Responding to increasing ecological crises, this paper considers Jurgen Habermas's Discourse Ethics as a method of arriving at moral norms and brings it into conversation with Celia Deane-Drummond's use of wonder and wisdom in proposing an ecological ethics. Although Habermas's approach to our relationships with nature holds that we do not owe moral duties to nonhuman life, I argue that Deane-Drummond's insights can be used to expand Habermas's concept of justice and moral norms, and articulate possible steps in this direction, utilizing an understanding of the irreducible common good of the entire community of life. After considering wonder's role in revealing our connections with other life, and the manner in which wonder informs wisdom, I suggest the need for a division of rationality in our relationships with nonhuman life, analogous to that of system and lifeworld, leading to a lifeworld expanded to include all other life. Since the lifeworld influences the substance of our discourse, an expanded understanding will affect our assessment of arguments in discourse. I discuss wisdom, both speculative and practical, as necessary in determining the better argument in discourse before introducing a discussion of the common good. I contend that the resilient coexistence of the ecological community is an irreducible common good, which considers the goods of all, but cannot be reduced to the goods of individuals alone. Because, as wisdom reveals, such an irreducible good is necessary for the realization of all individual goods, it should inform our argument and hence our moral norms. Based on a realization that all life equally has value in such an irreducible common good, although not (necessarily) equal value, I argue that a species-wide norm of respect for all life is implicit in this common good, leading to a broader definition of justice and thus influencing both the realization of human rights and the obligations of humans to all life.
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