How to Be a Green Liberal : Nature, Value and Liberal Philosophy [1 ed.] 9780773582262, 9780773527737

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How to be a Green Liberal

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How to be a Green Liberal Nature, Value and Liberal Philosophy Simon Hoilwood

McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal & Kingston • Ithaca

© Simon Hailwood 2004 ISBN 0-7735-2773-7 (bound) ISBN 0-7735-2774-5 (paper) This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved. Published simultaneously outside North America by Acumen Publishing Limited McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Development Program (BPIDP) for its activities. National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data Hailwood, Simon A. How to be a green liberal : nature, value and liberal philosophy / Simon Hailwood. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-2773-7 (bound).—ISBN 0-7735-2774-5 (pbk.). 1. Liberalism. 2. Human ecology—Political aspects. I. Title. JA75.8.H33 2004

320.51'3

C2003-906653-3

Designed and typeset by Kate Williams, Abergavenny. Printed and bound by The Cromwell Press, Trowbridge.

Contents

Acknowledgements

vii

1 Introduction 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5

Being green Being green matters Dismal instrumentalism Liberalism excludes being green - allegedly Summary of what lies ahead

1

1 3 6 9 11

2 Nature's otherness 2.1 Introduction 2.2 "Naturalness", otherness and landscapes 2.3 Goodin, naturalness and meaningfulness 2.4 Otherness and fragility, ours and nature's 2.5 Eco-feminism, otherness and dualism 2.6 Otherness, not wilderness 2.7 Deep ecology and strong holism 2.8 Communitarian holism 2.9 The value of nature's otherness 2.10 Objectivity and fragility 2.11 Appropriate objectivity

18 18 21 25 29 32 34 36 41 44 48 51

3 Against blueprinting 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Bioregionalism 3.3 Mill the "dualist" 3.4 Stoic landscape 3.5 Classical anarchism 3.6 Mill's lesson against natural lessons 3.7 Plato 3.8 Bioregionalism again

57 57 62 65 68 73 74 79 82

v

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4 Liberal landscape 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Instrumentalist circumstances 4.3 Neutrality arguments 4.4 Neutrality analogies 4.5 Otherness and instability 4.6 Not just "following nature" 4.7 My enemy's enemy is my friend: shared anti-expressivism 4.8 Reasonable virtues 4.9 Extensions: universalist, perfectionist and comprehensive liberalisms

89 89 90 94 98 102 107 111 117

5 Some objections 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Is all value instrumental value? 5.3 No foundation for an environmental ethic? 5.4 Realism, fundamentalism, reformism and anarchism 5.5 Carter's eco-anarchism 5.6 Reformism is reformism is reformism

130 130 131 137 141 144 152

Notes Bibliography Index

122

157 189 195

VI

Acknowledgements

I have been thinking about the issues covered in this book for the past several years. Over that time many people have said things to me that have been helpful in the development of my ideas, including at times when I did not realize the shape of the overall argument. This book represents the current state of that argument, and of my views on related issues. Some of the help I have received in particular has stuck in my mind in a way that requires acknowledgement here. I have received helpful and encouraging comments, in conversation or as written responses to articles central to the project, from Stephen Clark, Jonardon Ganeri, Karen Green, Alan Holland, Jane Howarth, Pauline Phemister, Hillel Steiner, Piers Stephens and Marcel Wissenburg. Mathew Humphrey read the first full draft of the book and made suggestions that helped me to improve the argument, give a more nuanced treatment of some of the issues and avoid some particularly glaring omissions. My thanks also to Steven Gerrard of Acumen for his encouragement and guidance through the process of getting the book together from first receiving the initial proposal. Kate Williams edited the manuscript and her suggestions have brought significant improvements to the text. I owe my biggest debt of gratitude to my wife, Jan, for all of her patience as well as encouragement through the writing of this book. None of the people mentioned above are to blame for what follows. The book includes an adapted and extended treatment of material covered in published articles: Chapter 2 includes some material from "The Value of Nature's Otherness", Environmental Values 9(3) (2000), 363-72; Chapter 4 some from "Towards a Liberal Environment?", Journal of Applied Philosophy 16(3) (1999), 271-81; and Chapters 1 and 5 some from "Eco-Anarchism and Liberal Reformism", which at the time of writing is forthcoming in the journal Ecotheology.

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

1.1 Being green If or when man-made environmental calamities bite more deeply it is likely that so will the tendency to blame liberalism as the dominant tradition of Western political philosophy. Therefore it is politically and culturally important, as well as philosophically interesting, to identify and emphasize any green resources latent within that tradition. In this book I shall argue for a green form of liberal political philosophy, and seek to show how a green perspective can and should be developed within liberal political theory. An important preliminary question is this: what should we take "green" to mean in this context? First of all I take being green to involve the denial of a purely instrumentalist view of non-human nature. To be green in this sense is to reject what John Gray has called "normative individualism": the view that "nothing has ultimate value except states of mind or feeling, or aspects of the lives of human individuals".1 So, again, to say that a green liberalism is possible is to claim, contrary to much prevailing wisdom, that liberalism need not be saddled with what Richard Sylvan called the "sole value assumption": According to this major assumption, which underlies prevailing Western social theory, humans are the only things of irreducible (or intrinsic) value in the universe, the value of all other things reducing to or answering back to that of humans in one way or another.2 There is, however, a bit more to being green, as I understand it here, than rejecting a purely instrumental attitude towards the non-human. In effect, this is rejected also by those seeking to overcome "speciesism", who 1

HOW TO BE A G R E E N L I B E R A L

claim, for example, that any sentient "subject of a life" is worthy of a respectful treatment appropriately marked by granting rights to such treatment,3 or that any sentient being capable of forming preferences should be taken into account in overall utility calculations.4 And these sorts of claims can plausibly be seen as extensions of different variants of liberalism.5 But there remains an important sense in which these theories are nevertheless committed to a normative individualism. The value of everything else is referred back to the interests or preferences of sentient biological individuals, it's just that only some of these happen to be human. Whatever merits such claims have in themselves, it remains true that many of the natural items to which environmentalists attach direct, non-instrumental importance - plants, species, rivers, forests, mountain ranges, ecosystems and so on - are not sentient, or even biological individuals, at all. In order to capture this, I will take being green to involve rejecting normative individualism in this context as well as in its purely anthropocentric sense.6 It would be a mistake, though, to characterize being green generally as a matter of overcoming anthropocentrism. A number of writers have warned recently against adopting non-anthropocentrism as a basic commitment within environmental ethics and green political theory.7 In some of its senses, anthropocentrism - human centredness - is ineliminable and benign. So to march beneath the banner of non-anthropocentrism is to invite confusion at the least, and possibly the strategically disastrous impression that the green theorist does not care all that much for human beings in general, or has not noticed that some human beings are a great deal more culpable than others in the production of environmental ills. What is ruled out by the green perspective adopted in this book, however, is human centredness in the sense of seeing the value of the world as entirely derived from, or reducible to, our commitments to ourselves, other people or human interests in general (including future generations of human beings). This form of anthropocentrism, that of the sole value assumption, I will generally refer to as "instrumentalism". It is obvious that our duties to each other and ourselves require that we recognize the instrumental importance to us of wider nature. But I am taking it that to be green is to recognize also its non-instrumental significance; that it is not just there as a resource for human beings to use or enjoy with more or less foresight.8 Still, being green, as I am understanding it, cannot be equated with being non-anthropocentric because it involves some inescapable, even welcome, forms of anthropocentrism.9 On the other hand, notions like human chauvinism, racism or speciesism are not satisfactory alternatives to the troublesome notion of anthropocentrism. They tend to be about the arbitrary discounting of non-human interests, but, as just indicated above, that still involves a kind 2

INTRODUCTION

of normative individualism that excludes adequate - direct, noninstrumental - consideration of aspects of nature that have no interests.10 I reserve "green" then for views that (i) are non-instrumentalist, and so say that humanity and human interests are not the be-all and end-all - concern for non-human nature should not enter into our consideration only in so far as it serves our interests for it to do so - and (ii) do not confine direct, noninstrumental concern to biological individuals with interests.

1.2 Being green matters It might be thought excessively tendentious to restrict being green in this way. Given that other approaches might sanction the same, or very similar, practical measures vis-à-vis the natural world, declaring that they are not really green might seem a trivial semantic snub. If we unpack all the ways that present and future humanity depend on the rest of nature as a physical, aesthetic, recreational, medical and spiritual resource, then we see that a purely instrumentalist starting point can take us far down the road of environmental protection. Presumably even further when we also consider, in non-speciesist fashion, the instrumental value of things relative to non-human interests. One cannot respond adequately to this just by asserting that it is not really green to aim at (what many would call) green outcomes for say "brown" (purely human instrumentalist) reasons. It simply begs the pragmatic response, "Well, so what? If what one cares about is the state that nature is in, then surely it is the practical consequences for nature of our actions and policies, rather than the mode of reasoning or evaluation that justifies the action or policy, that matters."11 However, even if this response is taken to be decisive in theory, in practice it remains true that there are greens about who insist on rejecting a purely instrumentalist view of wider nature. Given this, it remains a worthwhile task to show how such a perspective may be embraced by liberal political philosophy. And given that there are plenty of liberals about, it would at least be interesting if some progress could be made in showing that, in the light of their other commitments, they should be green, especially if the liberal commitments in question are usually taken to exclude such progress. There will be much more on this issue in what follows. But consider now that the pragmatic response just sketched is not decisive in principle. There is the question of what non-human nature means to us.12 What if (part of) what X means to us is that it is something owed respect for its own sake, independently of instrumental considerations? It surely 3

HOW TO BE A GREEN LIBERAL

matters whether this is the meaning X has, and it matters independently of any consideration of the consequences for it of it having this meaning for us, as against the consequences for it of having a different meaning (say that of a highly prized, because very useful, perhaps irreplaceable, instrument). It seems to matter in much the same way as it matters whether one views political society as a kingdom of means, or as a kingdom of ends. Say I conceive of society only as a kingdom of means: other people, and my relationships with them, including those involved in political institutions, have significance to me only as means to securing my self-interest. Say also that I can be brought to believe that the most rational, clear-eyed view of my self-interest requires me to support exactly the same liberal political institutions, rights distributions and principles of justice as if I viewed others as fellow members of a kingdom of ends. Still, it matters in which of these two ways I view others. Consider cases of the following kinds: imagine a society in which standard liberal democratic rights and liberties are enforced internally and generally adhered to, but only because it is believed that this is what God has decreed, and eternal punishment awaits the disobedient ones; or because it is believed that a foreign superpower will deliver nuclear annihilation otherwise; or because it is believed that very powerful international trading interests will deliver economic ruin otherwise. One might say that it does not matter if individuals in such societies are effectively "forced to be free", what matters is that they live in a liberal democratic society, and it makes no practical difference whether or not this is the kind of political organization they would go for in the absence of external threats. But I take it that such a view would not quite capture what "liberal democracy" means to (at least many) liberals. The point I am labouring here is that it does matter what the motivating reasons are for protecting X (independent nature or liberal democracy, say). It matters whether X is valued instrumentally or non-instrumentally, even if the consequences for it are exactly the same in both cases; it matters at least partly because of the different meaning X has for valuing agents in the two cases. But, of course, once we see this then we see that it is extremely unlikely that the practical consequences for X will be the same whether it is valued instrumentally or non-instrumentally. The difference in meaning between the two cases consists partly in differences in the onus of justification of actions related to, or aimed at, X. If X is valued only instrumentally as a means to Y, then the onus is on those objecting to its being used, exploited, interfered with, en route to Y, to show that a better route to Y, or to some weightier end, involves leaving X alone. But if X is valued non-instrumentally this is not the case; the onus then is on those who would use it as a means to something else, to justify doing so. Certainly, when X is a human being, and so is viewed non-instrumentally, it 4

INTRODUCTION

does not follow that X can never properly be used, manipulated or interfered with. Rather, it means that sufficient justification is required. Similarly with non-human nature: to reject a purely instrumental view does not mean that nature can never be used (as if that was even possible), but that a sufficient justification is required. This seems to be right, and certainly at the level of principled discussion and policy-making about the natural environment, a shift from instrumental to non-instrumental valuation would probably have a profound effect.13 I am taking it that (really) being green involves rejecting the suggestion that non-human nature (not just biological individuals) has meaning only as an instrument, perhaps even a beautiful and irreplaceable instrument. Obviously, this is consistent with the anthropocentric recognition that nature is also of great instrumental importance to humanity.14 Indeed, another important consideration here is that instrumental reason may be buttressed by non-instrumental reason. If Xis valued non-instrumentally as an end, as well as instrumentally as a means to some other end Y, then its being valued is (relatively) immune to changing circumstances, such as a better means to Y being discovered. X*s status as a valuable object is more stable in that sense. An example of this is John Rawls's distinction between political liberalism supported as the basis of an "overlapping consensus" (a plurality of views converge on it as an end in itself) or as a modus vivendi (an expedient means to desired cooperation or security). A modus vivendi is less stable because the rationale for it can be undermined by such events as a change in the balance of power between the involved parties.15 In the case of nature's value, a green suspicion is that purely instrumental considerations are unlikely to yield the same outcomes for nature as noninstrumental ones, at least in the longer term, precisely because they do not give any weight to nature for its own sake. We might say that, unless buttressed with non-instrumentalist considerations, a purely instrumental approach can manage only (something like) a modus vivendi with nature, the rationality of which is contingent on the circumstances,16 particularly a relatively low level of technological capability to control what are now natural processes, or produce artificial or virtual analogues of particularly enjoyable parts of nature.17 We need to respect independent nature at the moment. But in the future? For example, this suspicion seems to tell even against Marcel Wissenburg's "restraint principle", perhaps the most important and successful element of his recent attempt to incorporate environmental considerations with liberal theory.18 The restraint principle is a revamped version of Rawls's (revamped) just savings principle,19 and expresses the idea that intergenerational justice requires maximum restraint in the use of both natural and artificial "capital". The restraint principle says: 5

HOW TO BE A GREEN L I B E R A L

no goods shall be destroyed unless unavoidable and unless they are replaced by perfectly identical goods; if that is physically impossible, they should be replaced by equivalent goods resembling the original as closely as possible; and if that is also impossible, a proper compensation should be provided.20 On the face of it, this seems to be a very strict principle, placing radical restrictions on the present generation(s) that protect the interests and preferences of distantly future generations. However, the (reasonable in themselves) qualifications in the restraint principle - "unless unavoidable", "unless they are replaced by", "if", "physically impossible", "as closely as possible", "if that is also impossible, a proper compensation" - may well raise reasonable suspicions from a green perspective. What is or is not "possible", and what may or may not count as a "proper compensation" in these terms, depends in large part on the state of technology, and humanity's changing capacity to supply artificial means to desired ends, means currently supplied by nature. In the extreme case: You say you (would) derive great satisfaction from encountering the natural world, real wildlife and all? Well, step up and enter my Experience Machine! For a small (well actually pretty large) fee, you too can have the satisfying experience of an encounter with the natural world! What do you mean it is not the same? It would not be really real? I promise you that your subjective experience will be real, and once you are plugged in to our new deluxe model you will quite forget where you "really" are, and be completely unaware of any artificiality until the program ends. Or your money back. And besides, so what if it is artificially produced? Surely what really matters is your subjective satisfaction.21

1.3 Dismal instrumentalism It is certainly true that green political theory and environmental ethics should not completely divorce, and place in opposition, concerns for nonhuman nature and legitimate anthropocentric concerns,22 including anxieties about the impact of environmental problems on human welfare. At least, green thought aiming at a positive impact should try to avoid alienating the public and politicians in this way. Notwithstanding this, in the context of buttressing instrumental with non-instrumental reason, it is worthwhile considering also that much eco-political theory, like much 6

INTRODUCTION

environmental thought and action generally, takes as its point of departure a set of very gloomy facts and predictions about the current or impending environmental catastrophe. This has various elements: soil erosion; global warming and climate change (rise in sea level, destruction of agriculture, Atlantic conveyor switch-off turning much of northwest Europe into tundra, etc.); a huge reduction in biodiversity (we are living through one of the few "mass extinction" events known to science); ozone depletion and so on. Call this the "gloomy story": it tends to make environmentalism a gloomy subject. This is not to say the story is false, or unimportant, of course. But what transforms it into something unremittingly dismal (making it the new truly "neo-Malthusian dismal science", as it were) is the focus on the consequences for humanity of the environmental crisis. This is why it counts as a crisis: it is a very bad thing for us. The tendency, then, is to argue that if we don't radically transform our social, economic and political institutions and habits, our way of thinking about the natural world and our relations with it, and do it now, as a matter of urgent priority, we and/or our descendants are doomed (or many of us/them are doomed, with the rest suffering very badly).23 The fundamental value relative to which things are judged to be so gloomy is understood in terms of human interests (in not dying, suffering or being thwarted in various ways). Things are bad because they are bad for us (threats to supply of food, water, useful land and raw materials are often highlighted). A less dismal approach would be to take account of the value that nature has in its own right, independent of human interests; that is, to have an explicitly green element within our point of departure. Certainly, this would generate an extra reason for gloominess for those taking seriously the situation reported by many environmental scientists. But if the gloom were generated in this way, it would not have quite the dismal tinge of anxious instrumentalism it would have otherwise. And there are problems with eco-political theory and environmental concern predicated on purely dismal considerations. There are problems, in other words, when a purely instrumentalist starting-point is assumed, while emphasizing the consequences for humanity of the gloomy story. I mention the following two. First, the gloominess of the facts is questionable.24 So any eco-political theory predicated on it is also questionable. And in this context of questionable gloominess there is also the suspicion, invited when such a theory is particularly emphatically radical, that the gloominess is being talked up, both in terms of extent and certainty, in order to provide an extra powerful-seeming reason for radical political solutions - "The very survival of our society, our civilization, perhaps even the human race itself, depends upon it!" - solutions already accepted on other grounds. After all, 7

HOW TO BE A GREEN LIBERAL

many anarchists, for example, condemn the state and capitalist economic relations anyway. It would be unsatisfactory to reply here that although one may quibble with this or that claim or prediction, only those with serious vested interests in maintaining the environmentally unsustainable status quo would reject the overall gloomy thrust of environmental science. Vested interests can be cited on the other side: shoring up and widening the appeal of otherwise minority radical politics; the temptation for groups and individuals operating in competitive intellectual, media and financial environments to exaggerate (perhaps unintentionally) to gain notice and a supportive audience; and so on.25 Thus the tendency will be for the dismal starting-point to generate ecopolitical theories that achieve political radicalness at the cost of chronic controversy on the empirical level. If the overall context in which it is thought a good idea to know the real state of the world and tailor our actions accordingly is the protection of human interests only, then the fragility of the resulting programmes for change will be boosted enormously. Such programmes will be contingent on changing and questioned empirical views about the real extent and nature of "environmental damage" as something impacting on serious human interests. In these terms, a non-instrumental value judgement representing nature as valuable for its own sake may provide a more robust starting-point, at least by constituting a reason to respect and protect nature, whether or not the gloomy story has truly dismal implications for us.26 Of course, such a value judgement itself is fragile in that not everyone endorses it, and it will have to coexist with legitimate anthropocentric concerns. But I will be trying to show that political liberals can and should endorse such a judgement. Secondly, even if we accept that a measure of dismal instrumentalism is required, given the gloomy ecological facts and their implications for human interests, it remains important that this be buttressed by noninstrumental considerations. Otherwise the dismal approach on its own might well provoke a fatalistic response: "If things are so bad, what the hell?" Alan Carter, for one, is aware of this possible response.27 However, I suspect that it is unhelpful to claim against it that radical political transformation, and only that, holds out any hope of rescue and that there is just one solution: dismantle capitalist civilization entirely, and adopt anarchism. Many (perhaps most, and certainly most of the powerful) may well be moved to fatalism if their way of life and familiar institutions cannot be reformed, but only dismantled as part of a supposedly necessary radical transformation. If not fatalism, then a purely dismal approach might encourage instead a tendency to retreat to the fantasy of a satisfactory technological remedy to environmental ills. Such a fantasy, leaning on the powerful myth of inevitable, indefinite techno-scientific progress, 8

INTRODUCTION

rests on complacency about humanity's ability, if not to restore what has been lost or degraded, at least to manipulate nature so as to continue more or less as we are. Faith in a strong connection between scientific and moral or social progress may have received fatal blows, but perhaps not faith in science's ability to save the day in some sense. Serious steps to curb the car culture, for example, seem much less urgent when non-polluting car-like technologies are anticipated. Serious degradation of natural open spaces for human recreation seems less important given the potential of virtual reality technology to provide artificial experiences indistinguishable from reality. Or if not a techno-fantasy response, a purely dismal instrumentalism may encourage the sort of escapist state of mind that would simply ignore the gloomy truth for as long as it can. On the other hand, if the non-instrumental value of nature is emphasized at the start, then fatalistic - "May as well carry on as we are" - attitudes, and fantasy and escapist responses are condemned explicitly at the beginning. Consider Carter's claim that, given the huge instrumental importance to human interests of environmental crises, it is rational to act as if the most gloomy reports and predictions are true, whether "rationality" is understood in terms of maximizing expected utility or choosing the least worse possible option (maximin).28 On either account of rationality, embracing an effectively dismal instrumentalist approach is required, which apparently renders anarchism as the only rational political option. But against this, one might well think that, given the extremely low probability of anarchism saving us,29 fatalism, escapism or hoping (and looking) for techno-fixes would be more rational if rationality is a purely instrumental matter of maximizing expected utility.30 If a non-instrumental value judgement is assumed as given, so that rationality is determined partly relative to that, then the rationality of those responses to the gloomy truth are definitely undermined.

1.4 Liberalism excludes being green - allegedly I am not claiming that a purely instrumentalist eco-political theory has to be dismal. Wissenburg's liberalism plus restraint principle, for example, expresses a rather cheerfully witty kind of instrumentalism. But this seems to be mostly because he does not put such great weight on the gloomy story. Perhaps, then, his theory invites an opposite charge: complacency. If so, then it would seem that those wanting an instrumentalist starting-point for their eco-political theory, focused purely on human interests, have to choose between seeming unremittingly dismal or complacent. Better to avoid this by adding an element of non-instrumentalism towards nature. 9

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Yet liberal political philosophy - the source of mainstream political theory - is commonly taken to exclude such a green perspective. That perspective, the concern for nature it embodies, can appear out of the question, perhaps even politically dangerous, given the apparent narrowness of liberalism's theoretical resources, wrapped up as they apparently are with normative individualism and the sole value assumption. Contractarian liberal theories, for example, seem like this. Restricting direct concern to what people may agree to among themselves looks like a way to exclude entities and relations outside the magic circle of consenting rational agents. Valuing the outside world for its own sake seems excluded from the scene when autonomous individuals are intent specifically on agreeing to principles by which they may live together and preserve their own defining and valued characteristics. Perhaps they can all be relied upon to recognize the instrumental value (to them) of the wider world. Some might hold idiosyncratic views about its non-instrumental significance. But they cannot be relied upon to share such views, or to formulate principles reflecting them, because these are disconnected from the fundamental ideas shaping the contract situation: the parties' individual equality, autonomy and rationality. Rawls is often taken to be the paradigm contractarian liberal, if not the paradigm modern liberal, and his account of political liberalism does illustrate how such an approach can seem hopelessly problematic from a green perspective. Consequently, his theory of liberalism is the one on which I shall mostly be concentrating. I shall be discussing in more detail31 why it seems to exclude green perspectives, as well as discussing how to overcome this exclusion. It might be objected that by concentrating on Rawlsian liberalism I am ignoring non-chauvinist/racist/speciesist theories, which might be termed liberal. But let me stress again that although these are not strictly committed to the sole value assumption, they do involve a kind of normative individualism that prevents them from being really green as I am understanding it.32 The extent to which they can overcome this depends on the extent to which, as political theories, they can embrace the elements of liberalism that I emphasize in my arguments against liberal exclusion of a green perspective.33 Those elements are particularly visible in Rawls's political liberalism. For now, it is noteworthy that although Rawls considers the preservation of nature and animal and plant species on such instrumental grounds as the (human) life-sustaining properties of nature and the need to preserve spaces for public recreation, he does so extremely briefly and puts them last on a list of issues (behind future generations, international relations and health care) that he thinks his theory of justice - justice as fairness - might be extended to cover.34 He does not discuss what this 10

INTRODUCTION

"extension" might involve. Shifted from questions of immediate urgency to do with the fundamental terms of just cooperation in the good society, out to the theoretical periphery, the issue remains subject to disagreement about how much instrumental weight must be given to nature anyway. The choice between dismal and complacent instrumentalism follows. Being really green - the issue of non-instrumentalism about nature - is even more far out; justice as fairness apparently cannot be extended to cover that issue. It is not that what Rawls revealingly calls "attitudes of natural religion" (views of our place in, and direct obligations to, wider nature) are to be banned from the liberal society, but they can never have a place in the centre of the theory where basic principles of justice and constitutional essentials are decided. "Being green", like "being religious", is a matter for private conscience and associations of consenting adults. The liberal political theory is not itself green, and so nor is (or would be) the liberal society considered as the coherent realization of the theory. One thought might be that this does not matter so much given that it remains possible for green considerations to have some influence on environmental policymaking, via the democratic process.35 But this still seems to leave green concerns very much as an afterthought from the standpoint of liberal theory. As Mary Midgley notes, contractarians "tend to discuss noncontractual cases briefly, casually and parenthetically, as though they were rather rare ... We have succeeded, they say, in laying most of the carpet; why are you making this fuss about those little wrinkles behind the sofa?"36 It matters, of course, whether this has to be the case: whether liberalism cannot be really green, and the liberal society as such cannot sustain a view of nature as not merely a resource to be exploited, alongside its commitment to human individuals as not mere things to be used. If it cannot then those who want a genuinely green political philosophy have to turn their backs on the mainstream political philosophy and adopt a radical alternative, whether radically libertarian or anarchist, or radically authoritarian.

1.5 Summary of what lies ahead What follows has the overall form of a consistency argument: X and Y are showed to be consistent, even deeply congruent, with each other. In this respect I take my main overall argument to be an example of what Robert Nozick called "explanatory" rather than "coercive" philosophy:37 I am not seeking to prove that X is true or that Y is true (although I do find both 11

HOW TO BE A GREEN L I B E R A L

plausible), or that X and Y logically entail one another. Rather, I shall be trying to show that when viewed from a certain angle X and Y fit together in such a way that proponents of X have good reason to look favourably on Y, and vice versa. Here, X is a fully green perspective on non-human nature, and Y is mainstream liberal political philosophy. There is another disclaimer. In seeking to establish this I shall be discussing issues in various areas, including environmental ethics, value theory and political philosophy, liberal and non-liberal. But I shall not be giving a comprehensive account of all the theories and positions mentioned, or a full scholarly review of all the twists and turns within the relevant literature. That would be a vast task, one inappropriate for a single book, even if I were qualified to write it. Instead, I hope the account 1 give of the matters I touch on is comprehensive enough to help clarify and explain the position I am seeking to establish. I shall be taking a particular route through the issues and focusing on matters as they seem to aid progress or place serious obstacles in the way, or when they seem to be particularly notable aspects of the passing scenery. There may well be some that I miss. What follows is divided into four main chapters. First of all, in Chapter 2 (Nature's otherness), I introduce some main elements of the green perspective I have in mind: what I call the "otherness view" of nature's value. Central to this perspective is the notion that one basis for nature's value is its "otherness", its being constituted of independent entities and processes that do not reflect our purposes. Nature's very "distance" from us, its "not-us-ness", provides an important reason for treating it with respect, one not reducible to nature's instrumental importance for the satisfaction of human needs and purposes. Notice that the point here is that non-human nature is other relative to us; we are to be doing the valuing, and if we do then it is a matter of limiting our own behaviour in light of the value we ascribe to something - nature - in virtue of a relation it has to us. In this sense we are at the centre of the otherness view, which is thus a form of what has been called perspectival anthropocentrism.38 In contrast with the otherness view, much eco-philosophical and ecopolitical theorizing has tended to build on markedly holistic pictures of humanity in nature, stressing continuity and community membership, strongly suggesting that we should identify with nature as deeply as possible and radically downplay any human-non-human distinction. My argument aims at a different kind of eco-political philosophy by emphasizing affinities between liberalism and an otherness-based ethic, with its implicit denial of strongly holistic views. So clarifying the otherness view will involve some discussion of differences between an eco-philosophy based on this and the more holistic approaches to be found in the 12

INTRODUCTION

literature. There will be some criticism of the latter, and particularly of some aspects of the views of Arne Naess, J. Baird Callicott and Warwick Fox. I shall also be trying to prevent my emphasis on nature's otherness from being taken in the wrong way, as a humanity-nature dualism of the kind warned against by eco-feminists such as Val Plumwood, in which nature, the "subservient" side, is denigrated and instrumentalized. Given that, when referring to nature's otherness, one is talking of what is other specifically to us, some discussion of the fuzzy distinction between humanity and independent nature is required. I find Holmes Rolston's concept of "landscape" as a hybrid of nature and culture useful in this context. For example, it allows one to identify independent nature (as other) with nature in so far as it is not landscaped, and thereby emphasizes that it cannot properly be identified with purposes and imperatives internal to cultural landscapes. We can then make the crucially important point that there is a tendency to overlook this, and consider nature only in so far as it plays a role within cultural landscapes; that is, there is a tendency to be anthropocentric in this unjustifiable sense. Consequently, the notion of nature's otherness, and so of the value it brings, has a peculiar kind of intellectual fragility. It is also important to recognize here that there are possible misunderstandings arising from the fact that most of the land surface of the earth has to some extent been "landscaped"; it is important to distinguish nature as other from nature as "wilderness". Indeed, natural otherness needs to be distinguished from various very similar concepts in the literature. In particular, the notion of "naturalness" as having non-human origin, or as contrasted with the artificial and/or intentional, is often taken as a basis for value. In this regard, I shall try to clarify the otherness view by comparing it with Robert Elliot's and, particularly, Robert Goodin's notions of "naturalness". So although the otherness view is not quite to be identified with these theories, nor is it wholly unfamiliar or a radical departure from views of nature's value that are already fairly widespread.39 Clarifying the central claim of the otherness view - that nature's otherness is a basis for value - also requires a discussion of the conception of value at work. Christine Korsgaard's work in value theory is particularly useful in this regard, especially in helping find a reasonably clear way through the difficulties surrounding the instrumental-non-instrumental, intrinsicextrinsic and objective-subjective value distinctions. I will argue that the value conferred by nature's otherness is best thought of as non-instrumental (independent nature is a "negative end" in virtue of its otherness), extrinsic and objective. Of various conceptions of "objectivity" that might be applied, I shall argue that Thomas Nagel's has various advantages. For example, if we are to limit our actions in light of the otherness view, we have to do that 13

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without completely losing sight of other human concerns, interests and projects. Not only are we doing the valuing, but we should be doing it without letting go of all of our commitments to ourselves, other people and legitimate human interests generally. It is a question of looking out from our perspectives as constituted by those commitments to recognize extra commitments to the wider world. The original, intra-human perspectives, the place from which we are looking, will be modified, perhaps transformed, in the process, but never obliterated. In this sense also the otherness view remains human centred.40 Thus one great advantage of Nagel's conception of objectivity is that it allows realistically for the tension between relatively objective and subjective viewpoints without giving automatic total victory to the objective viewpoint. In the present context, this allows us to recognize that the otherness view has to coexist to some extent with the concerns it seeks to supplement, go beyond and constrain; certainly, it cannot simply replace them with the misanthropic (and presumably suicidal) injunction to avoid landscaping altogether. In Chapter 3 (Against blueprinting) I discuss what I take to be another crucial element of the otherness view: there are no determinate moral or political lessons discernible in non-human nature. Bearing in mind this sense in which nature is "indifferent" to us, definitely not human centred, is part of what it is to respect nature's otherness. Consequently, in Chapter 3 there is an extended critical discussion of the notion of "living in accordance with nature" in the sense of treating some aspect of non-human nature as a blueprint for human morality or proper political organization, as instructions for the authentically natural life or society. I discuss briefly some examples of such "blueprinting" doctrines: Plato's hierarchical theory of the state as mirror of the natural harmony of the cosmos; the classical anarchist theme that any order imposed upon society, such as by a state, must be (pejoratively) unnatural because it is discontinuous with the overall order of nature, which is not imposed by anything; and the Stoic Zeno's account of living in accordance with nature, and the ideal natural society. I shall also discuss blueprinting themes within two notable recent eco-anarchist theories: Kirkpatrick Sale's bioregionalism and Murray Bookchin's social ecology. I take the classic statement of the objection to blueprinting to have been given by John Stuart Mill: briefly, external nature is so complex, encompasses so many different kinds of phenomena, that it is impossible to take seriously any proposed "lesson" as the authentic natural one; the selection will reflect prior commitments to this or that set of human values and purposes rather than a genuine recognition of what is authentically given in nature. Unfortunately, Mill's statement of the argument is coloured by a definitely dualist attitude towards non-human nature, and I draw attention to this side of his approach in order to distance the otherness view 14

INTRODUCTION

from it. However, to say that nature itself provides no grounds for blueprinting, and so does not morally determine one (type of) cultural landscape, even within a particular region, is to refer to a sense in which non-human nature is significantly neutral with respect to landscapes. Recognizing this neutrality is an important element of respecting nature's otherness^ as I understand it. In Chapter 3 I distinguish between three kinds of landscape (or landscaping): "rational", in which the instrumental importance of independent nature to the viability of the landscape is recognized; "reasonable", in which an appreciation of nature's instrumental importance is supplemented with the otherness view or respect for nature's otherness; and "blueprinting", in which the landscape is taken to embody the authentically natural moral and political order. A blueprinting landscape may be a rational one, but not a reasonable one; it excludes a full appreciation of nature's otherness. In these terms, my task in Chapter 4 (Liberal landscape) is to explain why landscapes in which the political culture is liberal should be reasonable, rather than (at best) rational. How and why should the otherness view be incorporated within liberal political philosophy as a fundamental commitment alongside human freedom and equality?41 By liberalism I do not mean the so-called "neo-liberalism" associated with the idea that the free market is a solution to all problems. As I have said, Rawls's political liberalism will be my main representative of modern liberalism. As we have already noted, Rawls himself is the most influential political philosopher, let alone liberal political philosopher, to interpret his political theory as hostile to a non-instrumental concern for nature at the political level. "Justice as fairness" might be extended to acknowledge the instrumental importance of independent nature for human beings, but must, he thinks, exclude non-instrumental concern from the politically decisive arena of public reasonableness (as must all forms of political liberalism). I believe this to be a mistake. The particular aspects of liberal political philosophy that I focus on to show this are the related ideas of neutrality (of reasons) and anti-expressivism. "Anti-expressivism" rejects holistic accounts of proper political institutions as strongly expressive of citizens' deepest personal commitments. "Neutrality" here means that the fundamental principles shaping the state should not be derived from conceptions of the good life not shared by all reasonable citizens. The continuity I wish to establish between respect for nature's otherness and these liberal ideas can be put roughly as follows. Respecting natural otherness requires not identifying oneself (or humanity) with wider nature, and recognizing that wider nature is not merely an extension of human culture, and that the latter is not determined physically or morally by the former. Similarly, liberal "political reasonableness" requires accepting that, 15

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at least under pluralist conditions, the state should be neutral at the level of the justification of principles of justice. It should not be expected to enshrine one's own conception of the good life. Thus, one should not identify with the state to the extent of expecting it to be the political or coercive expression of one's "non-public" (e.g. religious) commitments. In pointing to such factors as the neutrality of his political liberalism and the otherness view of nature, my aim is not to defend everything else in Rawls's theory, but to show that a certain continuity of reasonableness is there. My main strategy is to show that the more neutrality is invoked and emphasized in order to exclude the otherness view as a "natural religion", the more this continuity is made visible. It is most visible in the context of political liberalism, but I finish Chapter 4 by indicating how the argument can be extended to perfectionist, universalist and comprehensive forms of liberalism, which seek to deny or downplay their neutrality; these tend to remain neutral enough and sufficiently anti-expressivist to be ripe for greening in the same way. Compare Wissenburg's comment that the idea that there are limits to growth and obligations to future generations, is exactly what is needed to put environmental issues on the liberal agenda: without these physical limits, only moral reasons could draw attention to the relations between human beings and the environment - and liberal neutrality might well consider the latter an issue for private rather than public deliberation.42 I argue that it is precisely because of liberalism's (at least implicit) commitment to neutrality, with its related suspicion of strongly expressivist modes of politics, that it should treat respect for nature's otherness as a reasonable public commitment. Political reasonableness should encompass reasonable landscaping, including the recognition that there is a nature out there, the status of which should not be reduced to that of mere resource for this or that landscape. Resisting this seems to require that we either simply ignore the existence of non-human nature altogether, or be content with arbitrarily assuming a purely instrumental interpretation of it.43 There are probably many objections to my argument that I have not thought of. In Chapter 5 (Some objections) I try to anticipate and defuse some possible objections that I have thought of. One is the claim that all value is instrumental value anyway, made recently by Wissenburg as an element of his thoroughly instrumental version of green liberalism. Another is the suspicion that a blanket ascription of non-instrumental value to non-human nature can never ground a satisfactory environmental 16

INTRODUCTION

ethic, because it cannot determine one course of action over another. Finally, I consider the view that any political theory that is both green and realistic has to be a radical theory, aiming at total transformation, and not merely reform, of the political status quo. With regard to this issue I critically discuss Carter's eco-anarchist theory (in his A Radical Green Political Theory) as a recent, sophisticated version of the claim that the state as such must be opposed for there to be significant change in a green direction; attempts at reforming the liberal state are doomed. The upshot of my discussion is that negating the state is a much more problematic route than seeking its reform.

