Hope, Self-Transcendence and Environmental Ethics

Abstract

Environmental ethicists often hold that organisms, species, ecosystems, and the like have goods of their own. But, even given that such goods exist, whether we ought to value them is controversial. Hence an environmental philosophy needs, in addition to an account of what sorts of values there are, an explanation what, how and why we morally ought to value—that is, an account of moral valuing. This paper presents one such an account. Specifically, I aim to show that unless there are eternal goods (and maybe even if there are), we have a duty of self-transcendence toward nature—that is, a duty to value nature's goods as ends. This duty is owed, however, not to nature, but to ourselves. It is grounded in what I call an imperative of hope. The argument, in a nutshell, is that we have a duty to ourselves to (in a certain sense) optimize hope. This optimization requires self-transcendence toward entities whose goods are more diverse and enduring than any human goods. But unless there are eternal goods, such goods occur only in nature.

Notes

1. The outlines of this argument were first suggested to me by a passage near the end of John O'Neill's rich and insightful paper, “The varieties of intrinsic value”, Monist, 75, 2 (1992), reprinted in Light, A. and Rolston, H. (2003) Environmental Ethics: An Anthology, pp. 131–42 (Oxford: Blackwell). In this passage, O'Neill sketches this plan for justifying an environmental ethic:

• The most promising general strategy would be to appeal to the claim that a good human life requires a breadth of goods… . The ethical life is one that incorporates a far richer set of goods and relationships than egoism would allow … the recognition and promotion of natural goods as ends in themselves involves just such an enrichment. (pp. 139–40)

  In this paper I combine O'Neill's strategy with the ideas that hope is a central requirement of a good human life and that it is sustainable only by self-transcendence.

2. This definition is in two respects weaker than that of Partridge's “Why care about the future?” in Partridge, E., ed. (1981) Responsibilities to Future Generations (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books). According to Partridge, a person is fully self-transcendent when “(a) he regards something other than himself as good in itself and (b) when he desires the good and endurance of this ‘something else’ for its own sake, apart from its future contingent effects on him” (ibid., p. 208). First, I omit part (a). To love (and hence be self-transcendent toward) someone, one does not need to think of that person as good in herself. We can love a person simply by wanting the best for her, without having any notion of whether she is good in herself. Second, I omit “and endurance” because we may be self-transcendent toward an incurable sufferer for whom we think it would be a mercy to die. With these two omissions, Partridge's definition is equivalent to mine.

3. This stipulative definition merely explains how I use the term “value” in this paper. One can, of course, esteem something as a good and yet not desire it, and we may think of that as “valuing” in a sense. But it is not the full-blooded sort of valuing inherent in a self-transcendence that gives rise to hope, which is the sort of valuing that concerns me here.

4. When I say that an object is non-existent, I intend to speak tenselessly. Thus I hold that self-transcendence may be true even if directed toward entities that do not exist at present, provided that they will exist. (Self-transcendence toward entities that no longer exist is, I suppose, also possible, but not of any interest here.)

5. “For the ends of any person, who is an end in himself, must as far as possible also be my end, if that conception of an end in itself is to have its full effect on me.” Kant, I. [1785] (1959) Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. L.W. Beck (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill), German pagination 430.

6. See, for example, Tong, R. (1993) Feminine and Feminist Ethics (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth), Ch. 5 and 6.

7. The principle is: “Treat those individuals who have inherent value in ways that respect their inherent value.” (emphasis in original); Reagan, T. (2004) The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), p. 248.

8. The principle is: “The interests of every being affected by an action are to be taken into account and given the same weight as like interests of any other being.” Singer, P. (1990) Animal Liberation (New York: Avon Books), p. 5. To give an interest weight is to value its fulfillment not merely as a means, but as an end.

9. Regan, ibid., Ch. 6.

10. Classic sources are: Rolston, H. (1988) Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World, (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press), Ch. 3; and Taylor, P. (1986) Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), Ch. 2. See also the exchange between Rolston and Ernest Partridge in Pojman, L. P. (1997) Environmental Ethics: Readings in Theory and Application (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth), pp. 81–92; O'Neill, ibid., pp. 137–8; and Nolt, J. (2009) “The move from is to good in environmental ethics”, Environmental Ethics, 31(2), pp. 135–54.

11. Elsewhere, however, I have argued that they do. See Nolt, ibid. For doubts about ecosystems, see Cahen, H. (1988) “Against the moral considerability of ecosystems”, Environmental Ethics, 10(3), pp. 196–216; reprinted in Light and Rolston, ibid.

