and working out a personal response... Every student and teacher of philosophy should consider buying this book."
John Nightingale | The Philosophical Quarterly
John Nightingale | The Philosophical Quarterly
Review by Claire Brown Peterson of
ETHICS AN OVERVIEW
"Attfield’s Ethics sets a high bar for introductory ethics students, providing detailed, nuanced treatments of its topics. In choosing those topics, Attfield was very clearly playing to his own strengths (nowhere is this more clear than in the refreshingly sophisticated chapter on applied ethics), but those strengths are wide-ranging enough that the book never feels like an excuse to explore the author’s pet projects... The text as a whole remains highly useful for its purpose."
Claire Brown Peterson | Asbury University, Journal of Moral Philosophy
Claire Brown Peterson | Asbury University, Journal of Moral Philosophy
"An uncommonly clear, fair-minded and up-to-date survey of this vast and contentious field. Attfield is particularly good about Evolution.”
Mary Midgley | Author of "Beast And Man: The Roots Of Human Nature
Mary Midgley | Author of "Beast And Man: The Roots Of Human Nature
“This is an admirable up-to-date introduction to the main fields of ethics, including meta-ethics and applied ethics. The way Attfield presents his material reveals long-standing teaching experience and makes the book especially suitable for beginners. Though taking a firm stance on the more controversial topics of ethics (rather than indulging in mere "option presentation") Attfield consistently avoids being magisterial. Instead, the reader is invited to think things through for himself and to come to his own conclusions.”
Dieter Birnbacher | Professor of Philosophy, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Germany
Dieter Birnbacher | Professor of Philosophy, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Germany
CUSTOMER REVIEW
“This is an excellent book on Ethics. Starting with a historical overview as his introduction, Robin Attfield gives a thorough analysis of all the major branches of the subject, including normative ethics, meta-ethics and applied ethics. It deals with such contemporary subjects as climate change, environment, poverty and war. The chapters are clearly laid out and include summaries, further reading suggestions and study questions.The book is comprehensive and covers all major philosophers and aspects of the subject in a clear, concise style which is easy to read. As a relative novice to Philosophy, I found the subject matter very interesting, accessible and comprehensible. Robin Attfield's approach allows the reader to form his own judgements from the very clear analysis of the topics presented. Far from being dull, the book engages the mind from beginning to end.”
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