17

CHAPTER 2

Nature's otherness

2.1 Introduction What is the otherness view of nature's value that I have been referring to? Before going on to make the political connections I have in mind, it will be necessary to discuss the main elements of the otherness view. That is what follows in this chapter. I will clarify the otherness view partly by distinguishing it from some apparently similar views, as well as some that are more definitely different. I will also discuss some of the difficulties involved in keeping nature's otherness clearly in focus. Towards the end of the chapter I discuss what seems to be the most appropriate way to understand the concept of the value to be attached to nature in virtue of its otherness. First of all, though, it seems important to point out that nature's otherness is not a wholly unfamiliar basis for its value. It would not be right to think of it as the basis for a revolutionary perspective, or as requiring an entirely new environmental ethic. Much of the spirit of the otherness-based view is expressed, for example, in these comments by John Passmore: the philosopher has to learn to live with the "strangeness" of nature, with the fact that natural processes are entirely indifferent to our existence and welfare - not positively indifferent, of course, but incapable of caring about us - and are complex in a way that rules out the possibility of our wholly mastering and transforming them. So expressed, these conclusions seem so trite and obvious that one is almost ashamed to set them out. In general, if we can bring ourselves fully to admit the independence of nature, the fact that things go on in their own complex ways, we are likely to feel more respect for the ways in which they go on ... The suggestion that we cannot do this, that, inevitably, so 18

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long as we think of nature as "strange", we cannot, as Hegel thought, take any interest in it or feel any concern for it underestimates the degree to which we can overcome egoism and achieve disinterestedness.1 I think Passmore's views here are important and basically true. The very recognition of nature as independent may generate a respect for it. We can never entirely master or humanize natural processes; they are present within the most artificial environments. This independent nature is "indifferent" to us. To emphasize this "strangeness" is to deny the existence of a moral community formed by human beings and other parts of the biosphere. Thus, although this is absolutely not to deny physical or biological continuities implicit in evolutionary theory, for example, or the existence of ecological "communities" of causally interdependent parts, it is to repudiate the continuity implicit in the idea of human beings, plants, animals, mountains and rivers "involved in a network of responsibilities or a network of mutual concessions",2 necessary for ethical community.3 These are important elements of the otherness view and I shall be exploring them and other elements in this chapter and the next. It is worth pointing out, though, that Passmore's use of the term "strangeness" here (he takes it from Keith Earth's phrase "the strange life of beasts and plants which lies around us") is significantly misleading. He equates nature's strangeness with its "indifference" to us, and lack of moral community with us. But "strange" also suggests "unfamiliar", and independent nature (e.g. the lunar cycle or the weather) can be familiar to us. In this sense, nature becomes less strange as natural science progresses, which is important for better predicting the consequences for the world of human activity. Speaking of nature's otherness, however, allows for this without losing sight of, for example, nature's indifference to us and lack of moral community with us. What is other need not be strange in the sense of unfamiliar. Thus the otherness view assumes that there is a really existing nature independent of humanity, that we can know things about it and that science can deepen that knowledge; our descriptions of external nature can map onto how things are, at least sufficiently well for them not merely to reflect purely human interests, concerns and conventions. It is an issue, of course, whether human classificatory and descriptive terms ever refer to "natural kinds" or "cut nature at the joints". Perhaps they never do, and they simply mark distinctions with pragmatic value for beings with certain physical and mental capacities and interests; a particular perspective, which itself varies in accordance with historical and cultural circumstance. Maybe what is truly other does not in itself conform at all to our 19

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perceptions or to the categories we find ourselves applying to it; as soon as we refer to it, or try to perceive it, we colonize it - structure it through our own perspective. I assume this is not the case.4 The otherness view, as I understand it, presupposes faith in our cognitive and perceptual capacities to discover to some extent how things are independent of us. But it does not require blanket naive realism about all of our ways of talking about the world. It requires us to be cautious about them. Presumably they are very often, if not mostly, affected deeply by our own interests and goals. For example, "weed", "pest", "game" (as in "game reserve"), "crop" and "raw material" generally refer to things solely in terms of their significance relative to human interests. But our references to the world are not always and completely like that. For example, if "mountain" means "very large rocky protuberance", then "mountainous" ("very large") is relative to us; if we were smaller there would be more mountains - they would include some of what we now call "hills". But I assume that those rocky protuberances would exist even if we did not, although they wouldn't be "mountainous" unless other beings noticed their relative largeness to themselves. Still, the term "mountain" (at least roughly) refers to an aspect of nature as other, one that can be familiar to us. It is of course nature's otherness that we are concerned with here. But one immediate thought might be that nature's otherness alone cannot be sufficient for nature's being valuable. If sheer not-us-ness were sufficient to confer value it would also do so for various things, for example, mathematics, that are not valuable in the same way or for the same reasons as nature is.5 Now it is true that nature may be valued for a variety of reasons in addition to its otherness, reasons that don't apply to things that might also be considered "other", say mathematics, or any other range of abstract or supernatural entities that might be supposed to exist in some sense independently of us. For example, (parts of) non-human nature might be valued instrumentally as a context in which people can develop physical toughness and survivalist skills, whereas mathematics cannot be valued for these specific reasons, although it is obviously useful, and might constitute a different kind of testing arena. But the special point of focusing on nature's otherness, as opposed to the otherness of other possible things, is as follows. To speak of nature as non-instrumentally valuable in virtue of its otherness is to say that it is an "end in itself", for that reason, and not just a means to our own human ends. Generally and crudely, something can be an end in one or both of two senses: a "positive" end is something to be pursued or realized for its own sake - a goal; a "negative" end is something not to be interfered with (in some way) - a constraint. The latter notion is normally applied to autonomous agents, reflecting the Kantian roots of the terminology; the fact that autonomous 20

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agents can formulate their own ends is a reason to treat them as negative ends, to refrain from interfering with them in the sense of imposing ends on them. It might also be a reason for treating them as positive ends, in the sense of identifying with their goals and helping them to realize them, and/ or helping them to realize their own potential for autonomy. I am taking it that the kind of end nature is in virtue of its otherness is a negative end; to the extent that it is treated as such an end it is "not interfered with" in the sense of ridden roughshod over or altered without constraint (and this for its own sake and not just because it might be imprudent for us to do such things). Thus one fundamental aspect of respect for nature's otherness is a recognition that it is not, as it were, "just there" to be used as we see fit. I am taking it also that nature as other is not a positive end. Even if we think that (any part of) independent nature has ends of its own, to seek to identify with them and make them our own, or see them as external endorsements of our own goals, is to ignore nature's otherness. So not identifying one's own ends, or those of one's culture, with the goings on of independent nature is another fundamental aspect of respecting nature's otherness. I shall be returning to these themes and saying more about them.6 For now the question is, given that mathematical entities are also "other", should they not also be thought of as negative ends, if nature is in virtue of its otherness? I think not. The crucial point is that we cannot interfere with mathematical entities; we cannot, for example, damage the series of natural numbers or make them extinct. Talk of ends seems to make sense only in the context of practical reason - the consideration of reasons for action or inaction. Whereas it might be thought that the contemplation of mathematical entities or the performance of mathematical operations can be ends in themselves, activities worth doing for their own sakes, presumably nothing we can possibly do or not do could have any effect on mathematical objects themselves, should they have some kind of independent existence. Nonhuman nature is something we can affect.7

2.2 "Naturalness", otherness and landscapes At this point another objection might leap to mind. Leaving possible abstract entities and supernatural beings aside, "nature" is simply everything that exists and happens, including humanity, human action and its consequences; all of it is natural.9' As Mill argued, moral appeals to "the natural", in this sense, are vacuous.9 Nevertheless, as Elliot points out, the term "nature" (or "natural") is commonly "modified to mark a distinction 21

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crucially important to environmental evaluation". But the kind of distinction he has in mind, which is required to refute this objection, can be drawn in different ways, some of which seem better than others. He draws a distinction between the natural and the artificial, where "artificial" refers to "what is brought about, intentionally or otherwise, by human action".10 For Elliot, "naturalness" in this sense of "non-artificial" is one (but not the only) environmentally important value-adding property, although this should not be taken to imply that artificiality is always value subtracting, or outweighed in value.11 Similarly, Goodin's "green theory of value" says that "naturalness" imparts value to things, where this is a matter of the history and process of their creation. Things in the world with an origin independent of human intentions, concerns and actions are natural in this value-adding sense.12 Goodin compares this to the way in which we take procedural considerations (or the satisfying of certain procedural conditions) to confer legitimacy, and indeed value, to political outcomes.13 He also points to the parallels between the way in which we generally take replicas, fakes and forgeries in the aesthetic sphere to be less valuable than originals, and our similar responses to forging nature (the replacement of real trees with realistic plastic replicas and so on): a response explained by our valuing naturalness.14 These notions of naturalness as value-adding property are very close to, indeed encompassed by, the otherness view. But thinking in terms of the otherness view has a number of advantages. Much of what Goodin, for example, says about naturalness as opposed to fakery and related issues is plausible and consistent with the otherness view. However, it is worth stressing that "natural otherness" (or just "otherness" for short) conveys what seems to be meant more precisely than "naturalness". This is not a trivial semantic issue. Otherness makes much more explicit the absence of human purpose within the history and creation of natural things. The naturalness of the process of creation confers value on its product because the procedure is other in that it is not the expression of any prior human purpose, design or conception of the good. Forging or faking nature is problematic because it negates nature's otherness by substituting objects made in accordance with human design (albeit one inspired by nature) for those lacking a humanly designed origin and tendency of growth. Similarly, an advantage that the otherness view has over naturalness, as employed by Elliot, is that it doesn't rely on a strict distinction between nature (as other) and artificiality as such. The concept of artificiality is problematically question begging when built into the distinction between humanity and its doings, and non-human nature and its (at least likely) doings. As Elliot admits, his nature-artifice distinction is fuzzy because "creatures other than humans are almost certainly higher order intentional 22

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systems and arguably some exhibit culture, social organization and rudimentary economic arrangements". 15 The problem is that the likely existence of such creatures means that the nature-artifice distinction does not properly map onto the human-non-human distinction. Perhaps Elliot's notion of naturalness turns out not to apply to them. However, with its emphasis on not-us-ness, rather than non-intentionality as such, "natural otherness" encompasses any such non-human creatures, their activities and their artefacts. Thus, if nature's otherness is a value-adding property, then (unlike natural as non-artificial) it encompasses any intelligent, tool-making, cultural non-human organisms that exist, and their marks, track-ways and tools.16 In a later discussion, Elliot explicitly rejects otherness as a basis for nature's value, while endorsing Bernard Williams's observation that sensing "nature's otherness might engender pervasive and overwhelming fear".17 His thought is that for nature's otherness to be grounds for valuing nature, its recognition needs to be supplemented with an appreciation both of nature's aesthetic value and the fact that this value does not reflect intentional design or purposive intervention. He and Williams are certainly right that nature's otherness can provoke fearfulness, which should be distinguished from respect for it as such. I shall return to that issue below. But it is worthwhile to make the following three points here against Elliot's criticism of otherness as a basis for nature's value. First, as just mentioned, it already encompasses absence of human design. Secondly, citing nature's capacity to evoke aesthetic responses as a necessary element of its value gives that value an excessively instrumental focus, against Elliot's own intention. Certainly, nature's aesthetic value is a great blessing for us, and perhaps it can help us to overcome our fearfulness so that we can come to respect nature's otherness as such. But this is to talk primarily about what is good for us, rather than what is good about nature in its own right. Consider that Elliot rightly allows that sciences such as ecology contribute "to the elimination of that fear of the natural which derives from bewilderment and the absence of understanding".18 But he makes this point without feeling required to infer "scientific value" as a necessary element of nature's value. If aesthetic value is a necessary accompaniment to otherness because it makes nature less frightening, then "scientific value" must be necessary as well. In both these cases though - aesthetic and scientific - the focus has shifted away from nature as valuable for its own sake to nature as valuable in virtue of its capacity to evoke certain desired responses in us. Thirdly, if nature's otherness is rejected as an unsuitable basis for value because that aspect of nature might also engender fearfulness, it is unclear why otherness plus non-intentional aesthetic value should be suitable. Acknowledging such 23

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value remains consistent with experiencing fear in the face of nature's otherness, including its indifference to human purposes, as when contemplating the terrible beauty of a volcano "thoughtlessly" erupting as part of the vast processes of the earth's carbon cycle. On a more everyday level, maybe there would be less fear of commonplace, harmless spiders if they could be more beautiful as they scuttle, utterly oblivious of human sensibilities, across living-room floors. This raises again the fuzziness of the distinction between the human and non-human spheres. Take another version of the distinction, outlined by Rolston,19 this time invoking the notion of "landscape". He contrasts nature with the supernatural and with culture. A "landscape", though, is "the shape of nature, modified by culture, from some locus, and in that sense landscape is local, located". So the notions of nature and culture are cut across by that of "environment", which is "the current field of significance for a living being, usually its home, though not always, should an animal find itself, for instance, in a strange environment ... humans have both natural and cultural environments... landscapes are typically hybrids".20 This notion of "landscape" as the shape of local nature as modified by culture is very important, and it will be given a lot of attention in what follows. It allows us to gloss "respecting nature's otherness" as respecting nature as it is independent of the significances attributed to it, and the modifications made to it, within local landscapes. Still it remains true that if landscapes are hybrids of natural and cultural environments involving the modification of nature, there is bound to be some difficulty saying exactly where landscapes and nature as wholly other begin and end. This is also important, of course, but not to the extent that it undermines in theory the distinction between ourselves (and our landscapes) and nature as other; any more than the difficulty in identifying a precise boundary between being bald and not bald undermines the distinction between baldness and hairiness. Another advantage that talk of otherness has over talk of naturalness is that it reduces the likelihood of conflating ethically vacuous and nonvacuous senses of "natural". Because the term "nature" can mean "everything that happens (including human activity and its consequences)", to call something valuable because of its naturalness can seem pointless: a purely empty gesture. If everything is valuable because natural, then singling particular things out as valuable because natural can be dismissed as a waste of time. Such dismissiveness would be based on a mistake, of course, but it is a mistake invited by treating "naturalness" as the name of a value-adding property. Goodin also considers the objection that because humanity is part of nature - human action and its consequences are just as "natural" as anything else - "naturalness" cannot serve as a basis for significant value judgements.21 But his main response to this is that although 24

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human beings are part of nature, not everything human beings do is equally "natural" in the terms of his account.22 He then goes on to distinguish societies that are relatively more "natural" because they are broadly more "in harmony with" nature, and those that are "less natural" because they greatly "impose on" and "tyrannize over" nature. Thus the English countryside is more in harmony with nature as it is in itself than is the Los Angeles megalopolis, which involves a greater disruption of natural processes, a more determined superimposition of human order onto the natural order. Similarly, French formal gardens are less "in harmony with nature" than are English landscape gardens.23 This line of thought is worth pursuing in order to contrast it with the otherness view.

2.3 Goodin, naturalness and meanmgfulness Notice that Goodin does not simply equate "naturalness" with "untouched by human hands". In effect he is claiming that different human landscapes involve more or less disruption to their natural surroundings. Nature's otherness also cannot be equated simply with nature as it is, untouched by human hands.24 Nature as other is present within cultural landscapes, and landscaping can be pursued with more or less sensitivity to the otherness of local nature. But it seems to me that to talk of activities or societies (or their landscapes) as more or less natural, as opposed to more or less respectful or destructive of independent nature, is mistaken. Certainly there are crucial judgements to be made between the different degrees of destruction of, or qualification of, nature as other involved in this or that landscape. But I want to put it that way rather than talk in terms of degrees of naturalness as degrees of living in harmony with nature. This latter has (albeit unintended) connotations of taking cues from, or following lessons or blueprints somehow inherent in, independent nature. Thus another mistake invited by talk of valuing naturalness, is that of conflating respect for non-human nature on the one hand with something quite different (almost the opposite in fact); namely, taking "following nature" to be a moral or political imperative for human beings. I have already suggested that this is a matter of ignoring nature's "indifference"; that it is a mistake will be the main theme of Chapter 3. For now, it is enough to point out how misleading it is to say, for example, that Los Angeles is more or less "natural" than the English countryside (both are equally expressions of "human nature"); it is a more problematic landscape from the standpoint of the otherness view because it is more destructive and disruptive of independent nature (nature as other). 25

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To be fair to Goodin, though, having explained his response to the "humanity is part of nature" objection in terms of degrees of naturalness and harmony, he admits that a "more nuanced" way of speaking than calling Los Angeles relatively less natural and therefore less valuable is required. What he turns out to want to say is that people living in the English countryside live in a context that is more "outside themselves"; such a landscape is more valuable because it better allows its inhabitants the larger perspective necessary for their lives to be meaningful.25 Although the English countryside is just as much a landscape as is the urban sprawl of Los Angeles (or of London or Liverpool for that matter), nature - "the larger context of meaning" - is closer, more visible. I will criticize this in a moment. But notice now that what is important here is not that one landscape is in "better harmony" with nature than another, in the sense of somehow interpreting and following nature's dictates more accurately, but that they may ride more or less roughshod over other parts of nature. And Goodin reassures us that "more in harmony with nature" simply means better in these terms. So he seems to acknowledge after all that talk of harmony and degrees of naturalness are out of place, other than as shorthand for referring to what is more or less successful in terms of maintaining the larger perspective: the larger context for meaning. But it might be better to simply avoid such misleading shorthand, at least in the context of a theoretical explanation of nature's value. It is also implausible to suppose that the notion of nature as the larger context of meaning can do the work Goodin wants it to; that is, provide an explanation of the value of naturalness. He argues as follows: people want to see some sense and pattern to their lives; this requires their lives to be set in some larger context; the products of natural processes provide that desired context.26 But this argument does not show (or explain) why naturalness in particular should confer important value. If a "larger context" is necessary for the meaningfulness of human life, it does not have to be independent nature. It could be a landscape (nature-culture hybrid), or a state, or an economic class, each possibly supplemented with a story of its historical destiny.27 Such "larger contexts" could involve damaging disregard of independent nature. Goodin, of course, goes on to say that it is nature's externality to "forms of life" that is most important; the lives of individual people take place within the larger context of forms of life.28 I want to say that respecting or valuing nature as other requires remembering it is there, which crucially involves not identifying it with the cultural landscape. But I do not want to claim that a culture or form of life animating a given landscape without regard to nature's otherness lacks meaning. If the thought is that human life as such (individual and collective) is (relatively) meaningless without the "larger context" provided by a discernible and 26

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acknowledged external nature, then questions of how we should relate to and act upon that larger context are still left open. It is not as if we are (ever going to be) in the position of utterly destroying external nature and therefore an external context for human life.29 It seems, then, that pointing to independent nature as a necessary larger context for meaningful human life does not in itself explain why it is valuable in a way that gives us reason not to be utterly exploitative of it. It does not ground or explain the greenness of Goodin's green theory of value. A supplement is needed; perhaps the assumption that external nature is an end in itself simply in virtue of its otherness would serve. It might be replied that the otherness view is vulnerable to the same charge: nature as other will always be out there whatever we do. However, the otherness view allows us to attach disvalue (in principle) to any act, institution or practice that qualifies nature's otherness in any way or destroys any part of nature as other. Since this would apply to pretty much everything we do, judgements of degree are required, but allowed, by the otherness view.30 It seems to me that the nature-as-external-context-for-meaningfulness view, on its own, does not say even that gratuitous destruction of nature is automatically suspect, because such destruction would not amount to the removal of an external context. There is also the problem31 that if "being meaningful" requires location within a larger context there is an infinite regress, unless one arrives at a context that is either meaningless itself, or inherently meaningful itself.32 Where does this leave non-human nature? Putting aside the possibility of a supernatural "larger context" within which nature itself is rendered meaningful, there seem to be two options. Either nature is intrinsically meaningful, not in need of a larger context to make it so, or it is just meaningless. Neither of these seems satisfactory, at least not in the context of Goodin's intended explanation of his green theory of value. Should we say that nature is a necessary context for the meaningfulness of human life and culture that is itself inherently meaningless? That is why it is valuable? Surely not.33 On the other hand, if we take nature to be inherently meaningful, there seems to be no good reason why we can't take the same to be true of human life. If it is, we can still say, if we want, that individuals who take no part in projects outside themselves and identify with no wider concerns, not even imaginary ones, live lives that lack meaning. But as we have seen, these wider projects and concerns need not be at all respectful of non-human nature. They could involve the wanton destruction of value, in nature and/or in humanity. In this case they bestow meaning all right, but one we would wish they didn't. I have argued that "otherness" is a better way of focusing concerns expressed by "naturalness" views, which are represented here by the theories 27

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of Elliot and Goodin. In effect the otherness view encompasses the good parts of their theories, while avoiding the bad parts. The good parts are wrapped up with the emphasis on nature's independence of human purpose as a basis for its value. Here it is very important to mention also that with their intended emphasis on non-human origin, such accounts remind us that independent nature is a process and not just a collection of objects. If this is not borne in mind then attention may become fixed on particular natural objects in a way that effectively replaces natural processes with landscaping processes.34 Attempts to preserve objects in a particular condition, or even restore them to it, may be motivated by the false belief that this is to preserve or restore a completely independent nature, rather than some aspect of the landscape.35 This is not to deny that the items themselves (say animals or species of animals) may also be valuable in virtue of their natural otherness. It is not necessary to put so much weight on the distinction between objects and the processes (say natural selection) whereby they come to be the natural objects they are, as to suggest that only the processes are valuable.36 I have suggested that the bad part of such "naturalness" views — avoided by the otherness view - is that they tend to invite the "but everything is natural", "there is probably non-human artifice", and "it is a mistake to try to follow nature" objections (the last of which will be discussed at length in Chapter 3). I have also suggested that the distinction between humanity and nature necessary to refute the first of those objections makes use of the notion of "landscape", described by Rolston as a nature-culture hybrid. So nature as other is nature as it is, independent of the significances given to it, and the modifications made to it, within human landscapes. But I have been at pains to deny that societies that ignore, forget, try to shut out, or ride roughshod over independent nature therefore "lack meaning". Thus the otherness view does not encompass Goodin's explanation of the value of naturalness. Now, Goodin suggests that a "green theory of value" should include some explanation of why the things it says should be valued - for example, "natural things" - are valuable.37 Unfortunately, it is when he gives his explanation (independent nature is valuable in providing the larger context in which human life is meaningful) that his own theory goes most awry. "But," it might be said, "at least he tries to explain why naturalness confers value, which is more than you do for nature's otherness!" I have two responses to this. First, it misunderstands my main intention, which is to treat as a given that nature is valuable in virtue of its otherness: a given to be clarified and its affinity with liberal political philosophy to be established. In effect, establishing this affinity will constitute an explanation of why those who accept that political philosophy should also accept the otherness view of nature's value.38 Secondly, although it does not strictly prove that nature as other should be respected as a negative end, 28

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the following consideration is important. The objective39 recognition of nature as other is a recognition of non-human nature as it is, independently of the uses found for it within human landscapes. Given the availability of this perspective, the onus is on those who would ignore it in favour of a purely instrumental view of nature to explain why that is reasonable. Otherwise, their unremittingly anthropocentric instrumentalism would appear to stem from an arbitrary human chauvinism.

2.4 Otherness and fragility, ours and nature's I mentioned earlier that there is bound to be some fuzziness in the distinction between humanity and nature as mediated by the notion of cultural landscape. I now want to emphasize that with this fuzziness comes significant fragility for nature's otherness. Presumably every human intervention and artifice qualifies the otherness of nature, at least by altering the course that things would otherwise have followed. In that sense, independent nature, to the extent it is in our grasp, is physically vulnerable to our landscaping. But there is also a kind of intellectual fragility involved with the difficulty of maintaining natural otherness in view: the ease with which it is overlooked in the cultural process of feeling at home and secure in a landscape. It is easy to identify nature and landscape in thought, to think of nature only as it features in our own landscape. In this sense, external nature is vulnerable to the encroachment of landscape, not so much through a process like excessive gardening but through an intellectual oversight. It is an oversight because nature as other is not identical with any landscape. And, as we will see at greater length in Chapter 3, nor does it physically determine one particular landscape in any given location, either physically, or "morally", by supplying lessons in right action and social organization. Still, there are pointers to be gained from human activities and organization with respect, and disrespect, to nature's otherness. Consider the statue builders of Easter Island, who are thought to have pursued their inter-clan rivalry in ceremonial statue building to the point that a densely wooded island was deforested and rendered too infertile to support that culture. An inward-looking cultural obsession brought ecological disaster, which in turn brought social disaster.40 This illustrates an instrumental, prudential reason for keeping nature's otherness at the forefront of attention; one grounded in our fragility. The ecosystem of the island was not just there as a resource for statue production, or as an indefinitely willing backdrop to their rivalries. As Midgley remarks, 29

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What astonishes us - each time that we hear of it - is the way in which such obviously approaching shortages don't inhibit building. Traces of this same obsessive process have been seen in many ruined cities elsewhere, especially in that cradle of human civilization, the Near East. People occupied in constructing something grand are extremely slow to see that they might need to worry about the ground they are standing on and the air that they are breathing. The statues were evidently the Easter Islander's skyscrapers, their Empire State Building, their moonshot and Tokyo Tower and Canary Wharf.41 Valuing independent nature non-instrumentally, "for itself", seems likely to buttress instrumental reason,42 although this is still a matter of our fragility. Such prudential concerns obviously may accompany respect for nature's otherness, in the sense of valuing nature non-instrumentally for its otherness, but should not be confused with it. For example, consider Keekok Lee's account of respecting nature's otherness.43 Her aim is to articulate a concept of value in nature encompassing, but not confined to, biotic nature, and therefore not confined to the earth's biosphere. This would, for example, provide grounds for refraining from "terraforming" Mars, if that becomes a practical possibility.44 Lee states three "fundamental truths", recognition of which requires giving attitudes of awe and humility precedence over arrogance and dismissive superiority towards "the Other" (her term) that is nature. We should maintain a "respectful distance" from nature, avoiding "excessive demands of any kind upon it, not only those to sustain ever-increasing consumption, but even those which express our love for it".45 This seems right, but there are two features of her position that I think it important to disagree with. One is that she equates this respect and humility towards the (natural) other, with viewing nature as a "locus of intrinsic value". We shall see below46 that, strictly speaking, this is a mistaken application of the notion of intrinsic value; for now we shall take "intrinsic" to mean "non-instrumental". The "fundamental truths" Lee mentions are, first, the non-teleology thesis: nature exists "for itself", without reference to human purposes. Given that we value ourselves because we exist "for ourselves", consistency requires we do the same for nature. Secondly, the autonomy thesis says that nature's "origin and capacity for continued existence and function independently of humanity" imply that we recognize nature's value as similarly independent. Thirdly, and this is my next bone of contention, the asymmetry thesis rests on a recognition of "our total dependence on Nature, and Nature's independence of us, [and] reinforces the Autonomy thesis and emphasises the independence of Nature's value".47 30

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It is not that Lee's asymmetry thesis is false or unimportant. The problem is that by building it into the very notion of nature's otherness, she undermines it as a basis for non-instrumental value. Obviously we are utterly dependent on nature, and we had better remember and respect that fact. And perhaps "respecting that fact" requires acknowledging that nature is other, part of the meaning of which is that it is "indifferent", not organized around our welfare. The Easter Islanders presumably forgot this, and Midgley might be right to suggest that many of us, including many powerful individuals and institutions - "those involved in constructing something grand" - are in a similar state of forgetfulness, or ignorance, about our relative fragility. But remembering this is not the same thing as viewing independent nature as non-instrumentally valuable in virtue of that otherness. Unfortunately, Lee's asymmetry thesis suggests too much, again, the fearfulness that Elliot associates with recognizing nature's otherness: what Bernard Williams calls "Promethean fear" - "a fear not just of the power of nature itself, but of taking too lightly, or inconsiderately, our relations to nature". It reflects a sense of an opposition between ourselves and nature, as an old, unbounded and potentially dangerous enemy, which requires respect. "Respect" ... not first in the sense of respect for a sovereign, but that in which we have a healthy respect for mountainous terrain or treacherous seas.48 Although presumably more prevalent historically as an attitude towards nature, Promethean fear cannot ground non-instrumental respect for nature's otherness. Rather, it seems to crowd it out, and so represents an important source of the otherness view's intellectual fragility. In so far as nature is viewed as a danger to be guarded against or an enemy to be overcome, it is viewed only in terms of how it may thwart or advance human purposes. Respect for nature's otherness in itself implies fear, not of the consequences for us of our own carelessness "in the face of an old, unbounded and potentially dangerous enemy", but of the consequences for it of our carelessness and arrogance. Promethean fearfulness substitutes anxiety about our own fragility, and that of our landscape, for concern about the fragility of nature as other. Presumably the more threatened a landscape is by "natural disaster" - harvest failure, drought, flood, earthquake and so on - the more likely its inhabitants are to make this substitution.49 Despite the thrust of the rest of her account, Lee's asymmetry thesis seems more like a manifestation of Promethean fearfulness. For example, as she points out, the equilibrium of the inner solar system, including 31

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Earth's solar orbit, requires the continued existence of Mars.50 But this is not true for, say, the fifteenth smallest piece of rock lying within ten miles of Mons Olympus. That rock, like Mars, satisfies the non-teleology and autonomy theses but, unlike Mars, it does not satisfy the asymmetry thesis. This is true also for any given terrestrial biological individual (and for many collections of them). So the asymmetry thesis introduces an excessively instrumental element; many things in nature, despite their independence of humanity, do not fall under Lee's account simply because humanity does not depend on them. Respect for nature's otherness, as an element of the otherness view presented here, is better understood to involve the non-teleology and autonomy theses without the asymmetry thesis.

