Methodological Pragmatism, Pluralism, and Environmental Ethics

Andrew Light starts off his essay by introducing his own pluralist position that he has began to develop in 1992. It was called “environmental pragmatism” and his goal was to present some of the normative arguments that would support his claim that environmental ethics should be done in more pragmatic way in order to transfer […]

The Case for Animal Rights

Regan starts off his essay with a strong statement, where he describes himself as advocate of animal rights and presents his three main goals. First, the total abolition of the use of animals in science, the total dissolution of commercial animal agriculture, and finally the total elimination of commercial and sport hunting and trapping. He […]

Interspecific Justice

Donald VanDeVeer starts off his essay by stating how big of an impact had Singer’s “Animal Liberation” on him. Although it did change his view on animals and the importance of equal consideration, he points out a specific part of the text, where he struggled to follow Singer’s ideas. Singer basically suggested that there could […]

All Animals Are Equal

After reading Peter Singer’s essay called “All Animals Are Equal” it was clear to me that his main point was that we should extend to animals the same equality of consideration that we extend to other human beings. In his essay he introduces few major ideas or points, which he believes are necessary to understand […]

On Being Morally Considerable

In Kenneth Goodpaster’s essay called “On Being Morally Considerable” the author asks multiple interesting questions. Perhaps the most important one is; what are the requirements for “having standing” in the moral sphere? The reason why he’s asking this question is simple. There has been a significant increase of concern about the environment. Therefore, it is […]

Respect for Nature

After reading Paul Taylor’s essay called “Respect for Nature”, there were couple ideas that stood out to me. If I understand correctly his main position is that there should be respect for every living organism. He explains his idea by introducing three key elements. First, he believes in the “biocentric”/life centered environmental ethics. Second, he […]

Self-realization

After reading the “Self-realization” essay by Arne Naess, we had the opportunity to learn and reflect on who are we, where are we heading and what kind of reality are we part of. The answers that Naess comes with are certainly innovative and interesting. He starts off the essay with six points, that should give […]

Duties to Ecosystem

After reading Holmes Rolston’s “Duties to Ecosystem”, there are certainly many interesting points that are worth to be pointed out. First, he starts the essay with looking at different perspectives of different scholars on the question whether plant is a complex organism or not. He seems to agree the most with Leopold Aldo’s idea of […]

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 […]

The Land Ethic

After reading the story “Thinking Like a Mountain” and the essay called “The Land Ethic” from Aldo Leopold’s book, I have some important and interesting ideas to share. First, let us look at the story Aldo shares with us on the page 129. “Thinking Like a Mountain” is a story where the author describes his […]