Ecofascism

For my next blog post, I took a closer look at the Baird Callicott’s “Holistic Environmental Ethics and the Problem of Ecofascism” piece. This chapter perfectly connects to what we have learned last time about the land ethics. In fact, the author focuses on Leopold Aldo’s piece in depth and explains what are the key elements and factors that influenced his thinking. In addition, he adds some philosophical ideas and pedigree of the land ethics in relationship to more familiar Modern moral concerns that Aldo didn’t mention. Finally, the essay focused on the problem of ecofascism.

To really understand Aldo’s idea behind the “Land Ethics”, Calliott points out his main source, Charles Darwin, and how he influenced his work. Next, the author focused on the question of selfish and selfless and spends a long portion of the text discussing all the theories and possibilities connected to this question. First, it is the outcome of animals creating a special bond not only between the parents and children, but also between the cousins and siblings ect. Therefore, Darwin believed in the creating of these mini societies that would help the species to protect and help each other. That would be the evolutionary origin of ethics presented by Charles Darwin. Then, the author focuses on the differences represented in the alternative modernist account of the origin of ethics. Here, it seems like the idea was that the animal’s part wasn’t included at all in the social contract theory. Thomas Hobbes believed that ethics are found upon selfish rationality, rather than selfless sentimentality. Finally, Calliott answers the question of the appearance of ecofascism in Leopold’s land ethic. He concludes that it is not a case of ecofascism because the land ethic intended to supplement, not replace, the more venerable community-based social ethics. Moreover, he believes that the environment-oriented duties would at the end of the day always be more important for humans than the individualistic-oriented duties.

To sum it all up, Calliott makes the Land Ethic more systematic, easier to understand, easier to see how to implement it. There is clearly an influence from Darwin and his account of the moral sense. He believes in ethics grounded on moral, social sentiments, impulses and affects. He also takes an issue with other accounts of the origin of the ethics as he believes that they are grounded in reason. In addition, he is unclear about the individual and seems to justify acts in parts of biotic community that we prohibit in human community. Now, we have established that Calliot believes that Aldo’s Land Ethics is not a case of ecofascism. He believes that it is just an accretion, and addition to our accumulated social ethics and it does not work as a substitute. However, we can also see that there is a problem of moral pluralism which can derive two principles from Land Ethics and give us a ranking system. First, obligations generated by membership in more intimate communities take precedence over those generated in impersonal communities. Second, stronger interests generate duties that take precedence over duties generated by weaker interests.

In my opinion, Calliot’s essay looked the Land Ethics from many different angles. What I found interesting was the idea that even though Aldo Leopold encouraged us humans to create a bigger bond and better relationship with the ecosystem, he did not include a better description of the relationships within the ecosystem. The author talks about two interesting points. First, he mentions that for a good stability and prosperity of our society we do kill animals or chop down trees, which seems to be rather unnecessary. Therefore, he questions how can we really respect the land. Secondly, he talks about the difference between human society and the biotic society. He points out that there are certain rules and cycles in society that are strictly set. There are predators and prey, there are animals whose life is dependent strictly on a death of another animal, ect. Therefore, he argues that all of these examples are actually very land ethically wrong.

Question: What is the right balance between human and biotic society? And how do we make sure we don’t cross the line?

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