2.5 Eco-feminism, otherness and dualism Now it might be thought that in excluding reference to humanity's dependence on nature from the conception of nature's otherness, I am effectively endorsing what eco-feminists call a humanity-nature "dualism".51 I think it is important to stress that this is not the case. Eco-feminism treats the denial, or ignoring, of dependence as partly diagnostic of a dualizing "master" perspective: a prelude to the denigration and ruthless exploitation of the other. According to Val Plumwood, Dualism, as a way of construing difference in terms of the logic of hierarchy ... has been discussed by many feminist and ecological thinkers ... In dualism, the more highly valued side (males, humans) is construed as alien to and of a different order of being from the "lower", inferiorised side (women, nature) and each is treated as lacking in qualities which make possible overlap, kinship, or continuity. The nature of each is constructed in polarised ways by the exclusion of qualities shared with the other; the dominant side is taken as primary, the subordinated side is defined in relation to it.52 Thus, for example, Cartesian mind-body dualism, as a form of "dualism" in this sense, involves more than the mere marking of a distinction between mind and body. It structures the different sides of the distinction in terms of a hierarchy, representing the mental as of an utterly different order from, and literally untouchable by, a physical realm, with a merely instrumental 32

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status as raw material for the plans of rational minds.53 Plumwood takes "dualism" to involve the following elements: backgrounding (the denial, hiding or downplaying of the ways the superior "master" side depends on the inferiorized "other"); radical exclusion ("the master tries to magnify, to emphasise and to maximise the number and importance of differences and to eliminate or treat as inessential shared qualities, and hence to achieve maximum separation. Ί am nothing at all like this inferior other' is the motto associated with radical exclusion"); and incorporation (defining the other only in relation to the master, or the master's desires, needs or lacks, so that the other is not attributed, or perceived to have, qualities beyond those reflecting master concerns. Thus: "the other is recognised only to the extent that it is assimilated to the self, or incorporated into the self and its system of desires and needs: only as colonised by the self. The master consciousness cannot tolerate unassimilated otherness"). The following two features of dualism are "important corollaries" of radical exclusion and incorporation: instrumentalism (the interests and ends of the inferior other are ignored, denied or simply assimilated to those of the superior master side, so that whereas "the upperside" is an end in itself, "the underside" has only an instrumental identity as a mere resource); and homogenization or stereotyping (the disregarding of difference and diversity among the inferiorized group: "To the master, all the rest are just that: 'the rest', the Others, the background to his achievements and the resources for his needs").54 How does the otherness view I have been discussing fare with respect to these issues? Am I not just setting up another human-nature dualism, or perhaps merely restating a traditional one when, for example, I exclude the asymmetry thesis as a defining feature of nature's otherness, and so "background" humanity's dependence on wider nature; and when I emphasize the not-us-ness, precisely the otherness, of external nature, apparently so as to assert its "radical exclusion"? No, this is not the otherness view as it is understood here. I detached the asymmetry thesis from the idea of nature's otherness only because I want to focus on it as a basis for nature's non-instrumental value. It is not that I deny that we are in fact dependent, in a great many ways, on non-human nature. However, in so far as our dependence is emphasized, nature enters our consideration only as a means to our survival and well-being, only as our support system. That non-human nature as such is necessary for humanity's existence and well-being is presumably beyond doubt. But what is not clear is the condition that nature has to be in, what level and kinds of modification and destruction of non-human nature must be prevented or stopped, for it to continue to support human life and to do so in accordance with this or that account of human well-being. Thus, to emphasize dependency in this

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context is to invite the controversy and uncertainty that I associate with dismal instrumentalism as a starting-point for environmental ethics and green political theorizing.55 My concern to avoid this is not symptomatic of an attempt to "inferiorize" the non-human. Similarly, the sharp humannon-human dichotomy necessary to focus on nature's otherness, as a basis for non-instrumental value, is precisely that: necessary to focus on nature's otherness as a basis for non-instrumental value. "Radical exclusion" in the sense of a precursor or accompaniment to the incorporation, instrumentalization and homogenization of nature, is not part of the scene.56 So much should be clear with respect to incorporation and instrumentalization. As for homogenization, I take it that respect for nature's otherness requires notice be taken of the actual diversity and complexity of non-human natural processes and entities. Moreover, the very concept of "landscape" as nature-culture hybrid, with its acknowledgement that nature is present within human cultural landscapes - that human activity qualifies rather than completely eliminates nature as other - militates against radical exclusion of nature, or the "hyperseparation" of humanity and nature, as a feature of the otherness account. It is clear then that the humannon-human dichotomy it requires does not amount to a "dualism" in the eco-feminist sense.57

2.6 Otherness, not wilderness When thinking of nature's otherness it is important to recognize the relational character of the concept of otherness: something, A, cannot be "other" without something else, ß, to which A is other. This being so, reference to nature's otherness presupposes our own existence. One cannot report the fact that natural processes occur independently so as to discuss such independence as valuable for us, in the way that Elliot, Goodin and Lee do, for example, without (at least implicit) reference to us. This conceptual relation does nothing to undermine the independent existence and otherness of natural processes themselves, of course (they would exist, and continue in their own way in our absence), although it is essential to the concept of otherness. In this way the concept of natural otherness is like that of "wilderness". As John O'Neil has pointed out: "To say 'x has value because it is untouched by humans' is to say that it has value in virtue of a relation it has to humans and their activities. Wilderness has such value in virtue of our absence."58 Given that "wilderness" means something like "an area untouched by human beings", wilderness and natural otherness appear to be very similar 34

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notions. Still, it is important not to confuse them;59 they are different notions. Despite encompassing wilderness, natural otherness has a wider scope. For example, although it does not seem too much of a stretch to call outer space, beyond the stratosphere, "a wilderness",60 it does seem odd to call the Earth's mantle a wilderness, despite its otherness. And, as we have already seen, nature as other encompasses familiar things, such as the weather and arachnids, which are not always welcome within landscapes (perhaps partly because they tend to blur, in messy ways, the boundary with wider nature). In fact, "nature as other" can be present "from the streetcorner to the stratosphere",61 and beyond that to the edge of the universe. The streetcorner as such is not part of the purely natural environment, of course, but even there natural entities encroach on our turf - the atmosphere, herring-gull droppings, insects and so on - without transforming it into wilderness. Does the fact that many such things would not behave in the same way, or be there at all, if it were not for their humanly landscaped surroundings mean that they are not really (naturally) other? The spider in my living room would not scuttle behind the sofa to hide from me if my sofa, my living room and I did not exist; presumably that particular spider would not exist at all if its current environs did not exist (say its parents happened to meet in a cranny on the wall just outside my window). Thus it makes sense to say that humanity has had a hand in its existence and behaviour, and this qualifies its otherness. Yet it is not a robot spider, nor has it been reared, trained and put in my living room in order to make me jump. It is an "authentic" spider; a member of a species that, as far as I know, has not been genetically engineered or selectively bred; it does not seem to be at all domesticated, and has not received any conscious encouragement from me to stay. Thus it also makes sense to say that it retains a high degree of "otherness". I take it that "respecting its otherness" involves generally letting it cope and survive in its own way, and recognizing that "alarmingly ugly nuisance" (or "beautiful, entertaining roommate") does no more than describe its place in my life; it has its own existence independent of that place.62 Consider also that the fenlands of eastern England, which include protected wetlands and many wild species, are not a wilderness, but a landscape profoundly affected by millennia of human activity. Many of the particular organisms would not be there, and would not behave in the precise ways they do (e.g. herons fishing from garden ponds) if it were not for humanity. Yet it is a landscape in which natural otherness is qualified less than it is in other places (central London for example). Thus, respecting nature's otherness should not be understood only in terms of preserving pristine wilderness, and certainly should not be equated with the impossible - refraining from landscape construction 35

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altogether - because of a wilderness fixation. Limiting within landscapes the destructiveness of human activity, and the extent to which natural otherness is qualified, can express the recognition that nature is not just there, "given", for our purposes.63 In fact, it may be that the "environmental" consequences of human economics and international patterns of inequalities in wealth, power and development would often provide a more fruitful practical focus than wilderness preservation for those motivated by respect for nature's otherness.64 This is perhaps especially so when one considers how the notion of "wilderness" itself may express cultural ends to the point where it suggests a particular kind of landscape in its own right: an extension of culture into the world.65 I have in mind here the way "wilderness" suggests a kind of suitable arena within which to realize specific values (e.g. those of the rugged survivalist) peculiar to some cultural landscapes, or a place to recharge spiritual batteries flattened by the modern world. This seems to be the case with the American National Parks as areas of preserved wilderness (if that is what they are).66 Respect for nature's otherness, on the other hand, involves valuing independent nature for its own sake, not as a recreational space, a place for realizing certain human virtues and possibilities, or as a cure for alienation.

2.7 Deep ecology and strong holism Still, like wilderness, natural otherness is a relational concept and it will be important to bear this in mind later when we look more closely into the appropriate conception of the value it bestows. It is also necessary to mention it in order to emphasize the distance between this and much stronger, ontologically loaded, senses of "relational concept" sometimes associated with the "deep ecology" movement. Because it requires that we avoid identifying ourselves, and our culture, with independent nature, the otherness view is quite different to holistic philosophies, which point in the opposite direction by seeking to overcome real distinctions between humanity and nature. However, deep ecology is a broad movement encompassing a variety of different and changing views, and it is difficult to characterize precisely in general terms.67 We might perhaps simply take "deep ecologists" to be committed to thinking deeply about and taking very seriously the interconnectedness of the natural world (as in some sense the bearer of non-instrumental value) and humanity's place within it, so as to effect fundamental social change that will bring humanity to its proper place. This is all in line with an ecocentric perspective. As Christopher Belshaw has pointed out in a recent discussion, deep ecology 36

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goes beyond ecology (the science devoted to the study of natural ecosystems as systems) in two main ways.68 First, ecology is concerned with natural - that is, non-human - systems. Ecologists don't completely ignore the consequences of human action on ecosystems of course, but their focus is on the ecosystems, whereas deep ecologists will tend to delve as much into those aspects of the human realm - attitudes formed by religious, cultural and philosophical beliefs for example - that influence, perhaps in previously unnoticed ways, action impacting negatively on nature. Secondly, ecology is a "value-free" science; the ecologist simply qua ecologist should, in principle, merely describe and explain dispassionately any observed destruction of ecosystems. Deep ecology, on the other hand, is very much concerned with evaluating changes in the natural world caused by human action, typically in line with an ecocentric value position. So it tends to criticize "anthropocentric" assumptions and attitudes, the aim being to motivate "environmental activism" and fundamental social change. In these terms, the otherness view might count as a form of deep ecology, as long as we emphasize certain qualifications: "fundamental social change" need not involve abandoning, as opposed to modifying, the liberal political tradition; and "ecocentric" does not imply a blanket hostility to "anthropocentrism" as such.69 These caveats notwithstanding, some elements of the otherness view give it a certain deep ecological flavour. The interconnectedness of humanity and non-human nature (noninstrumentally viewed), and of beliefs or assumptions70 and ecologically destructive action, are central to the otherness view. And, given the connections I hope to establish with political philosophy, the aim is to change mainstream thought (and therefore action) in a more ecologically benign, non-instrumental direction. But concern with interconnectedness and systems, and the ecocentric location of value, can slide into strong forms of holism sometimes associated with deep ecology. That such holisms are inconsistent with the otherness view is the subject at hand. In so far as deep ecology is equated with them, the otherness view must be sharply contrasted with deep ecology. "To the extent we perceive boundaries, we fall short of deep ecological consciousness." So writes Fox71 in a holistic denial of the distinctness of nature. The essence of such a denial is said to be a "doctrine of real internal or intrinsic relations", where relations have ontological priority over relata.72 Perhaps the most influential statement of this is in Naess's original characterization of the deep ecology movement: Rejection of the man-in-environment image in favour of the relational total field image. Organisms as knots in the biospherical 37

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net or field of intrinsic relations. An intrinsic relation between two things A and B is such that the relation belongs to the definitions or basic constitutions of A and B, so that without the relation, A and B are no longer the same things. The total field model dissolves not only the man-in-environment concept, but every compact thing-in-milieu concept - except when talking at a superficial or preliminary level of communication.73 But in this case it seems not to be too much of a push to say that respect for nature's otherness is an obstacle to be overcome, or something to be replaced, by a radical identification with the whole, or total field, that is, with (what would no longer be) the other: as the implications of evolution and ecology are internalized ... there is an identification with all life ... Alienation subsides ... "I am protecting the rainforest" develops into "I am part of the rainforest protecting myself. I am that part of the rainforest recently emerged into thinking."74 Plumwood usefully distinguishes three senses of "identification with nature" (indistinguishability, expanded self and transcended/transpersonal self), between which some deep ecologists have seemed to slide on different occasions.75 Each of them involves undermining the otherness relation and so are not encompassed by the otherness view. One is the indistinguishability of humanity and nature involved in the metaphysical holism just mentioned. We should "identify ourselves with nature" in the sense of recognizing the universe as a seamless, unbroken whole with no ontological divide between anything and anything else, and hence between ourselves and nature. This is sometimes presented, for example by Callicott, as the metaphysical "implication" of ecology and quantum physics.76 Claims like these (and indeed the other senses of "identification with nature" distinguished above) have been subjected to effective criticism.77 But it is worthwhile re-treading some of this ground here to see why they play no part in the otherness view. That view of nature implies, and many would agree, that it is false to suppose that our commonplace distinctions between things - between me and you and George W Bush78 (assuming, presumably safely, that you are not the latter), human beings and aardvarks, the planet Earth and the planet Neptune - represent a "shallow" preoccupation with (relatively) Unreal parts, rather than the (really) Real wholes of which they are parts. Certainly things in the world, including human beings, are related to each other in many different ways; they may be parts of larger wholes (societies, landscapes, ecosystems, the biosphere, 38

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the solar system, the universe) and also themselves wholes composed of parts (cells, organs); and perhaps it is never possible to understand something in total abstraction from its relations to other things. But it in no way follows that "individuals" are unreal, or that parts are in some important sense "less real" than wholes. As Belshaw says, "to put it bluntly 'everything is connected' is true, while 'everything is one' is false".79 Moreover, if I take indistinguishability to be the ultimate truth and so believe that, despite appearances, I am indistinguishable from the biosphere, it does not follow that I will identify with it; I might identify it with me. A strong sense of nature's distinctness and independence is required for a sense of its value as opposed to mine or ours.80 This is certainly true when non-human nature is valued for its otherness, and it remains true despite the many continuities between the human and nonhuman, and whatever current physics and ecology "say" about relatedness. Whether, for example, the uncertainty principle undermines the subjectobject distinction at the level of subatomic investigation, or from a purely ecological perspective, organisms can be seen as "temporary formations or perturbations in complex flow patterns".81 Although "new physics" and "new ecology" tend to paint a holistic picture of nature as a whole, it remains possible to maintain a sense of nature's otherness (contrasted with the human realm). The required distinction has its problematic fuzziness, but that does not mean we should seek to dissolve it altogether.82 The second sense of "identification with nature", distinguished by Plumwood, involves the notion of an "expanded self". The idea seems to be that by "identifying" with other beings we acquire an expanded self that encompasses those beings. As Naess has put it, "the self is as comprehensive as the totality of our identifications ... Our Self is that with which we identify".83 The point is that we should make our self as comprehensive as we can.84 An immediate problem with this is that if the self is "expanded to incorporate natural beings", it makes protection of them an aspect of self-protection. In this case the otherness of nature is negated and concern and respect for it becomes self-interest and self respect. If what we think we do to nature we "really" do to ourselves, "environmental concern" could never amount to more than distinguishing more or less enlightened versions of self-interest. "The requisite care flows naturally if the self is widened and deepened so that protection of free nature is felt and conceived of as protection of our very selves".85 Now, as Plumwood says86 "identify" is still left vague within this context of declaring that "our self is that with which we identify". If it is literal identity so that there is no "real" distinction between the world and myself then the same problems arise as with the indistinguishability claim just discussed. However, "identify with nature by expanding the self" 39

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could mean something like "very strongly empathize" by taking its interests for one's own. In this sense my self expands as I come to have identical interests with nature. But, against this, one cannot identify with nature in this sense, if only because non-human nature as such has no "interests"; although particular organisms (and, perhaps, at a push, species of organism) do. However, I cannot make my interests the same as theirs. My interests cannot become identical with those of, say, a fox, not simply because I might keep chickens, which it will try to eat, but because, for instance, I cannot digest raw chicken flesh. And, of course, natural organisms do not all have identical interests. For example, at least at the level of individual organisms, the interests of predator and prey are incompatible. Thus making them all identical with my interests is not a logical possibility, no matter how big my self might become. There is still also the obvious danger of identifying one's own (or our own) interests with those of non-humans. It might be in our interests to identify with the interests of chickens where these conflict with the interests of foxes. But it would be delusional to then congratulate ourselves on having made progress in the project of expanding our "self" to encompass the natural.87 On the other hand, "identifying with non-human interests" could just have the weaker, more realistic, sense of expressing solidarity with specific (types of) organism in particular situations; seeking to protect their interests, where these are threatened by human activity. Plumwood gives the following example: We may identify in solidarity with an animal, say a wombat, expressing our solidarity by being willing to undertake political action on their behalf (working to remove them from vermin status, for example), but we do not thereby acquire identical specific interests, in grass eating, for example.88 If this is what "identifying with natural beings" amounts to then, as Plumwood says, the metaphysical holism and talk of "expanding the self through its identifications" is not only redundant, but a severe obstacle: We must attain solidarity with the other in their difference, and despite the ambiguity of the term "identification", solidarity here cannot be interpreted as identity; solidarity and respect cannot be understood as processes of overcoming or eliminating otherness or difference ...89 The third sense of deep ecological identifying with nature, distinguished by Plumwood, involves a further twist on the expanded self theme: the 40

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"transcended" or "transpersonal self".90 This requires us to seek, in so far as we can, a detachment from the particularities and "selfish" attachments of the biographical self, so as to achieve an impartial identification with all particulars, and hence with the whole natural world. Plumwood criticizes this in feminist terms as a "masculinist and rationalist demand for absence of emotional attachment and discarding of particular ties".91 Essentially, it seems, such an approach embodies an aspect of the master side of dualism: "In inferiorising ... particular, emotional and kinship-based attachments, deep ecology gives us another variant on the superiority of reason and the inferiority of its contrasts".92 Since it raises issues to do with the appropriate form of objectivity to apply to the value of nature's otherness, which I think must involve forming a relatively "detached" view of things, I will leave this matter until I consider the issue of objectivity below. For now it seems sufficient to point out that it is difficult to see how the "identifications" required for transpersonal self-hood can avoid the aforementioned problems of the "expanded self" approach.

2.8 Communitarian holism Another problematic form of holism in this area focuses on expansion, not of the self, but of the moral community, to encompass the natural or ecological "community". It qualifies as a form of holism because it suggests that the relations constitutive of the expanded community embody a truer map of morality than do those constituting the part or subset that is the human community. Such communitarian, or moral, holism is also at odds with the otherness view. At the beginning of this chapter I endorsed Passmore's claim that an aspect of independent nature's "strangeness" (or, as I prefer, its "otherness") is its lack of moral community with us. Viewing nature as other involves recognizing the lack of moral community over and above the causal interdependencies and relations that define ecological community. We can now put the point like this: sliding between ecological and moral senses of "community", so as to make shared moral community the vehicle of respect for non-human nature, apparently requires extending cultural landscapes out into nature to encompass everything so respected, thus negating the otherness relation. This does not mean that the otherness view implies that non-members of our community cannot be "moral patients" for us, proper objects of our moral concern. We should not think that we can have such concern only for things we can bring ourselves to think of as fellow community members. Nor does viewing domesticated non-humans within cultural landscapes as fellow community 41

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members necessarily imply any impropriety; their natural otherness has already been drastically qualified by long historical association with, and modification by, humanity, such that it seems no exaggeration to view their very existence as bound up with human purposes.93 Nevertheless, communitarian holism is an influential approach in environmental ethics. Callicott, for example, defends a Leopoldian land ethic, quoting with approval Leopold's declaration that "All ethics rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively: the land."94 I think Leopold was wrong about this. There is no need to move from ecological to moral community, unless (i) we attach moral significance to ecological community, and (ii) "moral community" is defined, elastically, as encompassing everything to which we attach moral significance, and so see as morally related to us in some way. It would then be true by definition that whenever we come to value something new, or discover a new source of moral claim upon us, we thereby acquire more members of our now newly expanded community of moral interdependents. Moreover, the Leopold declaration apparently overlooks the fact that actual moral communities cannot always be enlarged, at least not properly, just by decree. Even within the human sphere, such decreed enlargements ignore the hard cases, where ethics and morality shade into politics, of relationships between strangers, who are not part of the same concrete community (as opposed to some abstract, quasi-community such as the class of rational agents, or persons). Human beings are not all members of the same moral community, therefore members of "our" ecological community (say the earth's biosphere) are not all members of the same moral community.95 Consider how truncated and distant the notion of a genuine "world community" (as opposed to a "globalized" economy) seems. The aspiration to build a world moral community is one to get all peoples (in different human communities) to modify local interests in line with some shared norms. Realizing this aspiration, perhaps more properly called "political" rather than "moral", by decree, as opposed to negotiation and discussion, requires enormous morally problematic force. Assuming that force is not an issue, "enlarging the ethical community to include the land" can't even be an aspiration, unlike, say, "enlarging the ethical community to include China", or "persuading the world community to agree to an environmental ethic". The Leopoldian notion of "the Land" is not like the world of humanity, but bigger and more diverse. It embraces the human and non-human, and obviously cannot become a moral community through discussion and negotiation. 42

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Callicott's communitarian land ethic is largely a consequence of his preferred Humean-Darwinian value theory. He endorses Hume's sentimentalism as highly consonant with Darwin's theory of the origin of ethics, and Leopold's incorporation of this into the land ethic: the next stage of social and ethical evolution is the extension of our sympathies beyond the species barrier towards all members of the "biotic community".96 I argue below that Hume's subjectivism is an inadequate value theory to secure respect for natural otherness. For now it is worthwhile noting that, given the Humean sentiment-infused communitarian land ethic, highlighting the metaphysically holist "implications" of "new science" might be intended to inspire and buttress the desired extension of sympathies.97 Presumably much the same can be said about the relation between the "indistinguishability" and the "expanded" and "transpersonal" self approaches discussed above; overcoming the distinction between oneself and natural things is intended to help smooth the process of "identification" with them (so that the "requisite care flows naturally"). But it should be noted that if metaphysical holism is seriously intended as the truth,98 not mere inspiration, then it is in severe tension with Callicott's communitarian holism. For example, denying the subjectobject distinction is inconsistent with the latter's Humean-Darwinian roots: an analysis of value and morality ultimately in terms of the "passions" of individual subjects as directed towards objects encountered or imagined. More recently, Callicott has suggested that theories incorporating the subject-object distinction may be transcended by a "postmodern account of intrinsic value in nature" taking on board the deconstruction of the Cartesian subject.99 Perhaps this will happen, but in the meantime an otherness-based account seems preferable. Interestingly, however, there is an element of respect for natural otherness in Callicott's writings on environmental ethics, in addition to the communitarian holism. It is implicit in his emphasis of the difference between wild and domestic animals. He rightly criticizes the notion of "liberating" domesticated animals, partly because for many, as more or less "living artefacts", their liberation verges on the logically impossible, and partly because those achieving a successful feral existence would probably cause ecological problems in their competition with truly wild species.100 In this discussion he talks about the "natural autonomy" of wild counterparts of domestic animals. The land ethic, he claims, generates a duty to respect the natural autonomy of wild members of the ecological community.101 But given that something like Kantian autonomy is not the issue here, the suspicion must be that such respect is really for the natural otherness of these creatures; their behaviour being determined by their own nature, "indifferent" to us. The supposed existence of an overarching 43

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moral community embracing them and us seems beside the real point. Indeed, the strand of otherness-based respect obviates the need to posit a moral community as a necessary vehicle of ethically significant respect over and above the ecological community. Notice also that, once recognized, this respect need not be confined to particularly striking charismatic wild organisms such as timber wolves or mountain lions. For example, anything falling under Lee's non-teleology and autonomy theses would be morally considerable on these grounds.

2.9 The value of nature's otherness I want now to consider the interesting value-theoretic question that is: given that otherness is a "value-adding property" for nature, what is the best way to understand the concept of value at work here? First, should we say that nature's otherness is a basis for intrinsic value? The answer to this has to be no. Consider John O'Neill's point that "intrinsic value" tends to be understood in one or more of three senses often conflated within environmental philosophy: non-instrumental value; non-relational value, possessed in virtue of non-relational properties; and objective value.102 Let's take it that non-instrumental value is straightforwardly applicable,103 given that nature as other is meant to be valuable for its own sake, as a negative end, and not as mere means to another end, such as human interest. But this is not true with non-relational value. Before seeing this we should separate two importantly different distinctions, also commonly conflated: distinctions between means and ends and between intrinsic and extrinsic values. That these are different distinctions has been convincingly shown by Christine Korsgaard.104 The means-ends (or instrumental-noninstrumental) distinction marks the difference in the way we value things "for their own sake" as ends, or for the sake of something else, as instrumental goods. The intrinsic-extrinsic distinction is a different distinction^ one more to do with the "location" of the value than the way we do or should value things; intrinsic goods have their value "in themselves", whereas extrinsic goods depend in some way on something else for their value. Because they belong to two different distinctions, ends and intrinsic goods should not be equated; it is possible to have ends in themselves whose value is extrinsic, not "in themselves", in the sense of intrinsic. This latter, proper, sense of intrinsic value corresponds to the non-relational sense distinguished by O'Neill. Korsgaard also points out that conflating these distinctions, so that instrumental values are equated with extrinsic values, 44

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is part of what is behind the tendency to conclude that the final good must be pleasure or some sort of experience. The argument proceeds as follows: take an activity that we would naturally say is valuable for its own sake, - say, looking at a beautiful sunset. Now the question is raised: would you think this activity was a good one even if the person engaged in it found it tedious or painful? If you say "no" then you have admitted that the goodness of this activity is not intrinsic; that it depends, in some way, on the pleasantness of it. But if all extrinsic value is instrumental value, the only option is that the activity is a means to pleasure.105 Her main example to demonstrate that values can be extrinsic without being a means to pleasurable experience, even when clearly wrapped up with pleasurable experience, is that of an extraordinarily beautiful painting unsuspectedly locked up, perhaps permanently, in a closet. Now a beautiful painting, I am supposing, is valued for its own sake. If the two distinctions are equated, we must say it has intrinsic value ... [but] we know what the practically relevant property is: it is its beauty ... yet so long as it remains locked up and unseen, it is no good at all. The condition of its goodness - the goodness of its beauty - is not met. That condition is that the painting be viewed [and appreciated]. Notice, too, that this does not in the least mean that we have to say that the painting is only valued as a means to the experiences of appreciation. Those experiences are not the end to which the painting is a means, but the condition under which its value as an end is realized.106 It is fortunate that there can be extrinsic ends because the value conferred by nature's otherness cannot be intrinsic in its proper, nonrelational, sense. It must fall on the extrinsic side of the intrinsic-extrinsic distinction. As we have seen, although not at home in a strongly holistic context, natural otherness is a relational concept. Value conferred specifically by nature's otherness is conferred in virtue of a relation holding between nature and us. This is a conceptual necessity, required by the meaning of "otherness". But although this makes the value extrinsic, it does not thereby make it instrumental. Just as it is possible to value wilderness non-instrumentally,107 so natural otherness may be valued for its own sake, despite being irreducibly relational. Thus it may confer "final goodness", but not intrinsic value. It makes (independent) nature a conditioned end (although, as we shall see, we need to be wary of being 45

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swept too far in a Kantian direction by talk of "conditioned ends"). The condition of nature's value being realized in virtue of its otherness is simply that non-human nature and we exist, so that the otherness relation holds. But this is not to say that our existence is instrumentally valuable as a means to nature's otherness or vice versa. Other conditions might need to be satisfied in order for us to actually value nature for its otherness - for example, it had better not be presently threatening one's life, say in the form of a hurricane108 - but these don't need to be satisfied for it to be valuable as an end; all that is required is that the otherness relation actually be in place. That the means-ends and intrinsic-extrinsic distinctions are easily conflated in the area of environmental philosophy may be illustrated by looking again briefly at Goodin's claim that naturalness confers value because of the role independent nature plays in providing the larger context of meaning for forms of human life. He tries to refute the charge that his is a "capitalist", consumer-preference-based, theory of value, not a truly "green" theory (by making nature's value instrumental or, in his terms, a means to "consumer satisfaction"), with comments such as the following: the really central issue here is ... whether natural objects have value in and of themselves, or whether they have value only in relation to people and their purposes ... The characteristic of nature that is crucial in imparting value is the characteristic of "being part of something larger than/outside ourselves". Hence, those value imparting properties (if not the values themselves) exist independently of humanity.109 I take Goodin to mean that the value imparted by "naturalness", as he understands it, is relational value; it would be absent if we, and therefore the relevant relations, were absent, although independent nature would still be there (it is precisely independent of us). So natural objects do not have this value "in and of themselves", it is not "intrinsic" to them. Yet Goodin seems to defend the possibility of a relational, extrinsic view of nature's value, such as his own, as a way of refuting objections pertaining to the instrumentalist character of his theory. Certainly, value can be relational or extrinsic without being instrumental, but obviously it is no guarantee of non-instrumentality. The explanation he gives of why the relational properties involved in his concept of naturalness - independence of origin, being a larger context - confer value, invokes their instrumental role in allowing the meaningfulness of human life and possibilities of other forms of satisfaction. Thus nature is valuable in these terms because it serves our vital interests, even though, as he says, these 46

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might not be "crassly materialist" ones.110 In answer to the question of how we value nature in virtue of these characteristics, his (implicit) answer is "instrumentally". He obscures this by pointing out the need to accept the relational character of naturalness, thereby substituting an intrinsic versus extrinsic issue for an instrumental versus non-instrumental issue.111 Now, it might be thought that my rejection of intrinsic (as opposed to extrinsic) value in the context of the value of nature's otherness has been too quick. "Non-relational" value seems to be more or less what G. E. Moore meant by intrinsic value as dependent on the intrinsic nature of the valuable object. "Intrinsic nature" here is a matter of non-relational properties, those that something would retain even if moved to a different world, or alternative causal system.112 Thus it might be argued, in a Moorean spirit, that the intrinsic value of natural otherness should be understood as the value possessed "no matter what", by a whole comprising ourselves and nature related as other. Although otherness is a relational property, it is so only within an overall whole, which it defines, and to which it is intrinsic. Perhaps this move could work in the context of Goodin's green theory of value: the whole, comprising human life and nature related in terms of the latter's independence of and meaningbestowing "outsideness" from the former, is intrinsically valuable as such.113 But it seems a wrong move in the context of the otherness view, where it paints an inappropriate picture, precisely because it attaches value to the whole package, including us. As was the case with strongly holist approaches, such as those concerned with "enlarged selves", focusing on unified wholes seems to undermine the sense of apartness crucial to the notion of otherness. Respecting this otherness involves holding on to the fact of nature's independent existence while discussing the appropriate conception of its value. Although difficult, perhaps partly because otherness is a relational property, this is important and apparently rules out conceptions of value that would stress the unity of ourselves and nature within an overall whole, which itself is the ultimate bearer of the value. It seems paradoxical, for example, to ground respect for the "natural autonomy" of a wild timber wolf on a conception of intrinsic value attached to a whole including oneself as well as the wolf, where the actual object of value here would be a "oneself plus wolf" whole unified by the otherness relation. This is even though its natural autonomy is a manifestation of its otherness, its "going its own way", not my or our way, which is a kind of not-us-ness, independence from us, strictly inconceivable without our presence. Thus the Moorean notion of the nonrelational value of a whole seems inappropriate, paradoxical even, given that we are talking about natural otherness, rather than, for instance, stressing our membership of ecological wholes. 47

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2.10 Objectivity and fragility Having decided that nature's otherness confers extrinsic, noninstrumental value, should we think of this as objective or subjective? Environmental philosophers who are subjectivists about value tend to point out that although their analyses reduce value to human "attitudes" or "sentiments", it does not follow that objects valued as ends must be limited to the human sphere: anthropogenic metaethics does not logically entail a purely anthropocentric ethics.114 This is true but it seems to miss the point, perhaps especially when nature is valued for its otherness. It is coherent but unsatisfactory to claim that the value of nature as other is contingent on subjective attitudes. The value that nature's otherness confers is extrinsic, dependent on our existence. But although contingent on us in this way, we should not have to take it that nature's being valuable as other must be contingent on what our subjective feelings happen to be. There is a great deal of tension between (i) the view that nature is non-instrumentally valuable in virtue of its otherness, with this involving the autonomy and non-teleology theses, awe and respect for nature's independent existence and so on, and (ii) the reduction of this judgement to a matter of personal subjective feelings of value. Respect for nature's otherness seems to suggest at least that its value, its being a negative end, is not contingent on purely subjective attitudes, "up to us" in that sense. For example, we have seen that, for Callicott, Humean subjectivism provides the best value theory, at least given the tools of modernist philosophy. Human sympathy is extendable to the non-human world. But the picture this suggests, of large numbers of excessively anthropocentric people being inspired, like sulky, antisocial adolescents, to take more of an interest in, and acquire caring subjective attitudes towards, the "wider community", seems a poor one. This is not only because of the problems with communitarian holism raised earlier. Assuming that we don't want to make value entirely relative to particular agents then, as Karen Green has pointed out, subjectivism reduces questions of value to what is in fact valued by a majority of "normal" valuing agents: "If the majority see a leech filled ditch where others see a wild river of great value we will have to say that there is no value here because it is not recognised by normal observers."115 As she goes on to say, the problem is exacerbated by the standard subjectivist response to the objection that their theory cannot account for values in nature in the absence of valuing agents. The response is that natural objects may be valued by people living noncontemporaneously with them. Thus we now may value the continued presence of natural organisms after humanity's extinction. But 48

