In What Sense of 'Respect' Should We Respect Nature? A Comment on David Schmidtz's 'Respect for Everything'

摘要

A central contention of David Schmidtz's 'Respect for everything' (Schmidtz, 2011) is that species egalitarianism may be incompatible with respecting nature. Respecting nature is presumably an important virtue of environmentally conscientious persons, so Schmidtz's charge, if fair, would be pretty damaging for species egalitarianism. Indeed, I believe Schmidtz is right and we should reject species egalitarianism on respect grounds. But some of Schmidtz's arguments are vulnerable to the very charge he makes against species egalitarianism and generally evade some crucially important underlying questions about respect for nature: in what sense of 'respect' ought we respect nature anyway? Is there one sense that is appropriate for all of nature? Or is respect of one kind appropriate in some cases and respect of a different kind appropriate in other cases?