Ethics asks us to consider: ‘How should we live?’ Can recent moral philosophy help us think about this, in the light of the environmental challenges we now face?
Environmental ethics bluntly questions humanity’s seemingly unassailable moral status in Western thought which is underpinned by the belief that humans are morally superior to all other living things and systems.
So, what do we and should we value? Should we accord value to the non-human world? Does the non-human world, i.e. animals and plants, have merely instrumental value to humans, or does it have intrinsic value? If it possess the latter, on what grounds? What are the moral differences, if any, between humans and non-human things, and where do we draw the line in what we may do to harm the non-human world?
I propose that by taking a virtue ethics approach to considering these questions, and the challenges of how we choose to act in response, helps us to create the agency for ourselves to facilitate constructive collective action.
This session will be run in the form of a structured collective enquiry and will include small group discussions. Please come prepared to contribute to an interactive session.