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suppose that, in the future, the millions of people who exist then in the world no longer value wilderness, and most people in the past did not value it, then the subjectivist environmentalist ought to admit that, though wilderness has properties which stir judgements of positive value in her or him, on balance it does not have value, because these properties do not induce judgements of value in the majority.116 The same point applies to nature's otherness. It cannot be a basis for value without valuers to whom nature is other. So the subjectivist strategy does capture a truth: nature then is just as other to us now as is contemporary nature. But that strategy can only work to secure the value judgement as long as the value in question is not analysed in subjectivist terms. The subjectivist analysis leaves it vulnerable to particularly chronic fragility. Nature valued as other is nature valued independently of the interpretations internal to local cultural landscapes. This value judgement can be secured only if it is not "subjective": only if it is not necessarily vulnerable to cultural variation between landscapes. The only way for the subjectivist to escape this would be for her to take the implausible step of positing a universal human sentiment - something like reverence for external human nature - as a de facto brute component of human nature. Thus a non-subjectivist reading of the value of nature's otherness seems preferable, more in accordance with the other elements of the otherness view, even though it is not a strictly logical implication of that value judgement. By the same token, however, it is important also to notice that not all forms of value objectivism are appropriate in this context. For example, Moore identified objective, non-natural goodness with intrinsic value.117 Objectivity is guaranteed by the "necessary connection" between something's goodness and its intrinsic properties, their absolute lack of variation in line with external factors including subjective attitudes.118 But as we have seen, in the case of the relational property of otherness, this value would have to be intrinsic to a whole including both nature and ourselves; it is that whole, rather than nature (as other) that would be being valued. Another inappropriate form of objectivism seems to be involved in ecotheistic views of nature's value. I take it that, for the eco-theist, nature is objectively valuable through either really being God or being God's creation. This is problematic from the standpoint of the otherness view, partly because it changes the focus from the natural to the supernatural, or to a supposed relation between the two. Certainly, at first glance, the bare notion of nature as God's creation satisfies the main criteria for otherness as we have been applying them to nature: an origin and capacity for 49

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continued existence independent of humanity. But in so far as its relationship to God is emphasized, nature's otherness drops out as a distinct basis for value; nature is not being valued for its otherness as such but for being God's creation. In this sense, introducing theism changes the subject: God is now doing the work and nature becomes valuable in virtue of its place in an overall theology specifying the proper relationships between the parts of God's creation. This would seem to be true if, for example, we see humanity "as a steward, a farm manager, actively responsible as God's deputy for the care of the world".119 The example of the "stewardship" tradition shows that the issue is not that traditional theism, say that of Judaeo-Christianity, should be blamed for promoting "despotic" instrumentalist attitudes towards nature.120 It also brings out that by grounding nature's non-instrumental value in an account of nature's relation to God (and thereby our proper relationship with nature), eco-theism undermines the sense of nature's otherness by extending notions of divinely ordained order out from the cultural landscapes they animate on to an external nature, which is then no longer really other, at least not in thought. Adapting the terminology of eco-feminism we might say that although this needn't amount to a human-nature "dualism", it does amount to the "colonization" of nature by culture. Again, this illustrates the intellectual fragility of nature's otherness: the difficulty of keeping it in view in the process of making and maintaining landscapes. Certainly non-despotic attitudes, say, can be thought right independently of their relation to God's will, even when it is believed that God has willed them. My point is that the otherness view cannot rely on ultimately theistic groundings for such attitudes.121 I am suggesting, then, that forms of objectivism that, along with subjectivism about value, are inappropriate in this context, seem to highlight further the intellectual fragility of nature's otherness, as a basis for value. They do this by apparently threatening to replace the otherness relation with relations of continuity and dependence. For example, as I have said, valuing the natural world as "God's world", although perhaps an advance in treating it as valuable merely because it is ours, makes nature's value derive directly from something embedded in and animating many (although not all) human landscapes. With this in mind we could say that the view that nature's otherness confers non-instrumental value "implies", although not always with logical necessity, the inappropriateness of some positions in metaethics and value theory. This value judgement has here the status of a given to be clarified, with implications to be explored. This situation is quite different from that of, for example, theories taking certain aspects of nature, described by particular scientific theories, as givens "implying" this or that morally charged form of strong holism. 50

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2.11 Appropriate objectivity What, then, is the "appropriate" way to understand value objectivity in the particular context of the otherness view? If none can be found then the only resort will turn out to be some form of subjectivism, despite the problems mentioned earlier. An important approach not considered so far is that of practical reasoning theories. This suggests Kant, but I will argue that Nagel's conception of objectivity is more promising. In purely Kantian terms, if nature is a final end in virtue of its otherness, it must be a "conditioned" end. Kant's unconditioned-conditioned end distinction corresponds to the intrinsic-extrinsic value distinction.122 For Kant, only humanity, or the "good will", is an unconditioned end, with its value entirely "within itself", irrespective of circumstances, although there are other conditioned ends (non-instrumental extrinsic goods).123 Objective ends are those determined by reason, thus making claims on every rational will irrespective of inclination. In terms of the unconditioned-conditioned distinction, something can be an objective end only if it is either unconditioned, or conditioned and the condition satisfied.124 Assuming that nature is an end for us in virtue of its otherness, it can be an objective end as long as we exist and the otherness relation holds. Thus Kant's approach has some attractions in this context. Making the objectivity of value a matter of what reason dictates irrespective of contingent subjective inclinations, cultural circumstances and varying conceptions of happiness seems to cohere with the view of nature as other constituting an objectively valuable backdrop, as it were, independent of cultural landscapes. Moreover, Kant's account usefully allows for the important distinction already mentioned between ends to be pursued as objects of desire or purpose, and negative ends, things not to be acted against, rather than things to be realized.125 Unfortunately it is only "humanity" that is a negative end in this sense for Kant, and this points to some severe drawbacks with his philosophy given the present exercise. For Kant, humanity, or the good will - our capacity to choose our ends freely by means of reason - is not only the sole unconditional good, but also the source of all good. That the relational character of natural otherness makes nature's value conditional is not a problem. But the extra move, that such conditional value has its source in the depths of humanity's rational agency is problematic. Kant's practical reason succeeds in finding its unconditioned condition: the metaphysical source of goodness is fully rational choice.126 Given the present context it would have been better if, like theoretical reason, it had failed. Indeed the whole Copernican-Revolutionary tenor of Kant's philosophy seems inappropriate here. We are the unconditioned condition of objective goodness; we 51

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construct the empirical space-time world through forms of intuition and categories of understanding; and we (our capacity for rational morality and culture) are the only possible final purpose of nature as a teleological system.127 This is not a good system within which to place nature's otherness as a basis for objective value. Once again, to consider it as such serves to highlight its fragility. A seemingly much more favourable practical reasoning theory, with its accompanying conception of value objectivity, is that explored by Nagel.128 For Nagel, "objectivity" is a method of understanding from a detached perspective, formed by stepping back from an initial view to arrive at a new conception taking in the original and its relation to the world. In the case of theoretical objectivity, this brings a new or extended set of beliefs or conception of reality. In the case of practical reasoning, an extended set of values or reasons for action is formed. Either way, the original view is relegated to (relatively) "subjective appearance", confirmable and correctable from the new, more objective outlook. This process is repeatable, and objectivity and subjectivity are both a matter of degree: A view or form of thought is more objective than another if it relies less on the specifics of an individual's make up and position in the world, or on the character or type of creature he is. The wider the range of subjective types to which a form of understanding is accessible - the less it depends on specific subjective capacities - the more objective it is ... [Thus] reality is progressively revealed ... [by] gradually detaching from the contingencies of the self.129 For an evaluative outlook to be "objective" is for it to be endorsed by a standpoint relatively detached from the "contingencies of the self". Nagel points out that the attempt to form ever more objective perspectives in this way can be taken too far in the area of practical reason. At the limit, nothing matters from the standpoint of the "view from nowhere"; nihilism about values follows from this maximal pursuit of objectivity. Normative realism therefore requires the retention of some relatively subjective element.130 In principle, the relatively subjective elements required to preserve values need not be tied to the specifically human perspective, only to that of beings to whom things can matter. There is no necessary commitment in this to "rational humanity" as the metaphysical source of all value. Nor is there any hint of humanity and human culture as the ultimate constructor and final purpose of empirical nature.131 However, the relevant perspective here is the human one confronted by a nature both other and non-instrumentally valuable as such. This is

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perhaps one of the most objective of human value judgements. If true, it cannot be confined to the idiosyncratic viewpoints of particular individuals or groups; all human beings are confronted by nature as other whether or not they recognize it. As noted earlier, nature as other is present from "the streetcorner to the stratosphere", and beyond. Again, every human intervention and artifice qualifies nature's otherness, at least by altering the course things would have followed otherwise, and a very large proportion of the earth's land surface has been more or less "landscaped". Still, it is hard to think of any human environment that contains nothing non-artificial: even nuclear submarines and space shuttles have micro-organisms on board. The important point here is the general one that landscapes can be constructed with more or less sensitivity to independent nature. The value judgement here - such sensitivity is right - must be consonant with at least the degree of objectivity required to recognize a nature not constituted entirely by the significance attributed within local cultural landscapes. In this way the objectivity of the value judgement presupposes a fairly considerable amount of theoretical objectivity. I mean that one must already believe that, as a matter of fact, there is an independent nature of which the non-teleology and autonomy theses are true.132 That is, one must have "stepped back" from a perspective constituted entirely by significances internal to local, cultural imperatives: this valley is the place of our ancestors, that river is our vital water resource, that range of hills is our recreational space, under this ground lies our industrial raw materials, this animal symbolizes our national character, that animal is a pest, that one provides good hunting, and so on. One must have stepped back from such considerations to recognize that there is a nature that is independent of them, a nature that is other in that sense. The value judgement, that nature's otherness confers value, presupposes such theoretical objectivity, and, as an objective value judgement itself, must be relatively less subjective than those focused only on cultural ends internal to landscapes. Notice, though, that this is not at all a matter of "expanding the self" to "encompass the world", or of seeking an "identification with all particulars" as these are revealed by a more objective perspective. Objectivity here involves, positively requires, that we avoid identifying nature as other with one's own self, interests and landscaping imperatives. If this is right, these relatively subjective perspectives will have to exist in tension with the more objective recognition of nature's otherness as a ground of respect for independent nature. Nagel's approach is useful here also because of the emphasis he gives to the tension between subjective and objective viewpoints, without seeking either the elimination of the subjective, or its complete subservience to the objective.133 Nagel stresses that not all of 53

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reality can be accommodated objectively; subjective "appearances" excluded from a more objective standpoint can still be real. For example, consider that he distinguishes types of "generality" that may characterize objective reasons. There is the "breadth" that reasons may have, as expressed by principles that are general in the sense of applying to everyone; there is "relativity to the agent", in that reasons containing no essential references to the people that have them are "agent neutral", otherwise being "agent relative"; and there is "degree of externality" or independence of the interests of sentient beings. Reasons derived from the non-instrumental value of objects are in this last category.134 Although necessarily relative to human beings, the reason to respect natural otherness seems to be general in the first two of these senses because it is external in the latter sense. This is so although the objectivity is not the maximal objectivity of the view from nowhere. But none of this means that less general and objective reasons, and the values they embody, must always give way to those that are more objective. This marks another improvement over Kant, who connects value objectivity with the "unconditional necessity" of the moral law. For Kant, objectivity is a much starker all-or-nothing affair: persons must revere the objective moral law or fail even to realize themselves as persons.135 Nagel's best-known illustration of the fact that not all of reality can be accommodated objectively is the "what it is like" of mental experience, which drops out of view in the process of achieving the degree of theoretical objectivity required to understand the world entirely in terms of physical laws and processes.136 The tension between perspectives applies also in the area of values and reasons. Like the subjective "raw feel" of experience, they are invisible from a standpoint of objectivity constituted entirely by the science of physics. However, it is not just that physical objectivity ignores them in this way; values that are more objective should not automatically replace relatively subjective values. The claim is partly that ethical objectivity must be pursuable without too much disruption of personal life and relationships constituted by relatively subjective and non-general values and reasons.137 This is important here because the objective, general view that natural otherness is valuable for its own sake has to coexist with real "anthropocentric" imperatives; that we are "naturally landscaping" creatures cannot simply be ignored - it is a fact endorsable from an objective standpoint. Perhaps an assumption that viewing nature as objectively valuable for its own sake effectively requires an abandonment of humanism, or even the suicide of humanity, leads many to deny that objectivity.138 This assumption is false given Nagel's conception of objectivity. It is also clear from this, though, that drawing on Nagel's approach to objectivity does not solve all problems. Developing a relatively objective view of the world generates 54

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the new problem of réintégration, the problem of how to incorporate these results into the life and self-knowledge of an ordinary human being. One has to be the creature whom one has subjected to detached examination, and one has to live in the world that has been revealed to an extremely distilled fraction of oneself.139 Nagel also discusses essentially the same tension using the terminology of "personal" versus "impersonal" standpoints. The resolution of this, which does not consist in outright victory for either side, is, he claims, the central problem of political theory.140 We may view the extra "impersonal" material introduced by the otherness view as making this already difficult task even more difficult, although I shall argue that it is at home within the liberal approach to politics. Both the otherness view and political liberalism involve a requirement for people to live with a kind of doublevision brought by retaining both relatively "personal" and "impersonal" standpoints. We can also view this approach as disarming the charge that objectivity, in the sense of "standing back" in order to form an impartial, impersonal viewpoint, amounts to a "masculinist universalism".141 Even if this line of criticism does not presuppose either a self-defeatingly universalized (antimasculinist) ideal in its own right, or a trivial definitional identification of "masculinism" and "impartiality", so that it is rightly posed in the first place, it is side-stepped in the present case. Objectivity does not have to amount to the fetishising of abstract, impartial reason over subjective, concrete, lived relationships and the imperatives experienced as internal to them. It does not amount to that when the tension between objectivity and subjectivity is not resolved by granting permanent total victory to one side over the other. On the other hand, that the objective/subjective tension is left unresolved in this way makes the advance formulation of specific principles to guide decision-making in line with the otherness view very difficult,142 beyond a generalized commitment to "an all-round rejection of an economy of exploitation and the uncontrolled pillage of natural resources and raw materials, as well as refraining from destructive intervention in the circuits of the natural ecosystem".143 It is only realistic to recognize this difficulty. It is wishful thinking to suppose that an algorithm for deciding in detail between difficult conflicting considerations can be discovered in advance and given universal application. But this is not to say that it is pointless to put the otherness view on the agenda,144 and I shall be arguing that it should be given the status of a "constitutional essential" as an objective consideration alongside the standard liberal commitments to the freedom and equal rights of human individuals. 55

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If we take it that nature's otherness is an extrinsic end, there is a noninstrumental, objective reason to limit intentionally the degree to which it is qualified by human activities. Notice, though, that this cannot simply be a case of respecting the interests of non-human organisms as revealed, from an objective standpoint, to be on a par with human interests. They may well be, but natural otherness is not confined to living organisms. Respecting the otherness of things with interests presumably involves discovering what those interests are, and taking them into account.145 But, as has already been emphasized, abiotic nature as such has no interests to take into account, although, of course, living organisms have interests in its being in one condition rather than another. Still, respecting its otherness involves an objective recognition that the non-teleology and autonomy theses apply here also, and that it is not merely a human resource. For reasons already mentioned, the required human selflimitation should not be thought of on the model of "extending the moral community". Nor, also for reasons mentioned above, should it be thought of only in terms of "preserving wilderness". Presumably it can involve that, but it could motivate a variety of measures: limiting economic growth, limiting human-caused extinctions, the development of technologies making human ends pursuable with less disruption of ecosystems, and so on.146 But I particularly want to re-emphasize the "intellectual fragility" of nature's otherness - the difficulty of maintaining it in view - as well as its physical fragility. Bearing the former in mind seems to me a necessary precondition of serious, sustainable, large-scale measures of human selflimitation for the sake of the latter. As Simon Schama has remarked in a different context: Landscapes are cultural before they are nature; constructs of the imagination projected onto wood and water and rock ... But it should also be acknowledged that once a certain idea of landscape, a myth, a vision, establishes itself in an actual place, it has a peculiar way of muddling categories, of making metaphors more real than their referents; of becoming in fact, part of the scenery. 147x If nature's otherness is to be remembered and respected, independent nature should not be identified with the significances attributed to it within local cultural landscapes; the organizing myths and visions of landscape should not be that much part of the scenery.

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CHAPTER 3

Against blueprinting

3.1 Introduction Social ecology In his recent book The Environmental Crisis, Mark Rowlands makes a telling criticism of Bookchin's social ecology, an influential version of ecoanarchism.1 The main defining claim of social ecology is that the domination of nature derives from the domination of human beings by human beings. Social domination must end for there to be an end to the domination of nature by human beings.2 On the face of it, Bookchin's ecoanarchism simply aims at ending the social domination characterizing "hierarchical" society, both for its own sake, and as the necessary means to saving nature from domination by human beings. It looks as if it is about that, and not about producing a social order, which, in its anarchism, is taken to be a peculiarly authentic continuation of the wider natural order. Indeed, Bookchin has expressed impatience with more "mystical" ideas of harmonizing with nature, because they tend to obscure the required critique of hierarchical social structures.3 However, things are not quite as they seem at first glance. One major problem with the claim that human-on-human domination was the original source of other forms, including human-on-nature domination is, as Rowlands points out, that it is false. It implies that there was no "domination", no purely exploitative activity, at all in the world before human beings turned up to do it to each other and then to nature.4 This is inconsistent with evolutionary theory: "That competition is one of the factors driving evolution is a truism. That getting someone or something else to do some of your work for you puts you at a competitive advantage over others who do not is another truism."5 Rowlands explains Bookchin's error here in terms of the latter's "frankly laughable" concept of evolution 57

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as driven by the "inherent striving towards greater complexity, freedom and subjectivity". Bookchin infers this "inherent striving" from an intuition that there has been a trend towards such things.6 This "laughable" concept of evolution hides from Bookchin the nasty truth that exploitation and manipulation can be adaptive and confer competitive advantage, leaving him able to believe nature was without "domination" before human beings started it. This seems right, but one can also see his odd concept of evolution as evidence of a very traditional concern with the "natural authenticity" of "non-hierarchical" anarchist society; its "complexity, freedom and subjectivity" mark its continuity with wider nature, conceived of as exhibiting those same qualities. It is not implausible to suppose that this is what inspires Bookchin's "intuition" that evolution works through nature's inherent striving towards those qualities; it is basically the same intuition as the one portraying non-hierarchical, anarchist society as the only natural form of human society. The ending of human-human domination and the consequent ending of humanity-nature domination marks a sequence of historical progress towards an "ecological society", a direction of progress mirrored in the course of natural evolution itself.7 Rowlands suggests that one might redefine "domination" in a vain attempt to save Bookchin's theory.8 For example, a special sense of "domination" is suggested by Bookchin's own interpretation of primate society. Such societies are non-hierarchical, not "dominated" by alpha males, for example, because their place is not maintained through institutionalized forms of violence. They have no state, army or police force and no imposed systems of private property. Thus "domination" is strictly an explicitly political matter, and as such can disfigure only human society.9 Whatever violence, manipulation and exploitation there is in non-human nature does not constitute "domination", which is contributed uniquely by human beings, and was entirely new to the world when human beings first did so. Indeed Bookchin complains about the application to nature of terms taken from human social hierarchies, precisely because it tends to reinforce those hierarchies by implying that they are somehow part of the natural order of things. Thus there is in fact no "domination" in nature, any more than there are any "kings of the beasts".10 Rowlands points to two fundamental problems with this line of thought.11 First, defining "domination" like that apparently makes the crucial claim that human-human domination was historically prior to human-nature domination pretty much (trivially) true by definition: presumably, if through the exercise of institutionalized force the ruling class is able to make us domineer over nature, then the hierarchical, controlling institutions must already be in place. Secondly, by severing the link between "domination" on the one hand, and exploitation and 58

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manipulation as such on the other, it undermines any necessary relation between "domination" and "environmental damage". There may be no reason to suppose that "domination", in itself, is the main problem (or even necessarily an "environmental" problem at all), when what it means is politically institutionalized violence, exploitation and manipulation, rather than violence, exploitation and manipulation as such. Again, one might add that Bookchin's implied definition of "domination", in making the historical priority thesis true by definition, also underlines the extent to which institutionalized violence - hierarchical society - is a deviation from the order of wider nature, one to be rectified only by anarchism. Until then our statist organization of the political makes us the odd ones out. So although he complains about the use of "hierarchical terms" to describe nature, and warns of the "specious projections" of human values onto nature that can lurk behind analogical reasoning from natural to social order, Bookchin seems to overlook the beam in his own eye. It is not only reactionary, hierarchical ideas and values that can be projected onto nature so as to be read back as a specious natural endorsement. Nature, and natural evolution, can be co-opted in just the same way as an endorsement of non-hierarchical liberationist political projects. Thus it is very hard to resist the conclusion that behind Bookchin's claim that we need to embrace anarchism in order to end the "domination" of nature lies something like the following line of thought. All hierarchical political relations embody a departure of the social from the natural order, which involves no "artificially" imposed order by centralized "authorities". Such a human order is precisely unnatural, an offence against a desired harmonious continuity of humanity and nature. Bookchin does not think of "domination" simply as a matter of violence, manipulation and exploitation; for example, it is not simply the careless using and destroying of things. But what it certainly seems to be in his thought is both a great wrong that must be opposed as a matter of urgency and a deviation from the order inherent in wider nature: nature's domination-free striving towards greater complexity, freedom and subjectivity. Hence social ecology in the strong sense of the authentically natural human society as faithful to, rather than betrayal of, a valued order "seen" in wider nature. This is not to say that Bookchin holds views about reading lessons from nature in a naive or simple-minded way. He actually says that "to evoke nature as the source of an objectively grounded ethics, as I propose to do, requires careful qualification".12 For example, nature thus evoked does not endorse either "scientistic Stalinist dialectics" or Fascist visions of blood and soil; such perspectives are too "particularist" and ignore the fact that nature is not a "homogeneous fabric woven from a single thread".13 Rather, the "natural matrix" for describing an ethic is nature as conceived 59

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by "radical social ecology", that is, nature viewed as "non-hierarchical" and evolving towards greater complexity and subjectivity. It seems then that views of nature, and of what nature "requires" of us, what responses are appropriate, are generally unreliable because constructed within hierarchical society. Only when non-hierarchical society is in place (or really developing) will real natural imperatives be visible, and available as the guiding ethos of ecological, or "organic", society.14 We might say, then, that for Bookchin hierarchical cultural landscapes have to be distinguished from a wider nature that offers them no support, and which they misunderstand and seek to dominate. But the landscape of non-hierarchical society, in its freedom and ecological consciousness, is genuinely part of nature, a continuation of the wider order. Thus Bookchin stresses that nature does not offer particular models or paradigms of ethical behaviour that can be straightforwardly copied by any observant person in their vicinity. Rather it provides an ethical matrix or "source of ethical meaning that can be rooted in objective reality".15 So there is a general orientation for human life and values inherent within nature, although it is inherent within nature "non-hierarchically" conceived. Some important distinctions

That such a way of thinking, whether naive or sophisticated, is wrongheaded and shows no respect for the otherness of nature, or at least should be distinguished sharply from the otherness view, is the theme of this chapter. It is also particularly important that I discuss it here for the following reason. When I claim that, contrary to common assumptions, liberal political philosophy can and should value external nature for its own sake, it might seem that I am arguing for the special "natural credentials" of a particular view of proper political arrangements: the liberal view. It might look as if I am claiming that liberalism constitutes a uniquely natural political order, an account of human political life as in accordance with a pattern or blueprint discernible in nature. This would be far from the truth.16 It is the otherness view that I think liberalism can and should embrace. Certainly, in seeking to bring together liberalism and the otherness view I am in effect agreeing with those who, like Bookchin, emphasize that questions of the properly respectful treatment of nature cannot be divorced from questions of proper political arrangements: they have to be tackled together. But the otherness view, as I am understanding it, insists that independent nature provides no lessons for us on how we should live in order to live in an "authentically natural" way, or in accordance with the order of wider nature. As I say, this will be the theme of this 60

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chapter.17 To begin with, it will be useful to bear in mind the following distinctions: (a) The attempt to identify a certain aspect of independent nature, a natural phenomenon or process as something to be emulated, a model to be copied, a natural order to be followed, or continued, by human beings in their moral and political lives. The resulting moral and political order is then taken to be peculiarly legitimate because it is authentically natural, an expression of harmony and one-ness with the rest of the natural world. Call this "blueprinting". That it is excluded by the otherness view of nature will be important to my overall argument. (b) The attempt to find out and be sensitive to phenomena and processes in external nature as these are affected by human activity, and might impact on future human plans. The point is to know and understand external nature to better aid humanity and its plans. This is a matter of "respecting" nature in the sense of being aware that such understanding and knowledge are required for human life to go (sustainably) well. Call this "instrumental respect"; although it is not "really green"18 it is a feature oí rational landscaping. It will often be a matter of local knowledge of the particularities of local independent nature that need be taken on board if a landscape is to be sustainable. But this is not always the case, as when global climate, ocean currents and temperature distributions are studied for the deleterious effects of human industry in general. (c) Respecting nature as other. This involves seeking to know and understand natural processes and phenomena as in (b), but to be sensitive to them as owed non-instrumental respect for their own sake. They might be valued non-instrumentally for a variety of reasons. But I am thinking here particularly of sensitivity to their otherness, their not-us-ness, consciousness that they have their own existence, "indifferent" to us, and so on. I want to call this "reasonable" respect, a matter of reasonable landscaping, to point towards its affinity with political liberalism. Putting blueprinting to one side for the moment, both (b) and (c), instrumental and reasonable respect for independent nature, call for ecological sensitivity. In that sense, landscapes conforming to (b) and/or (c) are "ecological" societies. Those involving both are doubly so. Notice that a practice that seems rational in the sense of instrumentally respectful, because judged to serve cultural, say economic, ends in a sustainable way, or in a way that won't jeopardise the sustainability of the landscape (a 61

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quarrying project for example), may, in a society that is also reasonably respectful, be rejected for the disturbance to natural processes it entails. Such disturbance is always regrettable from the standpoint of reasonable respectfulness and, in a reasonable society, practices judged instrumentally respectful yet unreasonable, or not sufficiently reasonable, are sometimes disallowed for that very reason. On the other hand, of course, a human culture focused only on reasonableness, as opposed to instrumental respect, would be suicidal, or could not get off the ground; in its unwillingness to qualify at all the otherness of local nature, it would not "landscape" at all. It is obviously possible for a society to be instrumentally respectful without being reasonable, that is, to attempt ecological sensitivity only on instrumental grounds. No doubt this is better than one that is not respectful at all. But it is worthwhile noting that when eco-sensitivity is confined to instrumental concern, the potential result is dismal instrumentalism. Moreover, a purely instrumental "respect" is rational only in relation to matters internal to human landscapes. To see non-human nature as only instrumentally significant is to see it only as it can be used, or be somehow of benefit within human landscapes. Notice also that blueprinting and instrumental respect ((a) and (b)) are consistent, in that a landscape might feature both by seeking to emulate a model of moral/political order taken to be inherent in some aspect of nature, while also seeking to be instrumentally respectful. In fact, although these are distinct standpoints, they are often wrapped up together, for example in the theories of eco-anarchists. There is a tendency for such theories to swerve between the claim that anarchism is required for instrumental respect (a claim often pushed to the point of dismalism19), as a matter of ecological "sanity", and a critique of the state, social hierarchy and so on as a departure from the ways of nature. In effect the resulting claim is that nature will punish us for straying too far from its ways by destroying us (in a non-hierarchical way).

3.2 Bioregionalism Consider also Sale's bioregionalism, which I take to be another notable example of a recent eco-political theory incorporating a strong element of blueprinting.20 Sale reports various "ecological laws" inherent within nature, which he thinks bioregions ought to follow in their social, economic and political affairs. Some of these are laws of scale, such as laws of local and community organization.21 The face of the earth is organized into natural regions - bioregions - defined by characteristics of geology, 62

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climate, flora, fauna and so on. These tend to be smaller than areas defined by artificial, national boundaries.22 Moreover, all biotic life is divided into communities, where "a community is an essentially self-sufficient and selfperpetuating collection of different species that have adapted as a whole to the conditions of their habitat".23 Human beings, too, live in communities. But Sale's point is that small, face-to-face communities have been historically typical, large cities being a relatively recent invention of modern industrial civilization. Moreover, he claims, small communities have been the most efficient, both socially ("social feedback systems" and "information loops" are most effective in smaller communities) and ecologically (smaller communities are better at recycling waste, using energy, adjusting to the carrying capacity of the local ecosystem and so on).24 Bioregional social organization, therefore, should be focused on the small-scale and self-sufficient, in line with the ecologically and historically given, models of efficiency. But then what is to be expected is that a diversity of "communitarian tesserae", each with their own identity, will make up the "bioregional mosaic". Diversity of human community seems to follow from following the laws of scale.25 Interestingly, this is a traditional anarchist theme: problems experienced by communities are best solved by communities themselves in their own ways, on the basis of their own local experience - solutions should not be imposed from outside. An accompanying thought has tended to be that there can be no general fixed blueprint applicable to all communities, defining what it is for them to be ideal.26 This might seem to fit well with the otherness view's rejection of seeking blueprints in nature. Unfortunately, part of the rationale for having small, self-sufficient communities as the tesserae in the bioregional mosaic is that it is in keeping with ecological laws (a blueprinting rationale), in addition to their greater efficiency at embodying instrumental (and perhaps non-instrumental) respect. The non-blueprinting aspect of bioregionalism follows from its selfsufficient localism: there is no humanly formulable general blueprint applicable to all communities, because they should decide things themselves. It is not for us, or anyone else, to impose solutions on them in advance; that is to go down the road of centralization and domination. But when we ask why should we embrace self-sufficient localism in the first place, the answer is partly in terms of efficiency, and partly in terms of "following" ecological laws of scale. Indeed, when discussing principles following from Edward Goldsmith's "two laws of eco-dynamics",27 Sale says self-sufficiency "is the most elemental and elegant principle of the natural world: all the longestablished homeostatic and evolutionary processes of nature work towards self-regulation, self-reliance, self-empowerment", and this is appropriate for us too.28 Moreover, a principle of cooperation follows from that of self63

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sufficiency: for communities to survive as self-sufficient it is necessary that they are not split apart by individual competition, exploitation and pursuit of private profit. Thus the natural lesson is to do away with market economics based on these things. There should be communal ownership within the local economies of self-sufficient bioregional communities.29 In so far as this is not achieved, human society departs from the laws followed by all the other life forms on earth, or "Gaea's laws", as Sale is fond of calling them.30 Maybe blueprinting could be rational in helping to motivate instrumentally respectful landscaping. It might be thought justified as an environmentalist form of "noble lie". But it would be unlikely to work well even in these terms. Sale's bioregionalism takes localism to be a lesson from nature, although it is not clear that that is the best way to tackle more global "environmental" issues. Consider his statement of the "bioregional vision": "To know in detail where and how one lives is nothing less than the bioregional vision."31 Put like that it seems highly consistent with the otherness view, which requires awareness of nature as a reality independent of human use value and cultural significances.32 Thus Sale talks of generally getting to know the natural characteristics of one's bioregion, including "where it is healthy and where it is strained".33 Remember that respecting nature's otherness involves a kind of double vision: a preparedness to "see" the natural elements in the landscape as nature as well as landscaping materials, to "step back" from a perspective constituted entirely by significances internal to the landscape. But then this more objective perspective will reveal also that nature as other does not exist merely locally; it is present from the "streetcorner to the stratosphere" and beyond. Consequently, respect for nature as other, and the resulting concern about "environmental" impacts, cannot reasonably be restricted to local matters. Nature doesn't just exist on the "human scale", and it can take imagination to consider it beyond that scale. Not necessarily all that much imagination though; even if the aim is only to avoid the fouling of one's own nest, it is fairly obvious that activities of distant others can thwart this aim through their impact on the wider, global, nature. Moreover, in so far as unequal political and economic power relations are serious causes of environmental problems, they surely operate between as well as within landscapes.34 Thus it is most implausible to view localism as the be-all and end-all of ecological efficiency. The "bioregional vision" needs supplementing with a preparedness to consider nature beyond the local and small scale and mechanisms to protect it, including political mechanisms that go beyond the local or bioregional.35 However, the point I am most interested in making here is whether or not a given case of blueprinting is useful in tending to promote rational 64

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landscaping, it is against reason in the sense of being false, arbitrary, dogmatic and inconsistent with reasonable respect for independent nature. Blueprinting is a form of disrespect of nature's otherness; a society cannot both be reasonably respectful of nature and go in for blueprinting. Of course, this is not to say that blueprinting is inconsistent with noninstrumental valuation of nature altogether. Perhaps it can motivate really (or deeply) green forms of noble lying. But it is inconsistent with the valuing of nature for its otherness, because it involves denying a crucial element of that otherness. Respecting nature's otherness involves precisely not identifying landscapes with nature by seeing them as uniquely "authentic" extensions into culture of a wider natural order. So the otherness view disallows the slide between two senses of "living in harmony with nature": avoiding excessive destruction of nature on the one hand, and "living in accordance with" some determinate notion of natural order on the other hand. Ecological sensitivity need not and, in the context of "reasonable landscaping", cannot amount to moral sensitivity in the sense of being able to perceive, and live in accordance with, models, or grounds, sources or matrices of moral and political activity or values supposedly inherent within independent nature.

