From ethics without ecology to ecology without ethics. On the difficult moral relations between human beings and nature

摘要

Modern philosophical tradition has generally paid little attention to nature as an object of moral inquiry. In this tradition, only human beings are entitled to have moral rights. Recently, however, growing ecological problems and the shift from metaethics to normative ethics have changed this conceptual framework. The aim of the article is to show that, on a kantian basis, an interpersonal ethics can be applied to nature itself, precisely because, in the kantian paradigm, the rationale for excluding nature from moral citizenship are metaphisical and not persuasively moral.