Respect in Conservation Ethics: A Philosophical Inquiry

ABSTRACT

International conservation codes ask practitioners to treat historical objects and buildings with ‘respect’. What does this mean? The question has received comparatively little theoretical treatment in conservation literature. Taking a philosophical stance on the issue, this paper suggests that we cannot grasp how respect delineates ethical obligations for professionals in the field if we do not unearth the sources of these obligations, i.e. what counts as respectful behaviour and to whom respect is owed in the first place. Questioning the widespread understanding of respect as ‘preservation of the object’s integrity’, it proposes a model in which respect is interpreted as a form of preservation of meaning. On this model, respect is directed not so much to the artefact itself, but to the person, community, or culture that take interest in it, those for whom the object is especially meaningful.

KEYWORDS:

• Conservation ethics
• respect
• integrity
• meaning
• preservation
• historical objects
• inanimate objects
• ethical obligations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 As Paine (2013) notes, uses of the term in this context seem to be relatively recent. John Ruskin (1989/1849) used respect rarely in his writings; nor did Cesare Brandi mention it anywhere in his Theory of Restoration (1977).

2 In value theory, ‘constitutive value’ is a technical notion that is often used in contrast with ‘instrumental value’ (Schroeder 2016). Here, however, I use the term in a broader sense to refer to the role historical objects play in contributing to a person’s identity.

3 I thank an anonymous reviewer for prompting me to discuss this point.

4 This question is similar to asking who should count as a stakeholder in conservation decision-making (Henderson and Nakamoto 2016).

5 At least in a utilitarian framework in which conservation’s main goal is seen as finding solutions that provide the most satisfaction to the most people. In ethics, utilitarianism is the doctrine that the best action “is that which produces the greatest amount of welfare or wellbeing of agents” (O’Neill, Holland, and Light 2008, 6). This position is often defended in the context of nature and biological conservation (Loreau 2014).

6 I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for bringing this point to my attention.