3.3 Mill the "dualist" To see this we will consider Mill's objection to basing the special validity of a favoured moral and political order on analogies, or supposed continuities, with wider, non-human, nature. I am thinking particularly of his essay "On Nature",36 which, although defective in various ways, contains a fairly familiar lesson that many would still benefit from absorbing. I will spend some time discussing issues arising from some of the defects as a way into eventually stating Mill's lesson against "natural lessons". First, Mill's views on non-human nature appear to be instrumentalist to the point where they embody a humanity-nature dualism of the sort condemned by eco-feminists.37 Whereas the otherness view does not amount to a dualism in the condemned sense,38 the same cannot be claimed for Mill's views. It is sometimes said that Western culture, as a "master" culture, is shaped by a network of closely related dualisms, including those of male-female, humanity (culture)-nature, reason-instinct (and feelings), civilized-primitive, and so on.39 Mill's views in "On Nature" manifest several of these dualisms to the point where they apparently constitute a textbook statement of Western master culture. In particular, he manages to join up the humanity-nature, reason-instinct and civilized-primitive 65

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oppositions in precisely such a way as to suggest the radical exclusion, incorporation, instrumentalization and homogenization of the inferiorized "other halves" of these distinctions. Mill distinguishes two principal meanings of the word "nature": "it either denotes the entire system of things, with the aggregate of all their properties, or it denotes things as they would be, apart from human intervention".40 It is nature in this latter sense that is most interesting to Mill, and to us. Mill argues that the injunction to "follow nature" is "unmeaning" when nature is understood in the former, all-inclusive sense, in which everything anyone does is natural; no one can do anything but "follow nature" in that sense.41 When nature is understood in the other sense, however, the injunction to "follow nature", to "make the spontaneous course of things the model" of voluntary action, is, Mill says, irrational and immoral. This is where he shows his dualist colours. It is "irrational, because all human action whatever consists in altering, and all useful action in improving, the spontaneous course of nature". And it is immoral, because the course of natural phenomena being replete with everything which when committed by human beings is most worthy of abhorrence, anyone who endeavoured in his actions to imitate the natural course of things would be universally seen and acknowledged to be the wickedest of men.42 That is how Mill sums up his own arguments against "following nature". It is not difficult to tick off the dualistic elements within this summary. There is the homogenizing element: non-human nature is replete (i.e. "completely full") with things worthy of abhorrence if brought about by human action; all useful human activity improves non-human nature, therefore there is nothing at all in non-human nature, at least in so far as it can be affected by humanity, that useful human action could fail to improve. Mill clearly means "improved from the perspective of serving human interests" at this point. Thus his attitude towards non-human nature here is thoroughly instrumentalist; one might say that it is human centred in just the kind of way, and to an extent, that gives "anthropocentrism" a bad name. Nothing in Mill's conclusions about non-human nature suggests any awareness of redeeming features, of anything worth respecting for its own sake independently of its status, as something that ought to be improved so as to better serve human purposes, and as a kind of moral anti-lesson, a model of how the truly moral agent does not act. Thus his attitude exemplifies a dualistic "incorporation" of non-human nature; nothing else is of interest. And, of course, there is "radical exclusion" of non-human nature: as a moral agent and improver of the world "I am nothing like the inferior other" (i.e. 66

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external nature). At least "I, the rational, civilized person, am nothing like it", for, as mentioned earlier, Mill manages to weave several other dualisms into his overall humanity-nature opposition. For example, a civilizedprimitive (or "savage") dualism is a notable aspect of Mill's discussion of the implausibility of believing independent nature to be good, or a model of goodness for humanity, in accordance with the wishes of a wholly beneficent and omnipotent creator. The power of such a creator really must be quite limited, Mill thinks, for it would be necessary to suppose, for example, "that the best he could do for his human creatures was to make an immense majority of all who have yet existed be born (without any fault of their own) Patagonians, or Esquimaux, or something nearly as brutal and degraded ..."43 This is linked to a reason-instinct dualism, the difficult progress from primitive savagery towards civilization being a matter of acquiring virtue and, apparently more or less the same thing, achieving control over "base nature", including inner nature as the realm of natural instincts. For it is pointless to treat natural instincts - impulses untutored by reason - as reliable guides to moral behaviour.44 Suitably qualified, this latter point is reasonable, of course. But Mill's position is fairly unqualified: "Allowing everything to be an instinct which anybody has ever asserted to be one, it remains true that nearly every respectable attribute of humanity is the result not of instinct, but of a victory over instinct."45 And his discussion contains various examples like this: Rousseau's "advantageous contrast" of "savage life" with the "treachery and trickery" of civilization is "contradicted by all the realities of savage life. Savages are always liars ... of any point of honour respecting truth for truth's sake they have not the remotest idea; no more than the whole of the East and the greater part of Europe."46 The claim that independent nature provides no determinate, reliable blueprint for human morality and justice is true and important. But seeing its truth and importance is hindered, to say the least, when it is wrapped up with such confidently dualistic "inferiorizing" of independent nature, swathes of "internal" human nature and, indeed, the vast majority of historical humankind, as it is in Mill's article "On Nature". "Well? What did you expect?" radical critics might be inclined to ask. "After all, Mill was a liberal, and not only that but one of the great architects of the liberal world view." However, it is possible to be a liberal without inferiorizing "others" in that way. This will be the topic of Chapter 4.47 Consider now another important defect in Mill's case. As Goodin points out, Mill's main conclusion is in the form of a dilemma: either (i) human beings are part of nature, in which case the results of human intervention are just as natural as the state of things before human beings intervened, or (ii) whatever human beings do to nature necessarily counts as an improvement (at least from the human perspective).48 The defect I 67

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have in mind now is that (ii) here is clearly false. One can define a sense of "nature" in terms of the state of things independent of human activity, and yet deny that everything human beings do to nature in that sense improves it from a human point of view. In fact there are many examples that suggest that not denying it would be the height of folly (the activities and subsequent fate of the Easter Islanders, for instance). Mill would retort that all useful human activity improves nature. But notice also that one can escape Mill's dilemma by refuting (ii) with the assumption that "the human perspective" includes non-instrumental valuations of nature - which it does. "Useful" human activity might sometimes consist in protecting natural things for their own sake. Now, although he accepts the force of that strategy, Goodin says he wants to reject the first horn of the dilemma: even on the all-encompassing definition of nature, which includes humanity, not all forms of human activity are equally "natural".49 But when he comes to explain what he means by "degrees of naturalness" of human activity, his argument turns into a rejection of the second horn of Mill's dilemma. What turns out to be important is being "in harmony" with nature in the sense of not riding roughshod over it so as to destroy or greatly diminish the "larger context for meaningfulness"50 of human life. I have already criticized this claim.51

3.4 Stoic landscape It is possible to sustain a denial of the first horn of Mill's dilemma. For example, part of what Aristotle meant by saying that we are "political animals" - that is, "animals that live in a polis" - is that the well-governed city-state is uniquely self-sufficient in its capacity to bring about, or allow, the good life for its citizens. The good life (eudaimonia, or happiness in accordance with virtue) is a matter of human beings flourishing as human beings; realizing humanity's unique essence (that of the rational animal), in accordance with our place in nature as a teleological system. It makes sense, given this picture, to say that what departs from it - say stunted political communities too small to be self-sufficient, or overgrown states too unwieldy to be ruled effectively in line with the good - are "unnatural" or "perversions" of the natural order. Whether the picture is true is another matter, of course. But the ancient doctrine I want to focus on here for the moment is Stoicism. As Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism put it, "the end may be defined as life in accordance with nature, or in other words, in accordance with our own human nature as well as that of the universe, a life in which 68

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we refrain from every action forbidden by the law common to all things".52 Before returning to consider Mill's lesson, it will be useful to have a brief sketch and discussion of Stoicism.53 As the quotation from Zeno suggests, "living in accordance with nature" involves living in accordance with both human nature and wider, universal nature. Consider, first, living in accordance with human nature. The end of human life is portrayed by the Stoics as eudaimonia (happiness), which, unlike Aristotle, they conceived to be constituted by virtue alone, for only virtue - correct moral attitudes and intentions - can be fully under one's own control. No external or physical goods can be proper ends, or constitutive of the end of human life; health may decline, wealth and reputation may be lost or never attained, all through factors outside one's control. So the focus should be on attaining virtue, which in turn depends on knowledge: knowing the right thing to do at any given time, and acknowledging that success in achieving the objects of one's actions is irrelevant to happiness, because that also is not in one's power to guarantee. Knowledge is attained by right reasoning. The proper functioning of reason, the rational element of the soul, thus brings moral correctness. But, notoriously, only those - the wise - whose reason is fully developed can be really virtuous. Moral virtue is an all-or-nothing affair; everyone is either wise, and so virtuous, or else foolish, and therefore bad. However, as far as virtue is concerned, only that which is morally good is good, and only that which is morally bad is bad; everything else is "indifferent". Indifférents, such as health, may function only as material for the exercise of virtue. A vital distinction within the category of indifférents, though, is between the "preferred" (by the wise) and the rejected. The preferred (such as health and adequate wealth) are "in accordance with nature", the rejected (such as disease) being "contrary to nature". That preferred indifférents are in accordance with nature is known by the wise in virtue of their knowledge of basic human nature. They see it as appropriate to act in line with certain characteristic impulses and aversions. For example, like all living things, human beings seek to secure their own existence (and so want health, adequate wealth and so on). More specific to human beings is an intellectual impulse that directs us towards intellectual curiosity and reflection. Now there seem to be two senses of "living in accordance with human nature" here. One is the life of virtue considered just in itself: that which constitutes human happiness, the only rational end of human life. The other is the selection, as material for the exercise of virtue, of the indifférents whose pursuit is appropriate because they are in line with basic natural impulses. The attainment of these is never a true end in itself. As with Kant, only virtue is unconditionally good; indifférents may be 69

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attained by good or bad people, for the right or wrong reasons, or simply by luck or accident. The life of virtue is identical also with life in "accordance with universal nature". The Stoic universe is purely material, but within it, purely passive matter is distinguished from the creative, active force or logos: the divine reason permeating the universe, organizing it into an overall rational, purposive system. Humanity is a (vital) part of this system; indeed logos is identified also with the element of "creative fire", which also composes the human soul. Reason is the ruling active principle of the universe and so it is the ruling force in us, at least in those that are wise and happy. Here as well, knowledge is crucial; living in accordance with universal nature requires knowledge of the law-like, principled way in which logos organizes the world, and our place in it. Understanding the workings of logos allows us to identify with its purpose, and so harmonize our reason with universal reason. Thus Stoic doctrine is inconsistent with the otherness view in a number of ways. As has been generally recognized, it is incapable of grounding a non-instrumental eco-philosophy.54 The non-human, unconscious world has the status of "indifferent"; at best aspects of it count as preferred indifférents, selected by the wise as material to be used in the exercise of virtue. So there is a definite reason-(unconscious) nature dualism at the heart of Stoicism. The unconscious material world is there simply for the use of the rational. More specifically with respect to the otherness view, the very idea of universal logos permeating the material world seems to undermine the notion of non-human nature as other. Logos organizes the material universe; it is purposeful, divine reason. In so far as non-human nature includes this element, which also composes the human rational soul, then it can hardly be "indifferent" to us in the sense constitutive of otherness. This is especially so when it is believed both that the material world has been purposively organized, and that it is there for the use of the rational. That there is a related reason-passion dualism at the centre of Stoicism is also relevant here. One of the natural human impulses it is appropriate to live in accordance with is the intellectual impulse behind our tendency towards curiosity and reflection. Indeed, this should be developed to the point of a virtuous life in harmony with universal logos. But clearly we also have passionate, non-rational impulses, which are a threat to this, a threat to virtue. The wise man thus seeks control of his feelings to prevent them undermining his virtue. But then not any old aspect of "human nature" is appropriate for living in accordance with; but only those generally required for exercising the capacity to live in accordance with nature as universal logos. 70

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Should we say that Stoicism is a blueprinting doctrine then? On the one hand, moral virtue requires identification with wider nature in the sense of harmonizing one's reason with universal logos. This is a question of knowing the system, as it were, and identifying with it by consciously endorsing its operation. This looks like blueprinting: a question of focusing on an aspect of wider nature and making it a model for the human good life. On the other hand, one might think that the determinism involved in this picture - one cannot act in any way not determined by the system - makes the injunction to live in accordance with nature in this sense vacuous. Just as when the all-encompassing sense of nature is employed to generate Mill's "unmeaning" sense of following nature, one cannot do anything but live in accordance with nature as determined by universal logos. Our actions are causally determined in accordance with the designs of universal reason. And a vacuous injunction is not really an injunction at all, not even a blueprinting one. However, the Stoic point seems to be that our capacity to understand the causal laws operating through us makes meaningful our capacity to choose to follow them. We can willingly endorse the purposes of divine reason they embody, or we can be dragged along in accordance with them anyway, probably to our surprise and distress. Knowledge of universal logos (natural law) and the right intentions constitutive of virtue come together here. No one has the power to control her part in the overall scheme of things, but she may learn it and be happy: this she can have control over. Notice that whatever way you approach the Stoic notion of living in accordance with nature, it equates with living in accordance with reason, that is, with just that part of nature that is reason or the rational. Thus the injunction to live in harmony with universal reason in this sense is not vacuous given that some of us - the wise - manage it, and the rest - the fools - do not. This, then, is blueprinting, the conscious living in accordance with an aspect of the wider order of the world, its animating logos.55 Consider also the particular elements of the ideal Stoic society in Zeno's Politeia.56 The Stoic injunction to live in accordance with nature is sometimes identified as an important ancestor to the traditional anarchist concern to establish a natural, as opposed to artificial, social order.57 Zeno's Politeia does seem to be remarkably anarchic in terms of political set-up. His guiding assumption is that all are wise and virtuous; no one is stupid or bad. In that way then the ideal society - a Stoic cultural landscape fully in accordance with nature - is an equal society, all being equally wise by definition. Aside from the care and education of pre-rational children, no one is compelled by others to live in accordance with nature. There is no artificial social order here in the sense of an order needing to be imposed or policed. Thus the ideal Stoic "natural" society contains no 71

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hierarchy; it is an egalitarian order of the equally wise. Unlike in Plato's Republic, for example, Zeno's society of the wise is a classless, harmonious unity of friends, for by hypothesis all are in agreement in the pursuit of virtue for its own sake. But then, for example, there will be no private property or coinage, no law courts or gymnasia, no institution of marriage and men will feel paternal affection for all the children they encounter. Nor will there be distinctions between male and female clothing; in fact there will be no inhibitions about dispensing with unnecessary clothing. As incompatible with the ideal society of the wise, these indifférents are contrary to nature. Only the foolish and vicious need law courts, coinage, private property and gymnasia.58 The harmony of the ideal society renders such things pointless, pernicious even, as they would tend to replace virtuous intentions with self-interest, envy and competitiveness. Gymnasia, for example, are excluded because, although physical fitness is important (as a preferred indifferent), gymnasia are places of competition and excessive concern for one's own body. As a harmonious cooperative unity, the society of the wise is incompatible with institutions and arrangements other than the holding of things in common; hence no private property. Government in the classless cooperative society of the equally wise amounts to no more than what is required by administrative convenience.59 The point is that the set of preferred indifférents constituting the ideal Stoic landscape is organized around the end of happy, virtuous wisdom, which is living in accordance with nature. It is not that they are read directly off non-human nature. The blueprinting inference is nothing like as crude as, say, "animals do not have non-functional body covering, therefore we should not". Such things are excluded as contrary to nature because they are inconsistent with the harmonious society of the wise, who themselves (through their reason) are in harmony with nature. Through their virtue and knowledge of natural law they embrace the reason and purpose they discern in nature. Institutions, customs and practices inconsistent with the full society-wide realization of this are excluded. Notice that ideal Stoic landscaping would probably tread quite lightly on non-human nature. It would involve rejecting (as "contrary to nature") indifférents that undermine the sustainability of Stoic culture. For the Stoic, life itself is an indifferent, but one very much preferred as necessary to the exercise of virtue. Moreover, in its rejection of the kind of materialism associated with the pursuit of wealth for its own sake, whether individually or collectively, it would not pursue many of the practices associated with environmental damage. The ideal Stoic landscape would be instrumentally respectful. It would be a non-hierarchical "ecological society". But it would not be "reasonable" in the sense defined earlier: in bringing about its ideal, the society of the wise follows the rational aspect 72

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of nature, the divine fire permeating the universe; their knowledge of this informing the wise that the non-conscious - "indifferent" - world is there for their use (or rejection). At least in thought or in principle, the ideal Stoic landscape is thus the whole of the natural universe.

3.5 Classical anarchism Now, whether or not anarchists would want to distance themselves from full-blown Stoicism, it is true that "following nature" has been an important theme in the anarchist tradition. The anarchist society is the "natural" society in which social order occurs "spontaneously", embodying a spirit of harmonious cooperation, and as such reflects a wider order, one inherent in wider nature, without need of coercive authority to maintain it, and which, at least in much of its biological aspect, manifests what Kropotkin called "mutual aid". The existence of the state constitutes a jarring discontinuity from the natural, precisely because it involves the coercive imposition of an artificial order that undermines and perverts humanity's natural tendency towards peaceful, voluntary cooperation.60 I have emphasized that such a line of thought may be detected in Bookchin's social ecology. But, as with Stoicism, it can be hard to disentangle traditional anarchist blueprinting (i.e. injunctions to emulate an external natural order) from claims about "liberating" human nature. Depictions of anarchist society as "authentically natural" can also involve Rousseauian claims about the instincts of "natural man" being stunted or thwarted by artificial (statedominated, hierarchical) society. In which case what is required for natural instincts (for spontaneous cooperation and so on) to flourish, is the absence of formal institutions of rule.61 Now it might be thought that such claims do not really amount to blueprinting, which is essentially about seeing an order to be followed in non-human nature. In so far as a story about "following nature" is couched in terms of human nature then, whatever its other defects, it cannot amount to blueprinting, or so it might be thought. But this seems unsatisfactory. For one thing, it makes the definition of blueprinting seem arbitrary, suggesting that I have been putting too much weight on the human-non-human distinction. "Human nature" (human instincts and physical and mental capacities) is part of the natural world. Whatever the plausibility of "mutual aid" versions of evolution, it is at least clear that evolutionary theory has established our animal heritage and confirmed our embeddedness in nature. But I rather hide this with the distinction between humanity and nature (as other), a distinction now colouring my discussion 73

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of blueprinting. Thus it might be thought that what I have been calling "blueprinting" - following the natural order - is not so absurd when it is that specific part of the natural order constituted by human nature that is to be "followed", rather than thwarted or distorted by "artificial", coercive institutions. Against this I argue as follows. Although it is obviously true that humanity is part of nature, it is equally obviously true that there is a non-human nature out there. However, it is possible to make sense of "following human nature" as a case of blueprinting, even when the distinction between humanity and nature is sharply emphasized. It would be unsatisfactory to exclude this by definition. We should think of it like this. We have many instincts, tendencies and capacities, including the capacity to develop and act on and with each other, in a great many different ways. The question that arises is: which of these are "natural" in the sense that pursuing them (or allowing them to develop) is good as a matter of following naturel If the question is answered directly by simply calling "natural" those approved of on other, say moral or prudential, grounds, or because they are wrapped up with reason, then "natural" is doing no work, beyond lending an extra, spurious, authority to those other grounds of approval.62 Alternatively, and this is where genuine blueprinting seems to be involved, the question might be answered by taking certain human tendencies or capacities (say those wrapped up with mutual aid or attaining Stoic virtue) to constitute human nature "to be followed', because they are continuous with the wider natural order (say mutual aid as manifested in the evolution of non-human species, or the animating logos within universal nature). In other words, one decides which of our tendencies or characteristics are to be "followed", by identifying which are continuous with a favoured aspect of the wider natural order. Those then have the honour of defining "natural man", the characteristics that were (or would be) to the fore in the "natural society" not disfigured by the perverting tendencies of the wrong sort of government, (or perhaps government as such). But this then begs the question of which aspect of external nature to emulate. This means that although we can make sense of "following human nature" as a form of blueprinting, in so far as it is, it is open to Mill's objection to natural lessons.63 .

3.6 Mill's lesson against natural lessons The injunction to "follow nature", to take our lessons from the wider natural order when pursuing moral and political order, is absurd. The idea of being more or less natural, or more or less in harmony with the natural, 74

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in this sense of "following nature", is therefore also absurd. This part of Mill's case we really should take on board. As he points out, there still exists a vague notion that, though it is very proper to control this or the other natural phenomenon, the general scheme of nature is a model for us to imitate; that with more or less liberty in details, we should on the whole be guided by the spirit and general conception of nature's own ways; that they are God's work, and as such perfect; that man cannot rival their unapproachable excellence, and can best show his skill and piety by attempting, in however imperfect a way, to reproduce their likeness; and that, if not the whole, yet some particular parts of the spontaneous order of nature, selected according to the speaker's predilections, are in a peculiar sense manifestations of the Creator's will - a sort of fingerposts pointing out the direction which things in general, and therefore our voluntary actions, are intended to take.64 Mill is talking here, as he does through much of his article "On Nature", about independent nature thought of as reflecting God's will or design. But following nature in accordance with this "vague notion", needn't be something confined to theists, as we have seen. We have already touched upon65 Mill's most visible and rhetorically dramatic form of objection to it: however offensive the proposition may appear to many religious persons, they should be willing to look in the face the undeniable fact that the order of nature, in so far as unmodified by man, is such as no being, whose attributes are justice and benevolence, would have made with the intention that his rational creatures should follow it as an example.66 This is because nature is so full of the most abhorrent occurrences that it would be immoral to seek to follow it: "In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another are nature's everyday performances."67 The "soberness" of this "truth" is belied by Mill's great emphasis of it, and by the apparent relish with which he seeks to illustrate it68 and establish the radical ethical inferiority of non-human nature, and thereby effectively demonstrate his own humanity-nature dualism. He goes so far as to say: Even the love of "order", which is thought to be a following of the ways of Nature, is in fact a contradiction of them. All which 75

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people are accustomed to deprecate as "disorder" and its consequences is precisely a counterpart of Nature's ways. Anarchy and the Reign of Terror are overmatched in injustice, ruin, and death by a hurricane and a pestilence.69 He is perhaps exaggerating here. That there is "order" in nature is something he is willing to acknowledge, emphasize even, when talking of nature in the all-embracing sense.70 We observe regularities and name them "laws of nature", although, he says, we can't help but "follow" those.71 Ecological regularities are presumably among those the particular applications of which we may ignore, forget or remain ignorant about, but only at our peril, just as someone may foolishly discount the laws of gravitation when standing on a cliff-edge.72 Recognizing this is not a case of following or obeying laws of nature as a source of moral guidance; it can be a feature of reasonable as well as instrumentally rational landscaping. Remembering that one will fall if one steps off the cliff and deciding, as a matter of prudence, that one had better not do that is not to treat the laws of gravitation as guide, model or blueprint for one's life. To do that it would be necessary somehow to read-off the end of one's life, or the shape of some larger cultural project, from the laws of gravity, in addition to knowing that stepping off the cliff is not a good way to stay alive. All the exaggerated rhetoric depicting independent nature as "full of" disorder, and the kind of violent and destructive activities that would be shockingly immoral if "followed" by human beings, establishes Mill as a humanity-nature dualist. But one can also read it, more generously, as Mill emphasizing the "negative" aspects of independent nature as a counterbalance to rather sentimental depictions of its "positive" aspects taken to provide models of moral and political order.73 And doing that serves as a prelude to the real killer argument against "natural lessons". This argument is quite brief and is to be found nestling in a couple of places among the dramatic rhetorical flourishes and sustained concern to puncture theodical views depicting natural events as all to the overall good: Either it is right that we should kill because nature kills; torture because nature tortures; ruin and devastate because nature does the like; or we ought not to consider at all what nature does, but what it is good to do. If there is such a thing as a reductio ad absurdum, this surely amounts to one. If it is a sufficient reason for doing one thing, that nature does it, why not another thing? If not all things, why anything?74 76

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It has never been settled by any accredited doctrine what particular departments of the order of nature shall be reputed to be designed for our moral instruction and guidance; and accordingly each persons individual predilections, or momentary convenience, have decided to what parts of the divine government the practical conclusions that he was desirous of establishing should be recommended to approval as being analogous. One such recommendation must be as fallacious as another, for it is impossible to decide that certain of the Creator's works are more truly expressions of his character than the rest.75 Since independent nature does and is so many different things, it is arbitrary to select one (range of) natural activity or phenomena as constituting the authentic lesson. Which aspect of nature to emulate therefore has to be chosen, and justified, on different grounds to its naturalness. That this is so is underlined by the fact that much of what "spontaneous nature" does would be immoral, on standard accounts of morality, if emulated by human beings. So those aspects of nature selected as suitable for emulation will be precisely those that seem to reflect a prior view of what is good, one already justified in human terms. I take it that this lack of determinate moral lesson or political blueprint inherent within independent nature is a constitutive element of its otherness. In this sense, as we have seen Passmore put it, independent nature is (not positively) "indifferent" to us; it goes its own way without regard to us. So it goes its own way without taking the trouble to organize itself into clear, unambiguous "finger-posts" towards the "authentically natural" form of life.76 But now consider Sale's bioregionalism again. Sale quotes the biologist Lewis Thomas, as giving "nothing less than the simple message, the simple wisdom of the bioregional vision": Our deepest folly is the notion that we are in charge of the place, that we own it and can somehow run it. We are beginning to treat the earth as a sort of domestic household pet, living in an environment invented by us, part kitchen garden, part park, part zoo. It is an idea we must rid ourselves of soon, for it is not so. It is the other way around. We are not separate beings. We are a living part of the earth's life, owned and operated by the earth, probably specialised for functions on its behalf that we have not yet glimpsed.77 77

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From the standpoint of the otherness view the first part of this quotation is quite right. There is no need to qualify the claim about the folly of the notions that we own and are in charge of the earth. But we do need to qualify the last part: the claim about separateness. Sale also talks of scientific technology producing a vast psychic distance between humans and nature ... And there is nothing but the shortest step from this sense of separateness to the complete state of hubris that assumes that there is nothing human beings can do, that science can do, that they should not do, because the natural world is essentially there for our benefit, our use, our comfort.78 That the world is essentially there for our benefit is precisely to deny its otherness, of course, and it is clear that Sale wants a non-instrumental respect for non-human nature. But in that case it is necessary to keep hold of a sense of separateness. Sale's point is, perhaps, simply that living in a technologically enabled artificial environment seals people off from the natural world, "separates" them in the sense of divorcing them from natural realities, so they fail to appreciate the causal interrelationships between (even technological) humanity and wider nature. That is, they "forget" about nature in the sense of failing to be instrumentally respectful. Again, though, the thing is that instrumental respectfulness is consistent with a basically hubristic approach that has simply been qualified by the thought that "what science can do" must include what science can do given ecological insight into the consequences for humanity of human action on nature. It is consistent with the thought that the natural world is "essentially there for our comfort and benefit" but needs to be properly understood in order to secure a sustainable level of comfort and to reap its benefits. The extra step involved in the reasonable appreciation of nature as "not just there for us" presupposes actually giving moral weight to a "psychic distance" - a sense of separateness alongside the fact of physical embeddedness within wider nature. And a part of this sense of separation is the recognition that nature is "indifferent" to us in the sense of providing no definite blueprints for us to follow in our moral and political lives. We can never, reasonably, see our ways of life as "natural", or continuous with nature in that way, whatever way of life we adopt. The thought that one's way of life, or that of one's tribe, is the peculiarly authentic way, as signalled by nature itself, also seems more than a little hubristic. Although it is not as prevalent, or made explicitly as often as it should be in contemporary environmental ethics and green political theory,79 the 78

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argument against "natural lessons" does still occasionally make an appearance. For example, Avner de-Shalit has attacked the notion of a "natural proof" for political theory. Like Mill, he points out that many natural processes would be harmful if emulated within human society: "Think, for example, about a parasite, or about killing, which is part of everyday life in nature, but is either immoral (murder) or irregular (war) in social life." And the wider world provides no clear message identifiable as the authentic natural lesson: It seems either arbitrary or even dogmatic to perceive harmony rather than, for example, conflict in nature. Nature encompasses so many phenomena that it is possible to "find" almost anything in it. Moreover, what we find in nature may be nothing but a reflection of human values (rather than authentic "natural" ones) ... any attempt to derive political imperatives from nature is ridiculous because nature is neither democratic or a-democratic: nature is natural, whereas democracy and politics are artificial.80

3.7 Plato But it is worth re-emphasizing that the idea of a harmonious order in nature, with which we should stay in step, has ancient roots. In his Republic, Plato explains justice as a harmonious order brought about when each of the three parts of the whole, whether individual soul or city state, keep to their natural functions.81 The city is just when members of each social class, the producers, auxiliaries and guardians, mind their own proper business and get on with their own job. The job of the guardians is to rule for the good of the whole. Individual class membership is determined by nature, guardians being naturally suited to rule, and producers or workers being naturally suited to their subordinate position. In his view of the wider universe, set out in Timaeus, Plato makes use of the idea of the Demiurge, the artist/craftsman God, who imposes order on an otherwise formless universe in accordance with an ideal model. In this regard he departed from the idea of an order inherent in nature, one not in need of supernatural guarantees, which tended to be the view of the presocratic philosophers.82 But after the act of creation, Plato's Demiurge does not intervene to disturb the harmonious natural regularities characterizing his handiwork. So, unless we are considering specifically the origin of the universe, our explanation and description of natural events need not mention supernatural agency, but only the natural regularities themselves. 79

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To that extent, then, Plato took over the early presocratic view of "cosmos', as the rational, intelligible and regular aspect of the universe.83 But, crucially, cosmos was also an aesthetic84 and moral notion. Cosmic regularities are beautiful to behold and embody a kind of moral order. For the early presocratics, justice was inherent in the cosmos. According to Gregory Vlastos, for example, "Anaximander and Heraclitus ... projected into the physical cosmos their faith in justice".85 Although explained and described in terms of naturalistic principles, rather than supernatural agency, natural changes, processes and cycles were viewed also as an embodiment of justice. Andrew Belsey has suggested that we can see this as a way of expressing in simple, though by no means unsophisticated, terms a conservation principle: given that the world is a cosmos ... any change would threaten to unbalance it and thus create injustice; therefore there must be an opposite change to restore the balance of justice. The underlying sense of "natural justice" here could be understood as equivalent to "the principle of the conservation of cosmos".86 The specifics are different, and Plato's originally creative, but subsequently self-restrained Demiurge, who has made the world so that ultimately everything happens for the best, marks a big difference, yet Plato also had the notion of cosmos as an intelligible, regular system of balance and harmony, an external arena of "natural justice". It is nature as cosmos in this sense that is in the background when it is said that nature determines social class position in Plato's Republic, the just because harmonious organization of parts playing their roles as determined by nature.87 So its order is very much a continuation of that wider cosmic order, its justice a continuation of the wider justice. Alternative political arrangements, such as democracy, are bound to bring the "injustice" of people not "knowing their place": not playing their proper part in the overall social scheme. It is not simply that certain people should, as a matter of worth or meritocratic efficiency, occupy such and such places in society in virtue of the capacities, aptitudes and talents they have been born with. It is that social justice is a matter of the social harmony brought about when they do so, and do not seek to do anything else: their characteristic excellences, and so the parts of society they occupy, are in proper balance. Now, presumably, at least most of us want a "just" society. But if we also say that nature as cosmos manifests "justice" then we might well find ourselves arguing as follows: we want a just society, so what we want is for society to be "natural" - a harmonious order of parts each performing its 80

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natural function. Keeping Plato in mind, there are two appeals to the natural implicit in this. First, an individual's proper place in such a just society is determined by "nature" in the sense of the capacities and aptitudes she is born with. However, nature in this sense cannot be trusted to be a reliable supplier of the required qualities and aptitudes in sufficient quantities (or the proper relative quantities). That Plato does not trust "nature" in this way is shown by his proposals for selective breeding, to maintain a supply of people with physical courage.88 The more important background appeal to nature here is that because justice is the overall harmonious ordering, or balancing, of parts, and as such characterizes nature as cosmos, justice is natural justice. To seek justice is to seek what is natural (in that sense). So when a society is "just", when it conforms to this definition of justice, so that, for example, workers stick to working while rulers stick to ruling, it is also natural; it exhibits the same "justice" as does nature. This then lends an extra appeal to seeking a society that is "just" in that sense: not only just, but "natural", or "in accordance with nature". For who would want the alternative, that is, to live in a society that not only was unjust, but in being so was also unnatural, "against nature", or "out of touch with the cosmos"? That such justice is said to be natural justice thus adds an extra bit of normative force that might sway someone otherwise inclined to wonder whether they really do agree with Plato's description of the "just" society. It is entirely spurious, of course, because one might just as well reason as follows. Nature has some spectacularly violent and destructive aspects - exploding stars, erupting volcanoes, tornadoes and so on. Call this nature in its aspect of "excitement". So society also exhibits "excitement", in this sense, when characterized by violent and destructive upheavals. It is then also "natural": the human continuation of a notable feature of the wider universal order. Thus one can ask the loaded question: who wants to live in a society that has no "excitement", especially if it would therefore also be unnatural? The essentially simple anti-blueprinting point here is that non-human nature as "cosmos", or independent nature "in its aspect of order",89 is just that - an aspect. Thus it cannot be that "natural justice" is to be pursued simply because it is "natural" (an aspect of the non-human universe). As emphasized by de-Shalit and Mill, nature also includes "injustice" (or "excitement") in these terms: disorder, destruction, disharmony, decay and so on. So something other than an appeal to naturalness (say a particular view of reason and its proper role in human affairs) will have to drive the selection of nature's aspects to be emulated. To assume or imply that nature has chosen between order and disorder, or between one aspect or another of what might be counted as nature's order, so as to present us with moral signposts, is to negate its otherness. If the claim is that it is God or the 81

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Demiurge, or Gaia, or logos as divine reason, that has chosen, then, again as Mill has emphasized, the problem remains of telling which are the favoured aspects of nature that we should emulate; nature itself does not say. To avoid being misled about this, it would be better if terms like "justice" (and "excitement") were not applied to aspects of nature in that way.