12. Nolt, J. (2006) “The move from good to ought in environmental ethics”, Environmental Ethics, 28(4), 355–74.

13. Arne Naess, for example, defines identification as a condition in which “the interest or interests of another being are reacted to as our own interest or interests” (emphasis in original). (1984) “Identification as a source of deep ecological attitudes” in: M. Tobias, M. (Ed.) Deep Ecology (San Marcos, CA: Avant Books), especially p. 261. Similarly, Warwick Fox in (1995) Toward a Transpersonal Ecology (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press), pp. 249–50, writes that in personally identifying with various entities “we experience these entities as part of ‘us’, as part of our identity. An assault upon their integrity is an assault upon our integrity.”

14. We may, of course hope for things that are not good—a cigarette, for example, or the suffering and humiliation of those whom we despise. But insofar as we hope for such things they or some aspect of them will seem good to us. Otherwise our attitude is mere desire.

15. This is an oversimplification, accurate only if the expected probability and goodness do not vary over the time envisioned by the hope; that is, if they are constants. For a more explicit account of what I have in mind, I offer the following mathematical model. (It is only a model, and hence not to be taken too seriously, since it unrealistically assumes that the anticipated goodness, likelihood and duration of the object-state have numerical values.) Let p be some moment (e.g., the present) at which one is hoping for an object-state s, and let t be any later moment. Then the momentary expected value v_s (t) of s at t is the assessed goodness of s at t multiplied by the assessed likelihood of s at t, both estimated from the perspective of p. Clearly v_s (t) can be non-zero only for times t at which one hopes that s will occur. Then the magnitude at p of hope for s is given by:

16. This assumes that the hopes are individuated in such a way that they do not overlap.

17. Assuming, of course, that I want to live.

18. It may be objected that there is a third possibility: a state of detachment, without either hope or despair, such as some Buddhists or Stoics advocate. This is not the place for a digression on detachment. My reply can only be brief: such detachment is typically not a cessation of hope, but a replacement of its usual object states by object states of a different kind. (A Stoic may hope to live a life of integrity. A Buddhist may hope for universal enlightenment.) Absolute lack of hope for anything is not, so far as I can see, a desirable form of detachment.

19. Believers in personal immortality should add to this example the stipulation that the only authentic goods the person values (if any) are the mortal goods of her mortal self. Of course if there is no personal survival or if there is but she thoroughly misconceives its goods, then no such stipulation is necessary. Whatever she values regarding her immortal self is in that case not an authentic good at all. I will say a bit more about immortality in Section X. There is also a sense in which a relational self might survive death. But relational selves are self-transcendent and the person of this example is not.

20. I have formulated this in my own way, but I owe the idea to peripatetic conversations with John Hardwig that took place a couple of decades ago.

21. John O'Neill (1993) argues, to the contrary, that what happens after death can benefit or harm us. (See “Future generations; present harms”, Philosophy, 68, 263, pp. 35–51.) But his argument, while cogent, assumes our self-transcendence and hence is not applicable to the case at issue here. The actions of future generations may, he asserts, determine whether our projects succeed or fail; thus they may benefit or harm us. But this is true because those projects aim for communal goods—such as, for example, the preservation of institutions or the progress of science. Someone who values as ends no authentic goods apart from her own has no projects aimed at communal goods. See also Levenbook, B. (1984) “Harming someone after his death”, Ethics, 94, pp. 407–19.

22. She has acquired the hope because (1) given her self-transcendence, she values the realization of her lover's good even after her death and (2) believes this to be possible, which two conditions are sufficient for her hoping that her lover fares well after her death. This hope is, moreover, satisfiable, because (we have assumed) it is possible that that her lover will outlive herand (since her self-transcendence is true) she conceives the lover's authentic goods fairly accurately.

23. Provided, of course, that the goods that we hope for are possible, but this condition is usually not difficult to meet.

24. Thoreau, H.D. [1854] (1981) Walden in: J.W. Krutch (Ed.) Walden and Other Writings, (New York: Bantam), p. 111.

25. Tolstoy, L. [1884] (1978) A Confession, Section IV, in: J. Bayley (Ed.) The Portable Tolstoy, trans. A. Maude (New York: Viking Penguin), pp. 666–731; the quotation is from p. 681.

26. I have in mind here something like von Neumann machines—robot probes designed to colonize the universe. See, for example, Tipler, F. (1994) The Physics of Immortality (New York: Doubleday), Ch. II.

27. Thanks to my daughter, Jenna Nolt, for raising this objection.

28. There is also the question of whether people's desires for such things can be made strong enough to support much hope, but that is an empirical matter that need not be decided here.

29. Erazim Kohak, for example, advocates what I take to be such a view in (1984) The Embers and the Stars (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press).

30. An anthropocentric view is one that sees all value as value for human beings.

31. I wish to thank Elijah Weber and Baylor Johnson for valuable comments on a portion of this paper, which I presented at the fifth annual joint meeting of the International Society for Environmental Ethics and the International Association for Environmental Philosophy at Estes Park, Colorado, May 27th-30th 2008. This paper has also benefited from the comments of two anonymous referees for this journal.