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Welcome to the Taster ‘Environmental Ethics and the Domain of Morality’.

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Overall, this content aims to make you familiar with the central debates in environmental ethics concerning the scope of morality, and in particular of the different normative stances relevant to environmental ethics and the various problems associated with such stances; an awareness of the kinds of things which we may have some responsibility to treat as if they matter in some way and for some reason; as well as an understanding of the link between interests and morality. 

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Traditional western ethics has been accused by many philosophers of being too human chauvinistic to deal adequately with global environmental concerns. Indeed, western ethical perspectives on the extent of our moral responsibilities are anthropocentric, and anthropocentric theories of environmental ethics include only humans as candidates for moral standing. In other words, they limit moral consideration to humans.

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In this taster content we will outline and examine alternative positions in environmental ethics, and in doing so we will consider how far our moral obligations extend.

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As you go through the material try to reflect on ‘whether an ethic that is not anthropocentric can motivate action, and whether it is possible to care about the good of non-human creatures’. You are also encouraged to form a view ‘on the range as well as the limits of environmentalist arguments based on human well-being alone’ (Robin Attfield, Environmental Ethics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003, p.75).

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🌿 Click the image below to launch the course and get started.

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