3.8 Bioregionalism again It is sometimes pointed out how implausible it is to view as natural a social order needing to be imposed (by force and lies),90 or as harmonious a social order that embodies a highly authoritarian hierarchy.91 To that extent, theories pointing to the liberation of the "natural man" from "artificial" authority seem more plausible, if "natural justice" is the goal. But it is worth repeating again the important point that the fundamental anti-blueprinting objection applies also to anarchist, non-hierarchical views of the "natural society". For example, when Sale's discussion of bioregionalism turns explicitly to the political lessons implied by ecological principles, it becomes clear that Gaia92 is, above all, a libertarian in the classical anarchist tradition, for "the ways of nature are essentially without coercion, without organised force, without recognised authority".93 Thus, "the ecological law with which bioregional politics would logically begin is decentralism, centrifugal force, the spreading of power to small and widely dispersed units".94 Sale makes other points in the same vein: when discussing the "law of complementarity or mutuality", for example, he claims that since there are no intra-species institutions of hierarchy in the natural world "the lessons" (his phrase) for bioregional polity are that "hierarchy and political domination would have no place; systems of ruler-and-ruled, even of elected-president-and-electing-people, are non-ecological".95 As for interspecies relations, the "King of the Jungle" is just our "anthropomorphically perverse" description of the lion's status; that is not how it really is in nature, where "there is nothing more striking than the absence of any centralized control, any interspeciate domination".96 Now, obviously, writers like Bookchin and Sale are right when they point out that lions, say, do what they do without political institutions. Thus, the lion does not rule. But it is just as "anthropomorphically perverse" to treat non-human interspecies relations as a model of cooperative harmonious anarchism. Obviously lions have no police force (say, hyenas paid with scraps) with which to dragoon other species into acknowledging their status as rulers. Then again, maybe they would if they thought of it; maybe any top predators would if they thought it would save energy. Even better might be 82

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to inculcate an ideology justifying their authority as divinely ordained by Gaia: zebras and wildebeest should regularly select some of their number to sacrifice themselves to the lions' appetite, lest Gaia become displeased and cause some terrible dislocation in the "natural order of things", say an ungulate population explosion and famine. Maybe if they thought of it, lions, and all the others, would voluntarily eschew all formal political arrangements and still play their interlocking roles within the ecosystem, spontaneously cooperating to maintain it, so enacting a kind of natural libertarian version of "my station and its duties". Of course, this whole way of thinking is absurd. Known terrestrial nonhuman species do not have political relationships, internal or external; they do not decide to have this or that political arrangement, or arrive at them through processes of historical change or cultural adjustment.97 To say this is not to denigrate or disrespect them; acknowledging it is a necessary component of respecting them for what they are, rather than how they might figure in anthropomorphic fantasies and projections. It is not that Sale is all that anthropomorphically minded of course; the anarchic, communal elements of the non-human biosphere reflect "laws" inherent within nonhuman nature, not non-human political decisions.98 But this still brings him up against the main point of Mill's lesson against natural lessons: why choose those particular elements to emulate? If the lack of formal institutions of political rule in external nature is sufficient grounds for establishing the same as a human imperative, why not the same for the lack of morality, the lack of written languages and so on? To think that decentralized bioregionalist anarchism is peculiarly right, simply as a human continuation of natural order (i.e. for blueprinting reasons), is to disrespect nature's otherness. It disrespects it by implying that nature is not "indifferent" between (types of) landscapes, as if what is really going on is not that a (type of) cultural landscape is favoured over alternatives on other grounds, and then projected out onto wider nature, so as to identify it, its characteristic values and principles, with the natural, and thereby grant it a special "authenticity". But whether a given way of life, or kind of landscape, is good, or better than alternatives, is a matter for us to decide, or somehow arrive at a judgement about. The thing about non-human nature is that it is not us. Thus the position is that external nature does not provide a blueprint to be followed when human beings construct and maintain their cultural landscapes. This is not to deny that external nature, although "indifferent", places constraints on landscaping. As has already been noted, because landscaping is a matter of modifying "what is there anyway", then the nature of what is there anyway - geography, geology, climate, flora and fauna and so on - constrains the modifying. However, to what extent natural constraints are constraining also depends on technological factors. A hubristic 83

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pure instrumentalism sees them as simply there to be overcome, with no moral constraint. That perspective identifies aspects of independent nature with its own cultural purposes by recognizing only their (potential) use (dis)value, seeing them purely as more or less recalcitrant kinds of resource. In that sense it seeks to push its own landscape as far out into external nature as it can imagine. The otherness view places moral constraints alongside the natural ones: what is there anyway should be respected for its own sake, rather than viewed as simply there to be overcome, used or eliminated as far as it can be. But accepting moral constraints on overcoming natural constraints is not the same thing as treating those natural constraints as lessons in moral and political order; lessons that must be "followed" so as to achieve an authentically natural way of life. Consider the point in simplified (quasi) Aristotelian terms. A landscape is a nature-culture hybrid in which nature (as other) has not been extinguished. We might say that nature contributes the "matter", and culture the "form", of the landscape. This is alright up to a point. It should not amount to a "dualist" view of matter as pure resource: mere raw material awaiting the organizing ministrations of culture. The "natural matter" here has its own form, which is altered by culture in the formation of landscape. Compare a block of marble that is sculpted into a new form. The sculpture is not determined, but constrained, by the pre-existing form of the marble (its hardness, texture, density and so on). The level of intricacy and detail in the resulting sculpture is partly contingent on the skill and technology of the sculptor. There may be faults or veins in the marble that suggest one shape rather than another to the imagination of the sculptor, as well as making one easier to achieve than another (which might be why the block was selected for a given project), but it would be wrong to think of them as signposts indicating the "authentic" sculpture to sculpt, as if the blueprint of the particularly right (type of) sculpture was inherent to the pre-existing form of the marble (say a rough bust as opposed to a frieze). One might particularly admire a sculptor capable of shaping a variety of different forms from a given block of marble, or one whose particular style was evident in different sculptures from many different blocks of marble from different quarries. If one viewed a block of marble only in terms of respecting its otherness, one would not sculpt it at all. In so far as respecting its otherness is a weighty consideration (which presumably it would tend not to be in such cases), the sculptor "treads lightly" on the pre-existing form of the marble, seeking as far as possible to work with its features, rather than obliterate them. Such respect enters with recognizing that the marble is not "just there" to be sculpted but, given that it is going to be, favouring the selection of a sculptural form relatively less disruptive of the pre-existing form of the marble. This would still not be a question of the pre-existing form of 84

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the marble dictating the aims of the sculptor. In so far as the otherness of the marble is respected, it is remembered that "suggestions" about the finished sculpted form are really in the minds of the sculptor and those commissioning the work, not in the marble. Compare now Sale's account of what is involved in a "bioregion". What is the relation between a bioregion and a landscape? Often "bioregion" seems to mean what is "naturally given" in a region, the boundaries of which are determined (somewhat loosely and fuzzily) by natural characteristics, rather than human concerns. Thus it seems to mean a region that is defined (loosely) by nature as it is, independently of landscaping. Bioregions come in different shapes and sizes, and indeed "often can be seen to be like Chinese boxes, one within another".99 So there are "ecoregions", which take their character "from the broadest distribution of native vegetation and soil types", for example the Ozark Plateau in south-central USA. Within ecoregions there are "georegions", "identified most often by clear physiographic features such as river basins, valleys and mountain ranges, and often some special floral and faunal traits as well"; for example, the White River watershed within the Ozark ecoregion. And there may be distinct "morphoregions" within georegions. It certainly seems to make sense to talk of such naturally defined regions, even though, as Sale acknowledges, the boundaries between them are loose, imprecise. And, as I have said, "getting to know the bioregion" in the sense of what is naturally given in the area of one's landscape, must be part of what is involved in "respecting the otherness" of at least local nature. In the UK we can talk bioregionally (perhaps georegionally) of Snowdonia, the Weald, the Central Lowlands, the Cheshire Plain, the Pennines and so on. We do this although it is not always clear where the precise boundaries are (is the Cheshire Plain part of the Mersey Basin?). And this is despite the fact that these regions have been intensively landscaped, and relandscaped, over the millennia. That the natural boundaries are blurred does not really matter. What does matter is that Sale often blurs the distinction between naturally given bioregion, and landscape as human modification of what is naturally given, in a way that suggests that certain landscapes themselves are naturally given. As he puts it: [A bioregion] is any part of the earth's surface whose rough boundaries are determined by natural characteristics rather than human dictates, distinguishable from other areas by particular attributes of flora, fauna, water, climate, soils, and landforms, and by the human settlements and cultures those attributes have given riseto.wo 85

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Thus his definition of a "morphoregion": "in some places the georegions break down into smaller territories ... identifiable by distinctive life forms on the surface - towns and factories, fields and farms - and the special land forms that gave rise to them on the first place".101 Now, first of all, it is important to remember that such attributes do not "give rise to", in the sense of determine, human settlements and cultures; they constrain without determining. Secondly, Sale's notion of bioregion encompasses both what is naturally given, "there anyway", or local nature as other, and what is "landscaped", that is, nature as modified by culture. It seems that Sale wants to say that certain cultures and settlements are definitive of particular bioregions, because that makes them - the settlements and culture - uniquely natural for that bioregion. If a bioregion is both what is naturally given and partly constituted by the human settlements and cultures those natural attributes have given rise to, then those human settlements and cultures are themselves naturally given (within or by that bioregion). They are the "authentically natural" cultures for there. Take Sale's definition of morphoregions and consider that salt mining has been a traditional activity on the Cheshire Plain in one form or another for millennia, large salt deposits having been laid down about 200 million years ago in the Triassic Period. This has had a major influence on the landscape, including the development of industrial towns, the building of canals, the canalization of rivers and the appearance of flooded areas of subsidence called "flashes". If these landscape features are definitive of this morphoregion (the local bioregion) then they (and the various successive cultures that have developed them, and of which they have been a part) are naturally given. Given Sale's terms, this tempts us to say something to the effect that the underlying salt deposits are Gaia's gift of a salt-lick to the people, and other animals, of Cheshire; their acceptance and use of this gift is as "natural" as the presence of the salt itself, although if licked too greedily, the result will be the literal undermining of the land they stand on (as has happened in some cases). Sale presumably would want to emphasize that industrial-scale salt mining, with its attendant infrastructure, is a function of a socioeconomic and political system that disregards or disobeys Gaia's ecological laws. So such a landscape cannot be a natural given of the bioregion; for a human settlement, culture and economy to be that it must conform to Gaia's ways. Perhaps this is just a long-winded way of explaining the instrumental respectfulness required for sustainable landscaping, given what is available locally.102 But that doesn't quite capture all that Sale seems to mean. Hence he talks of "Native Indian tribes" as "roughly continuous" with "bioregional boundaries", and refers to the bioregional wisdom of "preliterate cultures close to the soil".103 These "followed the ways of Gaia", not just in terms of the sustainability, the instrumental respectfulness, of 86

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their landscapes, but in being the uniquely natural ways of life given (rise to) by the local bioregion. They represent a continuation of the wider natural order into the cultural, social order. Put another way, Sale's account suggests that their local nature is simply their landscape; there is nothing to external nature in their bioregion. There is no distinction between nature as modified and interpreted in their landscape, and nature "as it is anyway", independently of that. In so far as it buys into that thought, the bioregional vision is a blueprinting vision. Sale seems very tempted by this even though he is too practically minded to believe that anything is to be gained by trying to turn the clock back to the time of ancient or preliterate societies living close to the soil.104 Still, he thinks we can radically improve our societies by adopting the bioregional vision, and seek to follow more the ways of Gaia, even if we cannot hope to do so as effectively as those old ways. It is possible, of course, to reject blueprinting and still accept other grounds for bioregionalism. It might be the only (or by far the best) way politically to organize instrumentally respectful landscapes, or even reasonably respectful landscapes (once the blueprinting element is dropped). Sale certainly seems to think at least the former. For example, he seems mainly to have an instrumentally respectful, prudential, point in mind when he talks about the "law of diversity": healthy ecosystems mostly tend towards diversity, because this brings greater overall stability, and better capacity to cope with calamity without collapse.105 The same is true for human groups: diversity brings stability and a greater flexibility, to better cope with problems; agriculture and economies reliant on single industries and single crops are more vulnerable than those with more diverse production. We have seen grounds for scepticism about the effectiveness of a locally focused environmental concern.106 Still, perhaps the "bioregional vision" is best because it is also the only way forward if we really want to make progress towards the truly just and equal human society. That Sale is much more ambivalent about this issue is shown by his interesting, and notorious, discussion of the political implications of diversity within bioregions. He lets the anarchist cat out of the bag by pointing out that leaving it up to bioregional communities to decide their own organization means that a variety of political types will emerge, not all of which will be democratic, libertarian or egalitarian. There will be homogenising tendencies within a bioregion (similarities of cuisine, agriculture and so on), but also some diversity within as well as between them. However: Bioregional diversity, it must be understood, means exactly that. It does not mean that every community in a bioregion, every subregion within an ecoregion, every ecoregion on a continent, would construct itself along the same lines, evolve the same political 87

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forms. Most particularly it does not mean that every bioregion would be likely to heed the values of democracy, equality, liberty, freedom, justice, and the like, the sort that the liberal American tradition proclaims. Truly autonomous bioregions would inevitably go in separate and not necessarily complementary ways, creating their own political systems according to their own environmental settings and their own ecological needs.107 Thus, although "one can only imagine" that bioregional principles would impel bioregional polities "in the direction of libertarian, noncoercive, open, and more or less democratic governance ... they need not". Is this part of his position inconsistent with the libertarian, antihierarchical elements? On the one hand, communities will not be subject to the coercive power of an overarching, centralized state. On the other hand, there will be no overall state structure to protect individual rights and freedoms; I say Sale lets the anarchist cat out of the bag because he acknowledges and accepts the likely consequences of this. Whether radical decentralization to the point of anarchism is required on grounds of human justice, equality and freedom is something I very much doubt, although I am not going to say much about that. The claim that it is required for reasonably or instrumentally respectful landscaping breaks down into two parts. First, an acceptable eco-reformist statism is impossible because a properly green, non-instrumental attitude to the nonhuman is excluded, in principle, by the liberal mainstream. Refuting that claim is the main point of this book — the argument comes in Chapter 4. Secondly, it is practically impossible to make green progress without "negating" the state. I will discuss this claim in Chapter 5. My concern in this chapter has been to explore (perhaps "hammer home" would be more accurate) an aspect of nature's otherness that seems to me to be of crucial importance: deriving moral or political lessons or blueprints from external nature receives no justification from nature itself. When thinkers such as Mill make this point they can be interpreted as pointing to an aspect of nature's otherness. We can accept his lesson on this without saddling ourselves with the defects in his own position. We do this by pointing out that notions of living in accordance with nature are ways of disrespecting nature as other, further illustrations, perhaps, of the intellectual fragility of nature's otherness. This, of course, includes normative claims that it is "simply in accordance with nature" that we should treat the non-human world as purely instrumentally valuable; "only natural" that we see it entirely as a resource.

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CHAPTER 4

Liberal landscape

4.1 Introduction The question is: how can the political culture of a liberal landscape be more than instrumentally respectful of external nature? If it is purely instrumentalist, committed to the sole value assumption, or at least to normative individualism,1 how could it ensure reasonable landscaping, including respect for nature as other? Must it not see external nature only as a resource? For a brief introductory sketch of how this can be answered, consider the following anti-liberal line of thought. Liberals tend not to really believe in very much, at least nothing very substantial, which is why they can satisfy themselves with thinking that the state should not be the coercive expression of a conception of the good life, and why they emphasize merely procedural values and talk of "thin" (another word for bland or vacuous) goods such as toleration of diverse ways of life. They ignore the fact that a proper, red-blooded engagement with politics requires a full identification of one's value commitments with the political. Anything less than this is to condone political feebleness, a listless disengagement or alienation from politics, which is the last thing we want to encourage.2 This line of thought contains various mistakes. For example, one important aspect of liberalism involves distinguishing non-public conceptions of the good life from "reasonable" public values. Both kinds of values may be held as strongly as you like; the fact that they are distinguished, and said to apply to different areas of life, does not alter this. Liberals can denounce "unreasonable" ways of life, those inconsistent with accepting reasonable political values, as strongly as anyone can denounce anything. To say that this cannot be done effectively once political values are distinguished from particular views of the good life is like saying that distinguishing walking and chewing gum makes it too 89

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difficult to do both at the same time. The fact is that both can be done at the same time, and able-bodied people who find it too difficult should try harder. It is possible to be naive about the relevant distinctions: the political cannot be completely isolated in every sense from the private; the latter interact in a variety of ways. Nor can it be denied that the way gum is chewed might be influenced by mode of ambulation and vice versa. Yet the distinctions remain. Consider a similar line of thought as against the otherness view of external nature: to assert that one should respect the otherness of nature, and so not simply identify the non-human with human values and purposes, is to preach alienation from nature, a listless disengagement from the wider world. Non-human nature can mean nothing to us once we step back from considering its status as a resource, or supplier of blueprints. Against this, however, it seems clear that a properly respectful relationship with the non-human world does not presuppose that we must first identify it with the human world: see it only as "ours", or in some sense part of ourselves, or significant only in so far as we have worked out how it can be helpful to us, or how to use it in some way. We can have the double vision required to interpret and modify nature within landscapes in line with our cultural purposes, and at the same time recognize that there is more to the non-human world than that, that there is precisely an other reality, out there, as it were: an other reality that should be a constraint on landscaping. Similarly, we can pursue our conceptions of the good life with commitment, and retain a vital concern for politics to go well, without simply identifying the former with the latter; indeed while recognizing proper political values as a constraint on the pursuit of conceptions of the good life. There is a deep congruence between reasonable respect for nature as other, and the stance of political "reasonableness" (and not simply because I have chosen to use the word "reasonable" in the former context). Because of this, the otherness view may be incorporated within liberal theory without undermining its self-understanding as politically reasonable.

4.2 Instrumentalist circumstances The phrase "political reasonableness" is meant to be suggestive of Rawlsian political liberalism, and I will use this as the main example with which to flesh out the argument. I am not going to discuss the myriad possible criticisms of it,3 or of the details of justice as fairness (Rawls's preferred version of political liberalism). My concern is to show how to 90

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overcome its instrumentalism. My focusing on Rawls in this way should not be taken to show that I think there is nothing objectionable about his version of liberalism, or that it should be thought entirely noncontroversial. The point is that Rawlsian liberalism is both fairly well known and includes, in a relatively explicit way, ideas that are particularly important to my argument. Towards the end of this chapter, I try to indicate briefly how the argument can be applied to other varieties of liberalism. Start with the idea of the "circumstances of justice", which is clearly an important idea in the liberal tradition, and perhaps particularly crucial to contractarian liberalism. It is standard practice to distinguish internal (or subjective) and external (or objective) circumstances: in Rawls's terms, most importantly, the "fact of reasonable pluralism" and the moderate scarcity of material goods respectively.4 These make justice necessary and constrain its shape or content. For example, Rawls emphasizes that reasonable pluralism has been increasingly evident in democratic societies, as these have developed in the modern era. Indeed, we can say that one of the most basic liberal ideas, present in a variety of forms since the seventeenth-century European wars of religion, is that not all individuals will share the same conception of the good, and that this plurality (often religious plurality) should be accommodated, and not suppressed in favour of one of its elements.5 This is what Rawls calls the "fact of reasonable pluralism": at least when given some freedom, human nature and rationality yield a plurality of such conceptions.6 Thus the internal circumstances motivate the key notion of persons as free and equal as a "political conception", and a surrounding cluster of interconnected ideas and distinctions, such as the idea of "comprehensive doctrines", and the distinction between "the reasonable" and "the rational". The idea of "persons as free" here is the idea of people able to "form, to revise, and rationally to pursue, a conception of the good",7 as "self-authenticating sources of valid claims".8 The idea of persons as equal is that of citizens "all regarded as having to the essential minimum degree the moral powers necessary to engage in social cooperation over a complete life and to take part in society as equal citizens".9 A "political conception" (such as that of persons as free and equal, and the theory of justice said to be appropriate to them) has three features. It is a moral conception, directly applying specifically to the "basic structure of society" ("the main political and social institutions and how they fit together as one scheme of cooperation"); it is "freestanding" in that it does not presuppose any particular "comprehensive doctrine"; and it is "formulated so far as possible solely in terms of fundamental ideas familiar from, or implicit in, the public political culture" (e.g. that there are such ideas as those of citizens as free 91

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and equal and of society as a fair system of cooperation in their public culture is "taken as a fact about democratic societies").10 Notice in particular that a political conception is not a "comprehensive doctrine"; the latter has a much wider scope, including non-political ideas, values and virtues.11 And, again, a political conception is not the political extension or expression of any particular comprehensive doctrine; it is "freestanding" in that sense. The related distinction between reasonable and rational is also crucial here. Rawls explains that "the reasonable", as an attribute of persons, denotes first a willingness to propose fair terms of social cooperation that others as free and equal also might endorse, and to act on these terms, provided others do, even contrary to one's own interest; and second, a recognition of the burdens of judgment and acceptance of their consequences for one's attitude (including toleration) toward other comprehensive doctrines.12 It is unreasonable to "engage in cooperative schemes" yet remain "unwilling to honor, or ... propose, except as a necessary public pretense, any general principles or standards for specifying fair terms of cooperation"; and so to be "ready to violate such terms as suits [one's] interests when circumstances allow".13 Unreasonable, but not necessarily irrational: "The rational" applies to the agent's pursuit of "ends and interests peculiarly its own", and to how these are "adopted, affirmed and given priority".14 The sphere of the rational is the non-political selection, weighting and pursuit of "private" ends. Under certain conditions (i.e. those conducive to success), it may be rational to seek the enforcement of one's comprehensive doctrine over others via the coercive power of the state. But it would not be reasonable: reasonableness is the spirit of the political conception selected under conditions of reasonable pluralism.15 The vital question for us here, though, is this: why should the idea of the circumstances of justice exclude the non-instrumental significance of external nature? The external circumstances are formulated largely in terms of the moderate scarcity of natural resources. Distributive justice would be pointless under conditions either of extreme scarcity or superabundance. This means that non-human nature enters in only as a moderately unreliable provider of material instrumentally necessary for human survival and flourishing. Nature is niggardly enough to neglect guaranteeing everybody's wants and needs - if I have everything I want (materially), that might not leave enough for you to meet your basic needs - but not so niggardly, at least not usually, as to make natural necessities so hard to come by that talk of 92

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distributive justice is pointless, and "everyone for themselves" must be the order of the day. The point is that non-human nature enters into the external circumstance of justice only instrumentally as a resource. What we want is for the idea of the external circumstances of justice to include a noninstrumental evaluation of nature. In that case, an adequate political theory would have to provide for such concern continuously with social justice. An example would be to have the otherness view as part of our idea of the external circumstances. This would mean that the idea of the external circumstances includes the idea of nature as a negative end, the significance of which is therefore not exhausted by the status of pure resource. And it would include the idea of external nature as something that does not in itself authenticate the special validity of any particular conception of the good by providing its blueprint. One wants to say, in a non-blueprinting way, that it is "natural" to incorporate the otherness view like this, in that it seems arbitrary not to do so. To make instrumentalism the default position as it were seems to be both arbitrarily "dualistic" and a case of blueprinting. Seeing nature as just there to be used is to ignore its otherness because it is to see it only as it might function in landscaping. The idea of nature as other is not equivalent to the idea of nature as pure resource. The idea of nature as pure resource is the idea of nature as significant only as something to be used in this or that way. It is a purely instrumental view - nature has significance only as landscaping material - and as such, when unqualified, embodies a humanity-nature dualism. Although nature as other is "value free" in the sense of not embodying any determinate moral blueprints for us to follow, it is a further big step, one requiring justification if it is to avoid arbitrariness, to say that independent nature has significance only as something to be used as landscaping material. I say it needs further justification; it might be thought that the onus is on me to justify viewing it non-instrumentally. But given the concept of nature as other, and a nature to which the concept applies, then to assume as the automatic default that it should be viewed as a pure resource seems to be a mistake amounting to blueprinting. That we have to use it and landscape it I take for granted. But this is not to say that we must assume it is just there to be used and landscaped, as if natural objects themselves came with "to be viewed only as landscape materials" stamped on them, so we can say we are doing nothing more nor less than "acting naturally" when we follow that instruction. That would be as if we must substitute the early Stoic notion of natural objects as "indifferente" for the sense of "indifference" partly constitutive of nature's otherness.16 Against this, however, the instrumentalist default position will be thought non-arbitrary, given the political liberal response to the internal 93

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circumstances of justice, the fact of reasonable pluralism. Views of external nature as non-instrumentally valuable, what Rawls has called "natural religions",17 will be placed among the plurality. As such, the otherness view will be counted as a doctrine of the good, to be excluded from public reason18 and kept well away from the realm of the "constitutional essential".19 Anything else would involve an "unreasonable" colonization of the political conception by green elements, in which case it would no longer really be a freestanding political conception at all. Thus the political liberal approach to the internal, or subjective, circumstances of justice excludes building non-instrumentalism into the idea of the external or objective circumstances. It is reasonable to assume that everyone (in so far as they are standardly - instrumentally - rational) values non-human nature instrumentally as a necessary resource.20 This is not the case for non-instrumental views. Free and equal people may or may not hold these. Thus that extra valuation, however grounded, cannot be built reasonably into the idea of the external circumstances. Whether or not external nature should be viewed only as a resource is to be left to non-public, comprehensive doctrines.

4.3 Neutrality arguments This - call it the exclusion point - is the point to take issue with. I think it is mistaken, at least in relation to the otherness view. Consider it when couched in terms of neutrality: political liberalism is neutral between conceptions of the good, and a public commitment to the otherness view within the political conception is ruled out by this neutrality. We might put this in the form of the following argument:21 1. Neutrality requires that the principles and activities of a state should not be based on a belief that one conception of the good is more valuable than another. 2. The important elements of a conception of the good exist where there is both an ontology and an axiology. 3. Respect for nature as other involves an ontology (nature perceived as other to the human) and an axiology (a belief in the value of nature as other), and so embodies a conception of the good. 4. Therefore, any state guided by respect for nature's otherness is committed to the special value of a conception of the good. 5. Therefore any such state fails to be neutral.

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Now, neutrality is a controversial notion within political philosophy, to say the least, but I take it that political neutrality is possible (at least to some significant extent), and I will be going on to say more about this idea. The immediate problem with this argument is that the general form of argument it presupposes implies the impossibility of neutrality, pretty much by definition. This general argument must therefore be defective. It goes as follows: 1'. Neutralism requires that the principles and activities of a state should not be based on a belief that one conception of the good is more valuable than another. 2'. The important elements of a conception of the good exist where there is both an ontology and an axiology. 3'. Therefore, any state guided by principles that presuppose an ontology and an axiology is committed to the special value of a conception of the good. 4'. Therefore, any state guided by principles that presuppose an ontology and an axiology fails to be neutral (it will be committed to the special value of one conception of the good). The trouble with this argument is that, when supplemented with the premise 5'. All political principles presuppose an ontology and axiology and so a conception of the good. which seems reasonable and uncontroversial to the point of being a truism, it yields the conclusion: 6'. Therefore, no state, at least no state guided by political principles, can be neutral. Something must be wrong here. Put bluntly, the defect lies in the account of "conception of the good" in premise 2', which fails to distinguish between so-called "thick" and "thin" senses of "conception of the good", both of which imply ontological and axiological commitments. Given a distinction of that sort, one can claim that such and such political conception, stance, principles or judgements - and the presupposed thin conception of the good - are neutral with respect to (at least many) thick conceptions of the good. If no distinction of this sort is made, and given that any conception of proper political arrangements will have some ontological and axiological commitments, state neutrality between 95

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conceptions of the good as such will be impossible by definition. In terms of the proposed incorporation of the otherness view within political liberalism, it would be enough to point out that respect for nature's otherness is itself a conception of the good, to show that the resulting political conception (and any state operating it) cannot possibly be neutral between conceptions of the good, and so the proposal is nonsensical. However, it would not be enough if respect for nature's otherness involves a commitment to what is in some sense only a thin conception of the good, and the proposed political conception involves neutrality between thick conceptions of the good. I will say more on this last point below. In the meantime, I called supplementary premise 5' above reasonable and uncontroversial to the point of being a truism. Let me labour this point a little bit now by putting it in Rawlsian terms. Rawls's liberal political conception - "justice as fairness" - involves a commitment to the fundamental importance of human individuals considered as free and equal. Clearly this involves ontological and axiological commitments to the existence and "separateness" (as Rawls puts it) of individuals, and to the value of these as free and equal. Crudely, Rawls's contract procedure22 and the output of the procedure (fundamental principles to shape the basic structure of society) are meant to reflect, preserve and establish the implications of this commitment to the importance of free and equal individual people. Now, does this mean that the resulting conception of political justice, and any state operating it, fails to be neutral? It does according to the general antineutrality argument just stated. In a trivial sense, one can accept this; it is not neutral between itself and its own negation. More specifically, it is not neutral between accepting and denying the value of persons as free and equal. But this is just to say that absolute political neutrality is impossible (and who thought it was possible?). Indeed, there are a number of goods embraced within the parameters of justice as fairness. Rawls accepts that justice as fairness as a political conception affirms the "priority of right", but points out that this leaves various permissible ideas of the good.23 Still, it is a serious misrepresentation to deny that within the terms of Rawls's theory there is a very significant element of neutrality. For example, in the original position, individuals all seek to secure primary goods irrespective of their other differences, including their commitments to different conceptions of the good. These are excluded from consideration by the "veil of ignorance"; the resulting procedure of rational choice and the principles of justice chosen are neutral with respect to those excluded conceptions of the good. This is not because they embody ontological and axiological commitments, as if valuing, say, primary goods, and free and equal individuals did not. The important aspect of 96

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conceptions of the good here, which justifies their exclusion by the veil of ignorance, what really defines them so as to generate a coherent version of the proposition that fundamental political principles should not presuppose the validity of particular conceptions of the good, is their scope and their substantive and comprehensive nature. Particular conceptions of the good life would be a better phrase here. As informed by comprehensive doctrines, they are specifications of what it is to live a good life: views of what makes life most worthwhile, including commitments to plans and projects (whether pursued individually or collectively) from preferred leisure activities to religious observances and visions of salvation. Also important, though, is the fact that, unlike primary goods for example, they are not "shared conceptions of the good". Primary goods are like prerequisites (and are recognized as such by free and equal people, at least once they are explained to them) for the pursuit of any particular conception of the good life. People are supposed to need and want them whatever particular way of life they are committed to. Thus the procedure of the original position and its outcome in terms of political principles aimed at securing primary goods, indeed the whole political conception defined by these and related ideas, is neutral with respect to a plurality of different conceptions of the good life (and comprehensive doctrines).24 Rather, I should say neutral between reasonable conceptions, those the pursuit of which does not undermine the political conception itself, or contradict the commitment to free and equal individuality. I said earlier that the main defect in the general neutrality argument is in its account of conceptions of the good. It seems clear that even if we think that "having ontological and axiological commitments" is necessary and sufficient for being a "conception of the good", it is only necessary, not sufficient, for "conception of the good life". The latter entails a substantive view of how to live one's life.25 If we say, for example, that "equal opportunities is a good", then we are already taking on board certain ontological and axiological commitments. However, "equal opportunities" in itself is not a way of life; it places some constraints on the ways lives might be lived, but a commitment to equal opportunities is consistent with — neutral between - a wide variety of possible substantive views of how one ought to live. In merely formal terms, it might be enough for me to make this point, show this defect, in order to reject the exclusion point when expressed in the form of the above argument about neutrality. If the non-arbitrariness of excluding the otherness view from the liberal political conception is defended with an argument about preserving neutrality, which in turn implies the impossibility of neutrality (and with it political liberalism), then the exclusion point has not been made good. It is unsatisfactory to 97

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leave things like this, however, partly because significant neutrality is a possible feature of a liberal political conception, and partly because the spirit of the exclusion point remains. Indeed, it would seem simply to be this: why isn't the claim that nature should be respected or valued for its own sake, in virtue of its otherness, just another conception of the good life, the spirit of a particular "life choice", one of a variety of possible comprehensively "green ways of living"? After all, it is implausible to see this view of nature's value as something that is in fact shared by all free and equal individuals.26 Thus the exclusion point may be couched in terms of a new neutrality argument, a modified version of the earlier one: 1". Political liberalism is neutral with respect to (reasonable or permissible) conceptions of the good life. 2". Neutrality means that the principles and activities of the state should not be based on a belief that one conception of the good life is more valuable than another. 3". The otherness view is a conception of the good life. Therefore, 4". The activities and principles of the politically liberal state should not be based on a belief that the otherness view is more valuable than other (reasonable) conceptions of the good life. In this way, political liberalism excludes the otherness view. And this is not arbitrary given that neutrality between conceptions of the good life is essential to the political liberal response to the internal, or subjective, circumstances of justice.

4.4 Neutrality analogies The previous argument relies, of course, on treating the otherness view as the name of just another conception of the good life, a form of "natural religion" (premise 3"). But the otherness view is not just another conception of the good life; it is not a conception of the good life at all. This is the crucial point. Perhaps it is already clear from the discussion in Chapters 2 and 3, but I will try to make it clearer and, in the process, try to show that the otherness view can and should be incorporated "reasonably" into the public political sphere, or the political liberal's conception of the political, by emphasizing the following three factors. First, there are analogies 98

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between the neutrality involved in political liberalism and a notion of neutrality involved in the otherness view; secondly, political liberalism and the otherness view of nature share a crucially important element of "antiexpressivism"; and thirdly, I will suggest an extension of the virtues of the "reasonable citizen", so that they include respect for nature's otherness. Respecting the otherness of nature is partly a matter of accepting its neutrality between landscapes, a neutrality analogous to that of the politically liberal state with respect to conceptions of the good life (or, more accurately, of the political conception used to decide the constitutionally essential and to establish the terms of basic justice, with respect to comprehensive doctrines). "Landscapes", remember, are nature-culture hybrids: the shape of local nature as moulded and interpreted by human culture. As we have said, cultures generally need landscapes in which to locate themselves, as well as to develop as their physically necessary "raw material" for consumption. They need features of the given - hills, valleys, forests, meadows, plains, shorelines and so on - to treat as landmarks in networks of historical significance and cultural interpretation of what is not simply other, but, say, "our land". "Landscaping" thus takes mental labour as well as the physical transformation and moulding involved in such activities as building shelter, clearing forest for farmland, domesticating, breeding and genetically modifying organisms, mining minerals, developing infrastructure and so on. To go beyond landscaping, so as to qualify the urgent concerns that constitute its perspective and tend to crowd out consideration of the other, perhaps involves extra mental labour. It involves remembering, for example, that such and such an element in the surroundings, say a species of wild animal or plant, or a type of mineral, is "just there for us (or those of us with the appropriate property rights) to use", is as much the allocation of significance internal to the local landscape as "that plain is the place of our ancestors". To remember the reality of nature as other is to remember that there is a nature independent of landscape: for example, that that is not just the place of our ancestors, or a source of raw materials, but it is a landform laid down over millennia, its surface shaped mainly at the end of the last ice-age with features resulting from weathering by wind and water; it has an ecosystem with such and such evolved flora and fauna, and so on.27 To forget it is to stay within the landscape and see things as significant only as elements within that landscape. So nature as other is nature as independent of landscape; it cannot be identified with the significances and purposes internal to landscapes. But, with this independence comes significant neutrality; nature as other is neutral among (many) cultural landscapes. Partly this is a matter of a lack of physical determinism; local nature does not determine, in the sense of 99

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physically give rise to, any particular human cultural landscape as that which uniquely must be the landscape for that particular place. Again it should be emphasized that independent nature places constraints, and it influences but does not determine.28 The constraints and influences are evident on the large scale. For example, one might say that a seafaring culture, at home in coastal features, sea, tide and "natural" harbour, could not develop in the middle of the Sahara.29 They are felt also in the details of landscape, in characteristic cuisine, clothing, crops and cultivation methods and architecture (including such details as window size, roof type and building materials, and hence the colour of buildings). For example, one cannot explain the architectural and other landscape differences between Cheshire and Casablanca without reference to differences in the local nature: climate, sunlight, flora, fauna and so on.30 But this is not to say that such elements in the cultural landscape are determined by local nature (or by the interaction of local nature and basic human needs for food, shelter and so on). Nor is it to say that such and such a landscape is so "natural" that it is there necessarily, as if it were, by definition, an aspect of the given local nature.31 Cultural and historical factors have a significant autonomy; otherwise we would not be able to say, as we can, that a certain coastline might accommodate (or have accommodated) a coracle culture, a Roman outpost, a Viking foothold and so on, each with its own set of modifications and interpretations of what is naturally there anyway. Perhaps most significant is that nature as other is neutral relative to landscapes in not providing blueprints of moral and political order. This is to say that nature as other does not "determine" cultural landscapes in the sense of providing lessons in what moral and political relationships should animate them. Nature as other does not tell us how to live, in that sense. But then the otherness view of external nature is one that political liberals should find congenial because of analogies between the neutrality of nature relative to landscapes it requires us to recognize, and the neutrality of the politically liberal state (or its background conception of the political) relative to comprehensive doctrines and conceptions of the good life. Cultural significances and usages are not just "read-off" prelandscaped nature, which precisely is not to be identified with particular landscapes, any more than the neutral state is to be identified with particular conceptions of the good life. Nature does not tell us what landscapes to make, any more than the neutral state should enforce a way of life or tell us what comprehensive doctrines to adopt. Moreover, the neutral state is conceived as not required to give special assistance to certain conceptions of the good life merely because, as it happens, they are more "expensive" (e.g. in terms of time and material resources), and so less likely to thrive than alternatives, in this political environment.32 Similarly, 100

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certain landscapes may be more difficult, yet not impossible to sustain, given a set of local natural conditions. As we have seen, and is often remarked, liberal neutrality could never be absolute. For one thing, the plurality relative to which the state is to be neutral is a reasonable plurality: the citizens committed to private conceptions are not thereby made unwilling either to uphold a "fair system of cooperation", or to refrain from seeking the power to impose their own conceptions on the others. There is no question of neutrality with respect to actively intolerant and destructive doctrines or citizens. The neutrality of nature as other is not absolute either, for even the most favourable parts of the natural world will not sustain more than a fraction of conceivable landscapes. There are the natural constraints already mentioned but, in addition, nature will not sustain cultural ends pursued in a manner and to a degree that disregards natural processes and equilibria. "Naturally tolerable" landscapes, in this sense, must at least be "rational" landscapes.33 Otherwise, to view nature as it is, independently of landscape, is to recognize significant neutrality. Certainly, nature will "tolerate" landscapes that are both rational and "unreasonable" in the blueprinting sense (as in Sale's bioregionalism, blueprinting might even help motivate rational landscaping). But as I argued in Chapter 3, blueprinting is inconsistent with a full recognition of nature's otherness (hence "unreasonable" in that sense). Consider also that blueprinting doctrines tend to be comprehensive; external nature enters in, at least partly, as a validator of, or source of lessons about, substantive moral, as well as political, ideas. As such they cannot be equated with a politically liberal conception of the political, any more than they can be equated with the view of nature as other. It is the recognition of neutrality involved in the otherness view of nature that I claim is significantly analogous to the acceptance of neutrality involved in the political liberal view of the state. Now I emphasize the recognition or acceptance of neutrality here. Otherwise it might be thought that my attempt to draw an analogy between liberal state neutrality and the "neutrality" of nature must fail because it involves a category error; liberal neutrality is about reasons for acting (or reasons appealed to to justify principles to regulate state action), whereas nature in its indifference operates according to causes, not reasons.34 There is no category error (muddling of distinct logical categories) here because the notion of nature's "neutrality" is understood within the context of the otherness view. Again, this involves seeking to form a view of nature as it is independent of landscape; nature as other is not simply nature as it is "used" and interpreted for the purposes of landscaping. Nature as other is not to be identified with the landscape. In this context it is appropriate to say that nature is (significantly) neutral between landscapes. At the risk of 101

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becoming repetitive, nature itself provides no grounds for identifying landscapes with nature - for saying particular landscapes are the natural landscape - because nature as other does not determine particular landscapes either physically35 or by dictating particular cultural forms through manifesting their "blueprints". So I take respecting nature's otherness to involve recognizing this neutrality. But then it is precisely because it is about recognizing - and we are to be doing the recognizing - that the point is about our (as opposed to nature's) reasons for action. Reasons for action entailing that independent nature should be thought of as somehow especially validating or "requiring" particular forms of cultural landscape (including purely instrumental forms) are inconsistent with respect for nature's otherness. So are reasons for action entailing that independent nature is properly thought of as no more than the landscape or an extension of culture (e.g. this natural item is just an industrial resource). Similarly, reasons for action entailing that the state (or background conception of the political), should be thought of as properly validating, or "requiring" all citizens to adopt, a particular conception of the good life, are inconsistent with accepting political neutrality. So are reasons for action entailing that the state should be thought of as the political wing of a particular conception of the good life - no more than its political extension. This parallel does not presuppose that nature itself acts for reasons, consequently it does not involve the category error referred to above. My purpose in pointing to such analogies is to establish an affinity between the otherness view of nature and the politically liberal view of politics, and help the presentation of the former as a "reasonable idea of the good" (as opposed to comprehensive doctrine, or conception of the good life), and so fit for incorporation into the latter. Before I continue the theme by discussing their shared anti-expressivism, I will consider in the next two sections two further responses that might be made at this point. First, it might be said that this talk of analogous neutralities can only be a roundabout way of stating the instrumental importance of external nature. Secondly, it might be thought to be a case of blueprinting in its own right.

4.5 Otherness and instability It might be objected that I have been merely restating, perhaps rather laboriously, some standardly self-interested grounds for environmental concern; the only significant analogy here is merely between nature as a neutral source of raw material for human landscaping purposes, and the 102

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state (or background conception of the political) as a neutral provider of space for the free development of a plurality of good human lives. This might well be a parallel that it is in our interests to recognize, although to say so can only be to remain within the purely instrumentalist confines of rational landscaping. Now, I have already suggested that it is arbitrary to retain a purely instrumentalist interpretation of independent nature as the default position, and that a view of nature as a pure resource is one that gets no validation from nature itself. Still, it might be thought that by emphasizing analogies between the neutrality of nature as other and that of the liberal political conception, I must now be operating within only instrumentalist terms. However, I think the analogy is actually strengthened by invoking non-instrumental value. Consider the importance that Rawls attaches to the distinction between a political conception serving as the basis of a modus vivendi, and one reflecting an overlapping consensus to support a well-ordered society. When justice as fairness is accepted as a modus vivendi it is for such reasons as relative lack of power and fear of social disruption. The accommodation here is unstable, political allegiance remaining contingent on the balance of power; the political conception is valued as a means to secure a way of life only given certain conditions.36 The "environmental counterpart" to this does indeed seem to be an anxious, rather dismal instrumentalism, with external nature playing the role of an alien power, respect for which is necessary to sustain life and landscape. And the necessary degree of respectful accommodation of nature's alien ways remains contingent on humanity's degree of confidence in technological methods of controlling nature. But Rawls intends political liberalism to be a moral rather than merely pragmatic enterprise. The point is to establish a "well-ordered society", the good of which, realized when citizens individually and collectively achieve and operate a just (neutral) constitutional regime, is a non-instrumental good, an end in itself.37 The resulting political community, also instrumentally good in various ways, reflects the shared ends of citizens affirming the same political conception. Here there is an "overlapping consensus"; the political conception is shared, despite other differences and commitments to diverse conceptions of the good life. There is a convergence derived from moral agreement (from a variety of directions) rather than self-interest as in a modus vivendi. In other words, citizens should see their political society, in which the employment of power is justified neutrally relative to the pluralist outcome of free human association, as more than merely instrumentally beneficial to their own private interests and goods. Although stability as such is not the end to which the political conception is the mere means, the possibility of overlapping consensus is meant to illustrate the capacity of justice as 103

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fairness to generate its own support and remain stable through time; instrumental value is buttressed by non-instrumental value.38 The analogy now is with nature as other and non-instrumentally valuable as such. Rather than instrumentally valued only as a source of material for landscapes, one needing careful handling if particular landscapes are to remain viable, nature's otherness, its independent existence and properties, is valued for itself. Consider the following two pairs of judgements: (Jl) The neutral state, embodying justice as fairness, has instrumental value as reflecting a modus vivendi. (Rivals do not seek to co-opt state power to impose their conceptions of the good life. This would change if the balance of power changed.) (J2) Nature as other (and neutral between landscapes) is instrumentally valuable as the source of material for landscaping, and care has to be taken to preserve this source. (Technology might alter the balance; as Marxists might say, nature could be "humanized" through technology.) (J3) A well-ordered political society, with a neutral state embodying justice as fairness, is valued for itself by the plural elements of an overlapping consensus, not just as the means to secure self- or group interest. (J4) Nature as other is valuable for itself, not just for its role as provider of raw material for human survival and the pursuit of cultural ends; external nature, a "neutral backdrop" to landscapes, is noninstrumentally valuable. Of course there are some important disanalogies here.39 The modus vivendi in Jl is between different conceptions of the good life, the neutral state embodying the form of the modus vivendi. In J2 the otherness (involving neutrality between landscapes) is not the form of a modus vivendi. Modus vivendi is involved only in the sense that, for their own sakes, landscapers should remember and respect nature's otherness, so as to achieve a sustainable "accommodation" with nature as other. Still, respecting otherness/neutrality plays an instrumental role in both Jl and J2, in maintaining an overall environment as necessary for securing selfinterest. In J3 the well-ordered society (including the neutral state) emerges as the kernel of an overlapping consensus between divergent conceptions of the good life, whereas in J4, the valued otherness is not a construction of cooperating landscapes. The well-ordered society is both a positive and a negative end - something to be realized and then protected, not undermined - whereas nature as other can feature only as a negative 104

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end. But both are cases of the non-instrumental valuing of a space of neutrality. Rawls's view is that citizens can and should come to hold J3 as a public commitment; what then is the block to them likewise holding J4? The thought might be that the subject of J3 - the well-ordered political society - can be an end only because it is a human construction, unlike the subject of J4. At this point it is worth remembering another kind of instability that Rawls seeks to overcome via justice as fairness. He criticizes the prevailing common-sense ideology of equal opportunities, which aims to ensure that social and economic benefits are not distributed in a "morally arbitrary" fashion on the basis of undeserved, unchosen factors such as social background, race and gender. The "instability" that Rawls detects here consists in a failure to follow through its own logic,40 for inequalities resulting from variation in "natural talent" - intelligence, strength, creativity and so on - are still endorsed, although having a certain IQ, say, is unchosen: an accident just as arbitrary as being born into a given social class. Therefore, benefits accrued from this are equally undeserved.41 Whatever one thinks of Rawls's conclusions in the case of deserts, the point here is that the combination of J3 with J2 (as opposed to J4) remains "unstable" in this sense. I want to say that especially given the analogy established above, to withhold J4 only on the grounds that external nature, unlike political society, is not the product of human reason and cooperation, would be to allow morally arbitrary factors to hold sway. Given that there are no moral-psychological or valuetheoretic grounds for thinking it impossible to value external nature as a negative end as well as a means, and given that political liberalism noninstrumentally values one space of neutrality, it seems arbitrary to withhold that value from another space of neutrality solely because it is not a human creation. Being or not being a human creation does not seem decisive unless we are operating within the terms of, say, Kantian value theory and wondering whether or not to view independent nature as an unconditioned end. But we are not doing either. Political liberalism is precisely not "comprehensive" liberalism, Kantian or otherwise,42 and independent nature as other can only be a conditioned end, not an unconditioned end.43 A similar line of thought focused on the possible "instability" of justice as fairness has been suggested recently by Rowlands.44 Rawls's extension of the common-sense view of equal opportunity informs the conditions obtaining in the "original position", his model of the ideal contract situation. All kinds of particular self-knowledge are bracketed, hidden behind the "veil of ignorance", so that principles of justice will not reflect particular biases and unequal power relations based on morally arbitrary, because undeserved, factors.45 Rowlands argues that since being human 105

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and rational are also morally arbitrary attributes, knowledge of them also should be bracketed from the original position as undeserved sources of unequal power and benefits.46 Presumably, then, for the purposes of deciding fundamental principles of justice and the constitutional essentials, knowledge that one is a person, as opposed to, say, a badger or a mallard, should be put aside. In effect, Rowlands suggests a very "thick" veil of ignorance indeed, behind which the contractors can agree to nonspeciesist principles of justice. But this is unsatisfactory for several reasons. First, retaining knowledge of being human and rational would not be arbitrary. Remember that Rawlsian contractors adopt the cautious "maximin" choice strategy, picking the least worse political conception from the perspective of the lower echelons of the resulting basic structures.47 Presumably, in Rowlands's modified version of the original position, they retain general biological and ecological knowledge, and so will know that if they are not human "beyond the veil" they (or those they represent) are probably some sort of organism leading a precarious existence towards the bottom of the food chain, beyond the reach of effective human intervention (they will know the dangers of human attempts to exercise control over ecosystems). There is no question of them choosing some less bad alternative to nature, so to bracket out knowledge that one is a person (a rational human) would make the articulation of principles of justice seem pointless. Therefore such knowledge should be retained. Secondly, once the bracketing process has been extended beyond the species barrier, as Rowlands wishes, what can count as a morally arbitrary exclusion seems restricted in principle only by what can count as an interest. Rowlands draws the boundary at sentience.48 This seems an arbitrary restriction given an intelligible concept of an organism's interest that is wider than sentience: one based on the notion of its flourishing in the Aristotelian sense of the fulfilment of its nature.49 Rhubarb has interests in this sense. Things can go more or less well for a rhubarb plant; that no rhubarb plant is ever aware of this does not alter the fact. But swelling the population of the original position with representatives of all biotic nature with interests in this sense would exacerbate the previous problem above. Thirdly, whether or not Rowlands's extension is limited by sentience, it subsumes only living individuals. Only these have interests, so only these will receive direct consideration. We have already noted that although not narrowly anthropocentric in the sense of the sole value assumption, such a position is still a "normative individualism", which ignores such larger wholes and structures as species, ecosystems, the biosphere, mountains and rivers. None of these seem literally to be alive and so they lack even flourishingbased interests. Thus the resulting principles will not constitute a "really 106

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green" perspective.50 This is in contrast to the natural otherness view, which is not restricted to biological individuals, or even to biotic nature. Although Rawls's political liberalism remains "unstable" in the present sense as long as it retains a purely instrumental view of nature, this is understood better, at least primarily, at the level of the analogy between the spaces of neutrality represented by the politically liberal well-ordered society and the otherness of external nature, rather than in terms of the thickness of the veil of ignorance. It is the level at which the charge of arbitrary human chauvinism or speciesism bites best against the thought that the fact that one side is not a result of human choice and construction is a decisive disanalogy. However, when we do come to think of what Rawlsian contractors should know about in the original position, it seems to me that because of such considerations as the neutrality analogies, it is reasonable to claim that "respect for nature's otherness" is not just another conception of the good life to be excluded by the veil of ignorance (just as "respect for state neutrality" is not just another conception of the good life).

4.6 Not just "following nature" In Chapter 3, we saw that drawing analogies between natural and political order is anything but new. For example, we have noted that an important idea in the anarchist tradition is that spontaneous, uncoerced social order is natural because it is continuous with the likewise non-imposed order of wider nature; any institution seeking to impose order upon society will be an "artificial body" in a pejorative sense, and the cause of "unnatural" disharmony. This contrasts with the Platonic picture of a "naturally harmonious" hierarchical social order. Although Rawls is obviously no anarchist, and despite the common association of his theory with bureaucratic statism, it is worth pointing out that in these terms it seems closer to the anarchist pole than to its Platonic opposite. Consider again the importance to him of "the fact of reasonable pluralism": political liberalism assumes the fact of reasonable pluralism as a pluralism of comprehensive doctrines, including both religious and nonreligious doctrines. This pluralism is not seen as a disaster but rather as the natural outcome of the activities of human reason under enduring free institutions. To see reasonable pluralism as a disaster is to see the exercise of reason under the conditions of freedom itself as a disaster. 107

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A related ... general fact is that a continuing shared understanding on one comprehensive religious, philosophical or moral doctrine can be maintained only by the oppressive use of state power. If we think of political society as a community united in affirming one and the same comprehensive doctrine, then the oppressive use of state power is necessary for political community.51 Spontaneous - uncoerced - human nature tends towards pluralism; state power should not be used to impose conceptions of the good life, or accompanying comprehensive doctrines, given a reasonable plurality of these. State power protects the freedoms within which plurality may flourish, but justice also requires that power be exercised other than as the political extension of any of the plurality. Neutrality of justification of political principles is a consequence of the need to have a state to protect, rather than stifle, the plural expression of human nature. Thus, in order to be publicly acceptable, the state is not to be the political expression of (or identified with) any comprehensive doctrine or conception of the good life held by its free and equal citizens; it should not actively promote one over another, or have any as its sole ground: it should be neutral with respect to them. Now, both anarchist and Platonic versions of the "natural society" were condemned in Chapter 3 as examples of blueprinting. But by highlighting analogies between an aspect of what seems to be the "natural order of things" (the neutrality of nature as other with respect to cultural landscapes), and an aspect of a favoured political order (political liberalism's neutrality with respect to conceptions of the good life), am I not just setting up another example of blueprinting? If true, this would be particularly damaging because blueprinting is inconsistent with respect for nature's otherness. It would mean that the suggestion to incorporate the otherness view within political liberalism, on the basis of such analogies, is incoherent. It is not true though. Bringing the otherness view and political liberalism together by pointing to analogies between the neutrality of nature as other and that of political liberalism is not a matter of blueprinting. It does not amount to claiming that we should "follow nature" in the sense of emulating what nature seems to be doing. Nor is it a question of buttressing a prior commitment to political liberalism by pointing to an analogous aspect of the natural order and arguing that because that is what nature is like, political liberalism is peculiarly right through being in "accordance with nature"; the politically liberal society (say, Rawls's wellordered society) is the authentically natural society. No, the point is to 108

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advocate the incorporation of the otherness view within political liberalism by showing the affinity of some of the key elements of each. Let me try to make this clearer with a brief recap of the chapter so far. I began by suggesting that given that there is an independent nature as other - a nature with an independent existence and origin, a reality independent of the purposes, significances and interpretations bestowed upon it in the process of constructing and maintaining landscapes - then it seems arbitrary, and perhaps even a case of blueprinting in its own right, to think of it in pure resource terms, or to have a purely instrumental view as the automatic default. Thus it seems arbitrary to exclude a non-instrumental view of nature (as other) from the external circumstances of justice. Against this, the immediate thought was that such exclusion is not arbitrary given the politically liberal response to the internal circumstances of justice: the fact of reasonable pluralism. For the otherness view will be counted simply as another conception of the good life or comprehensive doctrine. At best it can be one of the plurality, a doctrine that may or may not be held by free and equal persons, and as such cannot be among the reasonable ideas constituting the political conception with which to decide constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice. Given the fact of reasonable pluralism, the political conception cannot be identified with, or presuppose the special validity of, any particular conception of the good life or comprehensive doctrine; it should be neutral with respect to them. Now, my argument is that the otherness view (including a noninstrumental attitude to nature as other) is not just another conception of the good life. That it is not, and that the political liberal should be particularly sensitive to that fact, I try to bring out by emphasizing shared elements of the otherness view and political liberalism (or at least a very strong affinity between them). Thus, far from dissolving the arbitrariness of the exclusion (of the otherness view), the idea of significant neutrality is endorsed by the otherness view, so that bringing it out just serves to make the arbitrariness of exclusion more evident. Accepting significant neutrality is an important aspect of "reasonableness" in both cases. Neutrality is very much part of the attitude of politically liberal reasonableness. Rather than being excluded by this, the otherness view, which includes accepting the significant neutrality of nature with respect to landscapes, seems more like a further application of it. This further application can be avoided only by ignoring the status of external nature altogether. That accepting significant neutrality is a basic part of the attitude or (more grandly) "spirit" of political reasonableness is very important here. Consider that "neutrality" can seem spurious or empty: why claim neutrality when it is acknowledged that absolute neutrality is to be rejected as impossible? For example, a religious fundamentalist will view political 109

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liberalism as a denial of The Truth as applied to politics, one just as coercive to her as any other such denial. The political liberal will reject this as "unreasonable"; her political conception is neutral only between reasonable doctrines, those that, for example, accept the fact of reasonable pluralism (that the fundamentalist does not accept the fact of reasonable pluralism is presumably an important element of her fundamentalism). Why then talk of "neutrality" at all rather than simply arguing for reasonableness and against unreasonableness, especially since many, if not most, actual serious political problems and controversies do not arise as a clash between "reasonable" doctrines? The question ignores that political liberalism is an exercise in what Rawls calls "ideal theory",52 and that to argue for reasonableness is to argue for significant neutrality. This marks an important difference between it and other accounts of how politics should proceed (such as that of the fundamentalist), one worth emphasizing as more appropriate given the fact of reasonable pluralism, even though, obviously, it cannot be neutral between itself and its own negation. As I say, this is an important aspect of the spirit of reasonableness; reasonable citizens (would) accept terms of political cooperation that do not enshrine the special validity of their own conceptions of the good life as against other (reasonable) conceptions. Notice that this is not well captured by the metaphor of the state as "neutral umpire". Such a description suggests a competitive game rather than cooperative enterprise, as if the particular elements of the plurality are trying to beat each other in some contest, the rules of which are enforced by the umpire. But what is it they are competing for? Political power? But then the umpire (and its party) has already won, as long as it enforces the rules of the competition. No wonder the notion of the state as "neutral umpire", when representing a controversial idea of the political, is viewed with suspicion: it is party, in effect, to the very competition whose rules it is supposed neutrally to decide and enforce. Political liberalism, on the other hand, seeks to delineate a political conception on the assumption that society is a cooperative enterprise53 characterized by the fact of reasonable pluralism. Its neutrality must be understood within those terms.54 The suggestion is that accepting neutrality as part of the spirit of political reasonableness should make political liberals take seriously the analogous neutrality that is part of the otherness view. This is not because that way they will see their political conception validated as authentically natural by the external, non-human world. It is more like the reverse of that: they should see a kindred spirit in the otherness view's recognition that nature does not physically or morally dictate particular cultural landscapes; nature as other is (significantly) neutral with respect to landscapes. The argument is not that "neutrality" names an aspect of the independent "natural order" to be emulated. That would be blueprinting. 110

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Remembering that independent nature does not constitute a model for our moral and political order is part of fully respecting its otherness. Remembering nature's otherness is, partly, remembering not to blueprint. The argument is that because a significant part of political attitude, P, is X, and a significant part of environmental attitude, £, is also X, these should be brought together in theory and practice. It is a question of continuity of attitude or spirit, not continuity of natural and political order. But notice also that we should resist any temptation to say that nature's neutrality is, so to speak, a "second-order" natural order; a second-order natural lesson, a "thin" model for us to follow that is implied by the lack of "thick" models; so political liberalism has a special natural authenticity in virtue of its own neutrality. This is too much like saying that we both should and should not blueprint, and still begs the response that nature itself does not tell us to follow this second-order, thin, lesson rather than any first-order, thick, lesson, any more than it tells us to follow a thick rather than a thin lesson, or one thick lesson as against another thick lesson. Thus the argument should be put in terms of the continuity of human attitudes and the spirit of "reasonableness" across the realms of politics and nature, which is a matter of establishing a reasonable landscape for political liberalism. Remember that reasonable citizens are prepared to value noninstrumentally the realization of their neutral political conception in the well-ordered society. My suggestion is that by analogy55 they should view nature as other non-instrumentally, that is, they should incorporate the otherness view of nature within their political conception. It is arbitrary to resist this only on the grounds that independent nature is independent nature (i.e. non-human).

4.7 My enemy's enemy is my friend: shared anti-expressivism I want now to reinforce further the idea of political liberalism and the otherness view of nature going together by discussing their shared antiexpressivism. Despite some eerie parallels to do with neutrality, which might make the political liberal agree that the otherness view is not "just another" conception of the good life, still she might want to say that nevertheless it is a conception of the good life, and a controversial one at that. Consequently it remains non-arbitrary to exclude the otherness view from her political conception. Not excluding it would entail using the coercive power of the state to enforce a green life choice, which not all, or perhaps even many, free and equal citizens could be expected to endorse. Ill

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However, as I have already suggested, the otherness view is a "thin" commitment; like, for example, the commitment to equality of opportunity, it is not a comprehensive doctrine or a conception of the good life - it is consistent with many such doctrines and conceptions. I take my point here to be like the one Goodin makes by distinguishing between green policy recommendations generated by his "green theory of value" on the one hand, and "green lifestyles" on the other. Endorsing the green theory of value and thinking it should carry political weight, and inspire political programmes and policy formation, does not commit you to a "green personal lifestyle", an archetypally "green" way of life, such as one that might be summed up rather dismissively with the phrase "tree-hugging, bean-eating hippiedom".56 Similarly, although the otherness view is consistent with such ways of life, it does not determine them as a universal necessity, certainly not as the "authentically natural" way to live. Still, it might be thought that this move does not quite settle the issue; there remains a problem in this area. What it might be I want to try to bring out via Charles Larmore's idea of expressivism and his distinction between "substantial ideals of the good life" (commitment to a specific way of life) and ideals concerning the way substantial ideals ought to be pursued - say as a Kantian agent selecting ends to pursue only after critically evaluating them from a position of autonomous detachment.57 Now, an expressivist version of neutrality extends this latter kind of ideal to political fundamentals; the state, or its basic principles, is neutral, but only between the various substantial ways of life that fully autonomous agents may choose. This is still in the name of autonomy: the right is always prior to the good as it were, the same ideal of autonomous detachment animating both personal and political realms. As Larmore puts it, "citoyen and homme coincide at heart".58 This then counts as a liberal version of general political expressivism, a tradition mostly anti-liberal in having no truck with neutralism or the ideal of citizens being equally free to pursue conceptions of the good life, seeking instead as complete and smooth a continuity as possible between the values animating the state and the lives led by citizens. That is, expressivism has mainly been the doctrine that the state must foster a substantial ideal of the good life. In these terms, Rawls's main motivation in "moving to the political" and attempting to recast justice as fairness as a form of political liberalism, a reasonable political conception, has been to purge it of its expressivist elements.59 Expressivist versions of liberalism, even though they may still embody a significant amount of neutrality, cannot be squared with a full appreciation of the "fact of reasonable pluralism". It is difficult to see that fact as consistent with the claim, say, that the only good lives are those chosen from a ("prior") position of autonomous detachment. It is not 112

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unreasonable to reject ideals such as Kantian autonomy or Millian individualism in favour of, say, a "constitutive traditionalism", which denies that all elements of personal and social identity should be viewed as chosen, rather than formed within and by particular cultural traditions.60 In Rawls's terms, "comprehensive liberalism" - liberalism as a complete way of life (or an attitude to the whole of life), not just a form of politics - cannot be the reasonable basis for a political conception to serve a reasonable plurality of ways of life and traditions, not all of which are "comprehensively liberal". It is important to bring this out here because it might be argued that although the otherness view, or respect for nature's otherness, is not, in Larmore's terms, a "substantial ideal of the good life", it might count as something like an ideal of how to live any good life. Perhaps, like an uncompromising take on Kantian autonomy, it also requires a permanent, comprehensively "detached" attitude towards the rest of one's (maybe therefore no longer very deeply held) commitments, doing things always with an eye to independent nature and its otherness. If true, this would justify excluding the otherness view from political liberalism in line with the anti-expressivism of its political conception. It is not true, however; the otherness view need not constitute such an ideal of how to live a good life. As Larmore and Rawls make clear in their different ways, political neutrality need not be "expressivist" or reflect the political application of comprehensive ideals, such as that of autonomy. Rather, it can be a matter of abstracting from substantial ideals for the particular purpose of creating common political principles. This does not require a permanent stance of detachment towards one's way of life. For example, people are not expected to live as if they were permanently resident in Rawls's original position, or with constant reference to goings on behind the veil of ignorance. People may remain attached to the ideals and values animating their own (reasonable) way of life, while not appealing to them for that basic political purpose, which in that sense remains neutral between conceptions of the good life and particular ideals of how to live them.61 Now I take it that such common political principles include principles of toleration of and respect for (the ways of life of) other people. Presumably also part of the point of having these as political principles informing state activities is that they motivate the passing of laws defining the practical requirements of toleration and respect, promoting them as practical virtues of citizenship. The presence of such legal frameworks means that individuals do not have to constantly monitor their own activities for manifestations of intolerance. Living within the legal framework means living a tolerant way of life, without this necessarily implying that "toleration" must be one of the constitutive values defining that way of living as the particular way of living that it is.62 113

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The same might apply to "respect for nature's otherness". Respect for state neutrality should bring respect for nature's otherness, I think. But commitment to this as a principle can be a "political" commitment that does not undermine the anti-expressivism of the political liberal conception. The practical requirements can be clarified by the democratic state, without respect for nature's otherness being one of the constitutive values defining any of the ways of living relative to which the state remains neutral. Respect for nature's otherness itself involves a process of abstraction - standing back from the commitments and values internal to the cultural landscape, so as to recognize that there is a wider nature, "out there", as it were, that therefore cannot be identified with those significances and projects (e.g. it is not merely a material resource for them). If I am right, this has great affinity with, and can be seen as continuous with, the abstraction involved in political neutrality. In accepting the reasonableness of respect for nature's otherness as a political principle^ however, it is not necessary to live one's whole life in this "abstracted", "objective" state of mind or perspective. Compare what Rawls says about the relation of political principles to the family: We distinguish between the point of view of people as citizens and their point of view as members of families and of other associations. As citizens we have reasons to impose the constraints specified by the political principles of justice on associations; while as members of associations we have reasons for limiting those constraints so that they leave room for a free and flourishing internal life appropriate to the association in question ... We wouldn't want political principles of justice to apply directly to the internal life of the family. It is hardly sensible that as parents we should be required to treat our children in accordance with political principles. Here those principles are out of place. Certainly parents should follow some conception of justice (or fairness) and due respect in regard to each of their children, but, within certain limits [the treatment of children must be such as to support the family's role in upholding a constitutional regime], this is not for political principles to prescribe.63 Rawls points out that one of Michael Sandel's criticisms of justice as fairness, as he sees it applying to the family, ignores this distinction. Sandel portrays a situation in which relations within a rather dysfunctionalseeming family come to be mediated entirely by the principles and ideas of political justice: "Parents and children reflectively equilibriate, dutifully if sullenly, abide by the two principles of justice, and even manage to achieve 114

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the conditions of stability and congruence, so that the good of justice is realized within their household."64 As Rawls points out, one thing this misses is that the principles of justice as fairness only apply directly to the basic structure as such and not to all aspects of all relationships. The point is that people can be "reasonable" as citizens without it needing to be true that all their relationships, all their dealings with others in whatever association or institution, have to be mediated constantly through the ideas and principles of the reasonable political conception. People can have identities as citizens and still have identities as members of, or belonging to, this or that non-political association, community or institution, including the family.65 Obviously this can bring tensions between the requirements of the different identities; they can pull in different directions, and generate conflict between different loyalties and commitments. Anti-expressivism is about resisting the urge to overcome this by simply identifying the commitments of "citoyen and homme" in one overall identity, or comprehensive doctrine specifying proper political relations as part of an overall conception of the good life. Similarly, the otherness view allows for the pursuit of relatively "subjective" values and commitments as part of the cultural landscape (i.e. as a member of associations, communities or institutions within the cultural landscape), but within limits marking respect for nature (as other). This is without requiring that "respect for nature's otherness" should permanently trump all other considerations, or become the guiding (suicidal) spirit of all our relationships.66 Say, for example, that someone's favourite tree is an old oak at the bottom of the garden of his childhood home. It was part of the world he was born into, part of the scenery of childhood; he has happy memories of climbing it and so forth. The mere fact that he has such an attachment to this particular tree does not in itself entail that he should care about other trees, such as those in the Amazon rain forest. To see that he should requires him to step back from personal attachments and adopt a more objective perspective, one from which, say, the otherness of those trees can be appreciated. He can also view his old oak from this perspective and recognize that it is not merely "his old oak" as it were, but, for example, an organism with its own mode of flourishing independent of the role it has played in his life. But having viewed it in that way, it remains possible for him to be attached to it as his favourite tree; he does not have to, and is not required to, view it from now on only from the more objective perspective - only as something other. He has not become disenchanted with that tree or with trees in general, nor is he now alienated in some regrettable way from it or them. What he has is a more sophisticated outlook on trees, one allowing him to accept the possibility of some principle of respect for trees as other, as independent of the particular 115

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attachments people may have to them, independent, that is, of the role trees are allotted within the landscape. As was the case with neutrality, pointing to political liberalism's element of anti-expressivism as showing the non-arbitrariness of excluding the otherness view serves to make it all the more arbitrary. The otherness view is anti-expressivist in its own right. It is anti-expressivism as applied to our view of independent nature. The strand of liberalism that emphasizes its own "political" (as opposed to "comprehensive") status is the denial of expressivist political philosophies, which treat the properly constituted state as the expression of one substantive moral tradition. It is a mistake to identify the just state with any comprehensive doctrine of the good life, including "liberal" versions. The expressivist error with respect to nature is to identify it with the landscape, as if there were no nature out there independent of the hopes and fantasies we project onto it, or the uses we can invent for it. Both mistakes are easy to make; the "neutrality" of nature and of state are both intellectually fragile, as it were, easily overlooked in the processes of making landscapes and good lives for ourselves. Unless the status of independent nature is to be ignored altogether,67 then one wants to say again, in a non-blueprinting way, that it seems natural for political liberals to recognize this shared anti-expressivism and seek to overcome both kinds of intellectual fragility at the same time. To be sure of the "reasonableness" of this it is necessary to remember that just as the anti-expressivist element of political liberalism is not itself a description of how we should live our whole lives, nor is that of the otherness view. Consider that major enemies of both the otherness view and political liberalism are strongly holist theories, which emphasize the importance of wholes over parts, or relations over relata, overcoming or transcending apartness or alienation and the subject-object distinction. For example, Larmore charges the German Romantic movement with being particularly thoroughly expressivist, and indeed the major source of the modern expressivist anti-liberal tradition:68 Their expressivism stemmed from their reliance upon a simple dichotomy: if a society does not form an organic whole, it is fragmented and anomic. It is indeed this ideal of a whole expressed in each of its parts that shaped the Romantics' vision of both society and the individual. It moved them to demand that a substantial notion of the good unite all areas of social life and that the individual overcome the "alienating" distinction, the Entzweiung, between the roles of homme and citoyen. They could not abide the idea that what is relevant in one domain need not be so in another. They longed for an all-pervading spirit of community that (they 116

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imagined) religion had once provided and that a distinctiondrawing Enlightenment had dismissed.69 The proposal to incorporate the otherness view within the political liberal conception is not based on an insistence that what is relevant in one domain (say environmental philosophy) must be relevant in another (say political philosophy), lest each domain suffer a crippling alienation and the fracturing of the seamless whole of which they should be parts. It is precisely not based on a prior commitment to as much holism as possible. How could it be when, by definition, the otherness view is so sharply distinguished from strongly holistic eco-philosophies?70 Rather, it is a matter of the deep congruence brought by their shared resistance to overcoming "alienating" distinctions and separations, as marked by their shared neutralism and anti-expressivism. The otherness view is available for incorporation; it is not excluded by the political liberal strategy with respect to the internal or subjective circumstances of justice - it is continuous with it. Given that independent nature should not simply be ignored and that a purely instrumental automatic default is arbitrary unless entailed by the political liberal conception,71 then the otherness view should be incorporated; nature's otherness (or respect for it) should be a political value alongside those of freedom and equality. At the very least, it should be a question of "my enemy's enemy is my friend", where the enemy is the "cult of wholeness".72

4.8 Reasonable virtues We might also put the issues in terms of seeing respect for nature's otherness as continuous with the exercise of virtuous citizenship in accordance with the spirit of reasonableness animating political liberalism. Remember that the "fact of reasonable pluralism" can be put like this: spontaneous human nature, unconstrained by coercive institutions, does not determine, or converge upon, a single particular conception of the good life. In being prepared to abide by "fair terms of cooperation" that allow for the fact of pluralism, citizens respect this fact. This is part of what it means to be a reasonable citizen. The reasonable citizen does not seek to identify the state (or background conception of the political) with her own conception of the good life, does not see it as right or proper that the former should simply be an expression of the latter; she accepts that one should not expect the state to embody or enforce one's own deepest personal commitments any more than it should anyone else's. Thus the 117

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reasonable citizen has what Rawls calls the "very great virtues ... [of] political cooperation that make a constitutional regime possible".73 These include the toleration of (diverse) others. It is perhaps not too misleading to gloss this as a disposition to respect otherness in the political realm, an unwillingness to try to force those wedded to perhaps quite puzzlingly alien doctrines and ways of life into one's (or "our") own preferred blueprint, either through personal coercion or invoking state power. Since this can be an inconvenience, the term "toleration" is not out of place here, even though what is tolerated might be valued. It might be thought that it is people, or their freedom and equality, that are being valued, and perhaps not their odd beliefs and ways of life, which precisely are merely tolerated; the term "toleration" should be reserved exclusively for what is only disvalued yet put up with. This ignores the fact that things, like the curate's egg, may be both valued and disvalued. Thus one might, in general, value the presence of diverse reasonable doctrines and ways of life within a well-ordered society and yet at least sometimes, in some moods, regret the inconvenience they necessarily involve: the diversion of social resources to ways of life not one's own; the occasionally unsettling shock of face-to-face encounters with difference; and the ways political decisionmaking is made more difficult. One might sometimes think (perhaps wrongly) that life would be easier if the rational pursuit of one's conception of the good life were not constrained by the reasonable, and the power of the state co-opted to that end. It is implausible to suppose that people would never experience the requirements, and necessary consequences, of their own reasonableness as a great inconvenience to be tolerated. But then one might similarly value external nature as a negative end, accept this as a general constraint, yet also see it (at least sometimes) as an inconvenience, precisely because it is a constraint on the pursuit of other ends. Here also it does not seem out of place to talk of tolerating nature as other: as a matter of attempting not to stamp out its every inconvenient encroachment, obliterate every annoying natural obstacle, or recoil (in readiness to lash out in a spirit of improvement, or simple disgust74) from every encounter with the non-human in its more apparently aesthetically and morally sub-optimal aspects. Seen like this, then, respect for (involving toleration of) otherness looks continuous over the realms of people, state and external nature. None of these are just there to be used for the purposes of particular individuals and groups, identified simply as "mine" or "ours", even though it might often seem easier, instrumentally rational, to do so. The politically liberal state has a duty to promote two of these aspects of respecting otherness as virtues of citizens. If I am right, it should also promote the third - respect for the otherness of external nature - as a virtue of the reasonable citizen. 118

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To talk in this way of respect for nature's otherness being at home among the liberal virtues, is to say that it should be part of what Rawls calls the "political capital" of society. As he points out, politics often "betrays the marks of warfare", and "consists in rallying the troops and intimidating the other side, which must now increase its efforts or back down". And so it often expresses the thought "that to have character is to have firm convictions and be ready to proclaim them to others. To be is to confront." But this ignores the great values achieved by a society that realizes in its public life the cooperative virtues of reasonableness and a sense of fairness, of a spirit of compromise and the will to honor the duty of public civility. When these virtues are widespread in society and sustain its political conception of justice, they constitute a great public good. They belong to society's political capital.75 By the same token, a purely instrumental attitude to non-human nature, seeking only to bend it to the human will ("to be is to exploit"), seems out of place within this spirit of political reasonableness. A general disposition towards reasonable landscaping appears to be in order here. And this amounts to "an all-round rejection of an economy of exploitation and the uncontrolled pillage of natural resources and raw materials", and a general will to refrain "from destructive intervention in the circuits of the natural ecosystem",76 as elements of the capital of the politically liberal society that has managed to acknowledge the existence of independent nature. It should be emphasized again, though, that the exercise of such virtues does not in itself constitute commitment to a particular conception of the good life. For example, it does not presuppose a commitment to "civic humanism", the Aristotelian view that the realization of our essential nature as "political animals" requires widespread active participation in political life. This is excluded from the reasonable political liberal conception along with other comprehensive doctrines.77 Similarly, respect for nature's otherness as such does not amount to "green activism", if this means a way of life thought necessary for realizing the complete human good, or achieving an authentic harmony with nature.78 Now, it is of, course, important that respect for nature's otherness is endorsable by the reasonable plurality within the well-ordered society. Its incorporation within the political conception must leave it recognizably liberal, or the exercise will have been pointless. Certainly, the otherness view excludes treating nature purely instrumentally. Thus incorporating it within the political liberal conception decreases the number or range of permissible conceptions of the good life and comprehensive doctrines. It 119

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makes it neutral with respect to a narrower field. It is not neutral with regard to ways of life incompatible with acquiring respect for nature's otherness as a political virtue,79 in addition to those incompatible with respect for persons as free and equal. At root my claim is that these two grounds of impermissibility are consistent with each other. More than that, the former should be viewed as continuous with the latter, given that the status of independent nature is not to be ignored completely. However, we have said that recognizing and respecting nature's otherness requires remembering that nature as other is not there merely as the expression of human values; it involves not identifying it with purely human concerns, bearing in mind that it has an existence independent of being a human resource, whether physical or spiritual. But this does not mean that all other ways of viewing nature make it impossible for their adherents to accept respect for nature's otherness as a political commitment, and so should be outlawed. For example, as we have seen, the otherness view encompasses the claim, identified by Robert Goodin as the fundamental unifying value judgement behind much of the green political agenda, that "naturalness" is a value-adding property. However, as Goodin points out, in addition to the respect for the products of natural processes specifically as the results of processes outside and independent of ourselves, there is often in green contexts a strong emphasis on the way "such processes serve to fix our place in the external world. They help to 'locate the self, in a deep psychological sense that matters enormously to people".80 There is probably a lot in this as an explanation of a variety of green beliefs. But, as we have also seen, to the extent that the value of naturalness is explained in terms of its role in producing healthy human psyches, through providing a "larger context of meaningfulness", that value remains instrumental. As the form of a composite moral and political theory it seems to count as a version of what de-Shalit terms "hard environmentalism", in which environmental concern enters as the means to a human society free from such modern ills as alienation and materialism.81 By contrast, the otherness view enjoins respect for independent nature irrespective of the role such an attitude might have in curing "moral sickness". Hard environmentalism cannot enter into the reasonable political conception, but the otherness view can, if I am right. And respect for nature's otherness is something "comprehensive greens" with "hard environmentalist" inclinations presumably can endorse politically,82 even though their comprehensive account concerning the optimum relation to nature for producing the good life is excluded from the political conception used to determine basic political principles and constitutional essentials. 120

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Consider also eco-theism. This talks of the natural world as God's world, and as valuable as such. Still, eco-theists can see the world as "other", at least to the extent of "not ours",83 although, as I have already said, this is not the same view of nature's otherness as that presented here.84 It is the latter that is appropriate as a "political" commitment. Take, for example, Peter Reed's suggestion for an otherness-based environmental ethic.85 He makes some comments in keeping with the otherness view, as we have been understanding it ("it is our very separateness from the Earth, the gulf between the human and the natural, that makes us want to do right by the world"86), but he goes on to discuss nature's otherness very much in terms borrowed from the theologians Martin Buber and Rudolf Otto, endorsing Buber's notion of nature as a Thou.*7 This has the effect of collapsing "respect for nature's otherness" into very particular kinds of deeply personal existential-cum-religious revelatory experiences. It makes respect for nature's otherness too much like a "natural religion", a particular quasi-theistic kind of conception of the good life, with respect to which the state should remain neutral. Not that the state should outlaw it, but it cannot be part of the liberal political conception for determining basic principles and constitutional essentials. Now, Reed claims that it is "absolutely essential" that "ecophilosophy should mesh with the intuitions of environmentalists", and he asks, "in the face of power struggles and inert political institutions, how do we implement an ethic based on awe for nature?"88 It seems to me that respect for nature's otherness, including the fact that it is not "just ours", does mesh sufficiently with environmentalist intuitions without the religious overtones. But it would be better if it meshed also with the intuitions of the non-religious, in which case it positively should not rely on religious overtones. Moreover, the political implementation of an "ethic based on awe for nature" might be approached reasonably through stressing ways that humility in the face of nature's otherness (nature should not be thought of as nothing more than the significances attributed within the local landscape), meshes with "political humility" in the sense of "political reasonableness".89 To play its part in this, the idea of respecting nature's otherness can usefully echo Reed's own echoing of Buber: Buber's work is a call back to a common-sense idea that there is something that is not just part of us, a solid something we can kick in refutation of Berkeley's esse es percipi. It is a reminder of the power and being that exists independently of the human mind.90 The trick is to echo this without the religiosity and existentialism, which should be left as commitments that citizens may or may not have. Within 121

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the overlapping consensus of a well-ordered and green society, eco-theists should be able to accept respect for nature's otherness as a practical political virtue, although their comprehensive doctrines, in terms of which they explain nature's value, cannot enter into the political conception. The situation is the same as that of their commitment to toleration of and respect for other people as ends. Within the terms of their comprehensive doctrine, people may be owed special respect as being God's special creation made in His likeness, say; a reason excluded from the political conception, although it can ground acceptance of its practical virtues. Perhaps those strongly committed to blueprinting doctrines could never support the well-ordered and green society I am advocating here as any more than a modus vivendi. Still, those whose blueprinting is consistent with a non-instrumental view of nature also might endorse the practical requirements of respect for nature's otherness as a political virtue, although blueprinting reasons, such as "following Gaia's ways", are excluded from the political conception. I take it that respecting nature's otherness involves a general unwillingness to destroy natural ecosystems (whether or not such destruction can be predicted to have negative consequences for human interests and landscaping plans), and a heeding of ecological laws so as to understand the consequences for independent nature of various possible human courses of action. I have argued that blueprinting is excluded by the otherness view; in so far as nature is viewed as other, it is viewed as "indifferent", in the sense of not providing lessons in moral and political order. If this were not an important element of the otherness view, it would not have such congruence with the reasonableness of the political liberal conception. But this is not to say that blueprinting doctrines as such, those presenting certain ways of life as peculiarly "in accordance with nature", should be outlawed by a politically liberal state supplemented with the otherness view as a reasonable political commitment.

4.9 Extensions: universalist, perfectionist and comprehensive liberalisms My argument for the incorporation of the otherness view within the political liberal conception, as set out in this chapter, relied particularly on the congruence brought by their shared neutralism and anti-expressivism. But I don't think these connections between the otherness view and liberalism apply only to political liberalism; the argument does not stand or fall with just that variety of liberalism. It is important to emphasize this, 122

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if for no other reason than that many liberals find political liberalism implausible in one way or another. The three other varieties of liberalism I will consider here are universalist, perfectionist and comprehensive liberalism. These are not mutually exclusive, of course; indeed, more than one of them may often go together. But they can be distinguished as representing three of the main ways in which liberals distance themselves from political liberalism. I myself tend to sympathise with political liberalism, and consider the criticisms from these three directions overstated. However, my intention here is not to try to defuse them as lines of objection, but to suggest that because they also involve significant commitments to neutralism and anti-expressivism, the varieties of liberalism they represent are also congruent with the otherness view. I should remind the reader that I have concentrated on political liberalism so far because that is where those commitments are most visible, and because of the fact of reasonably widespread familiarity with Rawls's views. I will now briefly take each of these three liberal variations in turn to indicate their commitments to the elements relevant to the incorporation of the otherness view. Universalist liberalism91 Political liberalism appears to deny a universal application of its own principles. Part of the idea of a political conception, remember, is that it builds, as far as possible, on ideas that are in the public political culture.92 Thus Rawls claims that the idea of citizens as free and equal are latent in the political culture of Western democracies. But this seems to make the resulting theory too relativistic;93 it would appear to have no application to societies with different political cultures, those with no commitment to free and equal citizenship and the rights, liberties and duties flowing from it. The theory gives no grounds for universal human rights, which is unacceptable. Now, let's say that this is a valid criticism of Rawlsian political liberalism, which would therefore be much improved by dropping the relativist element (from the idea of a political conception). Say then that justice as fairness, with its component ideas of freedom and equality, is universalized, so the fact that certain political institutions and practices in non-Western societies occur in a context where there is little or no tradition of liberal democracy does not mean that there is anything illegitimate about condemning them for being unjust, or for violating rights that should be respected everywhere. So be it; the rest of the political conception is intact,94 including the neutralism and anti-expressivism. If the otherness view should be incorporated in the more Western-liberaldemocratic-relative version, then it should also be incorporated in the 123

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universal version. If constitutional essentials should be universal (presumably leaving their precise interpretation and implementation to local democracy), then this in itself makes no difference to whether the otherness view should be among the constitutional essentials. Perfectionist liberalism95 This might seem to present more difficulties. A "perfectionist" view of the human good tends, in political philosophy, to be associated with an explicit rejection of neutrality with respect to conceptions of the good life. Perfectionism, crudely, says that there are objective values and disvalues such that ways of life involving the pursuit of disvalues are less worthwhile than those that don't. The life of a teacher, say, is better than the life of a gambler, even if the teacher is not an excellent teacher, and the gambler is a very successful gambler. Such comparisons are to be given political weight. The liberal element comes in with attaching great value to autonomy; say by claiming it to be a necessary condition of a life's being valuable or worthwhile that it be chosen autonomously.96 But, and this is the perfectionist element of perfectionist liberalism, autonomy in itself is not sufficient to make a life worthwhile; there is no value to choosing a worthless life. Thus the liberal state concerned, as it should be, with preserving valuable autonomy, will eschew neutrality in favour of ensuring that there are genuinely valuable options there for the choosing and, perhaps, attaching disincentives to the less valuable and the worthless.97 A life centred on teaching might (in some possible world) be highly incentivized, say through generous tax relief and accommodation grants, and the life of gambling disincentivized through high gambling taxes and restricted licences for casinos. These policies would be justified by the liberal state with reference to the perfectionist values involved. The important point for us here is that perfectionism seems to rule out neutralism, and thereby much of my argument for incorporating the otherness view within liberal theory. It might be thought that the best move to make now from the perspective of incorporating the otherness view is to make respect for nature's otherness a perfectionist value that, like autonomy, is a necessary condition of a genuinely worthwhile life: to be really valuable a way of life must be autonomously chosen and involve respect for nature's otherness, in addition to including more of what the perfectionist considers values rather than disvalues. Now I don't deny the possibility of such a theory, but I do not at the moment see how to make it work without simply insisting that respect for nature's otherness is a perfectionist value to be

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ranked alongside autonomy. Without emphasizing neutralism and antiexpressivism as elements of the overall political theory that contains autonomy, it is difficult to see any close relation between autonomy and respect for nature's otherness.98 In the absence of that, the otherness view would seem to be an ad hoc, arbitrary addition to the theory." No, I think the strategy must be to reject the dichotomy between neutralism and perfectionism and emphasize instead that perfectionist liberalism is a political conception that itself involves significant neutrality (and antiexpressivism). With this in mind, it is worthwhile pointing out that perfectionist criticism of political liberalism can be exaggerated. The neutralism of the latter, remember, is neutrality of aim or justification, not neutrality of effect.100 Moreover, at least in Rawls's theory, neutralism applies at the level of constitutional basics and basic principles of justice, but not necessarily to the formulation of policy by legislators, where "perfectionist" values might enter in.101 But still, the fact that perfectionist considerations are excluded from the political liberal conception determining constitutional essentials and basic principles may be thought a decisive objection. The view that the state and background political conception should embody a perfectionist commitment to a plurality of objective goods reflects a worry parallel to one raised by wanting to ensure that the value of nature as other has a secure role in decision-making; leaving it to what democratic legislators may or may not act on in the democratic to and fro means that important perfectionist values might be left out and disvalues left in.102 When it comes to what should be guaranteed, political liberalism is neutral. It is neutral with respect to the very claim that there is a plurality of objective incommensurable goods (and that autonomy is not worthwhile unless employed in the selection of some of them). Such value pluralism is but one of the (partially) comprehensive doctrines among the reasonable plurality recognized by political liberalism. This is unacceptable because that value pluralism represents the truth. Now, let's say we accept this criticism and reject political liberalism in favour of perfectionist liberalism. If we do that we are not thereby abandoning political neutrality altogether. We are rejecting neutrality (of aim/justification) between a plurality of reasonable comprehensive doctrines (or ways of life embodying such doctrines) in favour of neutrality (of aim/justification) between a plurality of objective values (or ways of life embodying such values). Perfectionist liberalism is perfectionist liberalism. It calls for guaranteed state action aimed at preserving a plurality of valuable options within the range of which autonomy may be exercised. It will act in ways the politically liberal state might not, both to preserve some valuable options that could disappear otherwise, and discourage 125

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worthless options that could flourish. But what it won't do is coerce citizens into one valuable option (or one narrow range of them), or insist that only those valuable options pursuable consistently with this or that, or no, religious doctrine, will be permitted. It will say, without equivocation, that lives committed to the pursuit of athletic excellence, or artistic excellence, or scholarly excellence, are all objectively good, and those who disagree are just wrong, objectively. Whereas political liberals will worry, at least when the focus is on the constitutional level, that there might be reasonable disagreement about this (e.g. the comprehensive athlete might reasonably doubt the goodness of comprehensive scholarliness, while recognizing that the comprehensive scholar might reasonably disagree with her). But perfectionist liberalism won't confine itself to viewing just those sorts of lives as worthwhile; there is a plurality of goods and a plurality of ways they might be combined and pursued. A wide range of autonomy remains. But then significant neutrality remains.103 The perfectionist liberal conception in principle is neutral with respect to a wide range of autonomous and objectively good ways of living. This must be true or its claimed equal autonomy, and hence liberalism, would be empty. Thus the citizens of the perfectionist liberal state are party to a kind of political reasonableness akin to that of political liberalism: they recognize the value of each other's autonomy and the plurality of objective values necessary to it. Hence they must accept the basic neutrality of their political order with respect to their choices among the good. They do not see the state (or background political conception) as the political wing of their own preferred way of living a valuable life.104 Neutrality (and a related anti-expressivism) is less pronounced in perfectionist liberalism, less overtly connected up to an attitude of political reasonableness, than it is in political liberalism, and it is obscured by the standard rhetoric of perfectionism versus neutralism. Yet it is there, it is significant, and if it is consonant with the otherness view of external nature in the context of political liberalism, it is difficult to see why it should be thought not to be in the context of perfectionist liberalism as well. Comprehensive liberalism105 Maybe Rawls should have left things more or less as they were with A Theory of Justice, the most thorough and sophisticated statement of modern liberalism as a comprehensive doctrine in which freedom and equality are genuinely substantive moral commitments: the correct and central values of the morally well-ordered society, rather than mere "political" commitments. The issue here is not the threat to universalism 126

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involved in reducing ideas of free and equal, and so on, to "political" status. It is precisely that a political status is not comprehensive; it involves a retreat from substantive ideals. Earlier, I endorsed Larmore's interpretation of Rawls's "move to the political" as a matter of reducing the extent to which justice as fairness is an expressivist theory so that it would be a reasonable conception given a plurality of comprehensive doctrines, not all of which are comprehensively liberal. But it might be thought that "expressivism" - the coincidence of political and personal ideals - is fine, as long as they are the right, that is, liberal, ideals. The attempt to formulate liberal political theory so as to appeal to those who are not comprehensive liberals is wrongheaded; it involves too much compromise (for the sake of "stability") and waste of intellectual effort better spent on pressing further for the realization of liberal principles of justice in what are still scandalously unjust so-called "liberal societies". That liberal ideals are controversial in their comprehensive form is irrelevant: those contesting them are mistaken. Besides, they are still contested in their "political" form. It is the non-liberal doctrines that should do the compromising. As Brian Barry writes in a slightly different context: Liberal principles are not some sort of "magic bullet" that can somehow create harmony without any need for sacrificing by the parties. If we want a medical analogy, we might better make the less agreeable comparison with a course of chemotherapy: it holds out hope of destroying the malignant features of religion, but only with side effects that are liable to be experienced as debilitating by believers.106 Now the "comprehensive" critique of political liberalism I am getting at here has two elements. First, "going political" for the sake of achieving a harmonious overlapping consensus around liberal ideas misconceives the proper relation between liberal principles and non-liberal comprehensive doctrines; only the latter have malignant parts that should be excised for the sake of social cooperation and civil peace. Secondly, the cure, in terms of the political implementation of liberal principles, is the right one despite any unfortunate side effects, because they are morally correct principles emerging from a true comprehensive doctrine. So I am taking it that comprehensive liberalism is liberalism in expressive form: its ideals of freedom and equality are held to be, and taught to be, of greatest weight in all contexts. This is unlike political liberalism, in which freedom and equality are components of an individual's political identity as a citizen, thus accommodating those who find it unthinkable to view their (say traditional religious) commitments as anything other than constitutive of 127

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themselves and so not possible objects of free choice (although they recognize that, as citizens, they have the right to leave their community). Comprehensive liberalism as a political theory asserts freedom and equality as ideals to be fully embraced by everybody. I have already noted that Rawls and Larmore cite Kant and Mill as comprehensive liberals. Perhaps they are wrong about that. For example, it is not true that Mill thought that the state should promote autonomy as an ideal, through the education system, despite his views on the importance of "reflective individuality" to human flourishing.107 On the other hand, the fact that Mill had such a view of human flourishing qualifies him as a comprehensive liberal, at least "in private". Maybe only those thus inclined towards such comprehensive liberalism would bother to formulate political liberalism; the point being to show others that they do not have to be likewise inclined in order to see the political project of liberalism as "reasonable": a form of explicit reassurance not thought to be necessary before communitarian criticisms of liberal individualism became so fashionable in recent decades. No matter. For present purposes I take comprehensive liberalism to be a political theory that is, if you like, "perfectionist" specifically about (equal) autonomy. But again, as with perfectionist liberalism proper, this theory retains significant neutrality, and at least a relative lack of expressivism. Its ideals are still relatively "thin" ideals; recalling Larmore's distinction between substantial conceptions of the good life and ideals of how these should be pursued or arrived at, it is the latter that comprise the expressivist element of comprehensive liberalism, the place where its personal and political ideals coincide. But it is part of the very commitment to the ideal of equal autonomy, within the terms of such a theory, to recognize that it may be exercised in ways different to the way one has taken oneself. Consequently, it involves a recognition that the state is not there to, and should not, enforce one's own way as the only, or most, proper way (as usual the paradigm is religion); and so the recognition that one should not identify the state with one's own chosen way of life, see it as the political expression of one's particular commitments, is present here also. Again, although the neutrality and anti-expressivism here are less visible than in political liberalism, they have a significant enough presence, I submit, that, if the otherness view should be incorporated there, it should also be within comprehensive liberalism as a political conception.108 With the arguments of this section in mind, we might envisage a dimension, "degree of expressivism", and place different conceptions of the political along it, with the most rigorous romantic holism towards one end (that of most expressivism) and political liberalism close to the other (that of least expressivism).109 Whether or not political liberalism is 128

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counted a form of universal liberalism is in itself irrelevant to its place on this dimension. Let us say once again that the main motivation behind Rawls's move to the political was to purge the remaining account of justice of its earlier expression of "non-public, comprehensive moral doctrines" centred on partisan liberal values of individualism and autonomy. We can interpret this as an attempt to move justice as fairness further towards the end of least expressivism, to increase its appeal as politically reasonable under conditions of a plurality of ways of life, not all of which embody strong commitments to such comprehensively liberal values. Still, comprehensive liberalism as a political conception is relatively close to the end of least expressivism, as is perfectionist liberalism.110 My suggestion is that whereas strongly holist approaches in environmental philosophy have an affinity with political theories at the end of highest expressivism, political theories lying towards the end of least expressivism tend to be ripe for "greening" through incorporation of the otherness view. This is not necessarily true of all such theories. Some might embody an essential, foundational, in some other way ineliminable, commitment to a purely instrumental view of nature.111 Perhaps Lockean "possessive individualism", for example, is like this; a comprehensive form of liberalism that is neutral between different ways nature might be exploited by those with natural property rights to it, rights subject only to provisos protecting the interests of other and subsequent rights bearers. Whether or not this is the right way to read Locke's own position,112 it is not true that all of liberalism is inescapably saddled with such views. Such a positive "comprehensive" commitment to thorough instrumentalism about nature is certainly not an essential feature of the theories considered here. Rather, the assumption seems to be that giving political weight to non-instrumentalism about nature, allowing it to share pride of place alongside the traditional freedom and equality, is inconsistent with liberal neutrality; yet we all have to use nature as a resource to some extent, so instrumentalism is allowed in, but then has the whole field to itself by default. If I am right this should not survive recognition of the continuity between reasonable landscaping and the political reasonableness shared, to a large degree, by political liberalism and the liberal theories just considered.

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CHAPTER 5

Some objections

5.1 Introduction Having tried to show why the otherness view of nature and the liberal view of politics should go together, I will finish in this final chapter by considering some objections to this way of being a "green liberal". No doubt there are many objections that could be made to my arguments in this book. I will consider three specimen objections: one each from the domains of value theory, ethics and political theory, respectively. First, consider an objection from the domain of value theory. The position I have argued for, and the otherness view of nature's value that it involves, presuppose that there is such a thing as non-instrumental value. But perhaps there isn't. If it could be shown that all value is really instrumental value this would undermine the whole project of this book. Not only has the proposition that all value is instrumental value been argued for recently by Wissenburg, but it has been argued for in the course of his book Green Liberalism, which contains a variety of important, carefully reasoned and often forceful arguments about the nature and viability of an environmentally friendly form of liberal political theory.1 It is therefore highly appropriate that I seek to defuse the "all value is instrumental value" objection by spending some time critically discussing Wissenburg's views on the matter. Secondly, consider an objection in terms of ethical theory. Any satisfactory environmental ethic, capable of determining one course of action over another, cannot be grounded on a blanket ascription of noninstrumental value to all of nature. This argument I associate with Tom Regan.2 Yet the otherness view does attach such value to all of nature (as other), whether at the level of biological individuals, species, ecosystems or indeed abiotic nature. Consequently the otherness view cannot form the basis of a satisfactory environmental ethic. 130

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Thirdly, there is an objection from political theory. The position I have sketched in this book is not radical enough. Meaningful progress on "environmental issues" requires opposition to the state. Liberalism is a statist political philosophy; being a "green liberal" could only amount to seeking reform of the liberal state, which will never be enough. Therefore, however close we manage to persuade ourselves the connection between the otherness view and liberalism to be, those with genuinely "green" intentions should eschew liberalism, in favour of anarchism. I discuss this line of thought particularly in relation to Carter's recent statement of eco-anarchism.3

5.2 Is all value instrumental value? Where Goodin argues that any green theory of value should include some explanation of why nature (or some favoured property of nature) is valuable,4 Wissenburg seems to argue that merely giving an explanation of why a valuable X is valuable; that is, to give a reason for valuing it, is to demonstrate the instrumental status of X*s value: "value can always be interpreted as instrumental: we do not just value things, we value them for reasons, thus making the valued act, object or situation instrumental to the satisfaction of our reasons".5 It is unclear what "satisfaction of our reasons" means here. Responding to Piers Stephens's critical discussion of his book, Wissenburg puts what seems to be the same point like this: "the value of Xis determined by what it means to us or to others or other things we care about".6 The valuing of others involved in our caring about them is also determined by what they mean to us. In the same place he says that the term "instrumental" is "confusing" and so should be avoided, apparently because to say that X is valued instrumentally suggests it is valued only for "consciously plotted purely self-regarding reasons". Still, he thinks, it remains true that We value our sons, ideally, because of what they mean to themselves, and admittedly, it is unlikely that anyone would describe this in an ordinary, casual conversation as instrumental value. And yet, in a purely technical and formal sense, the term can still be applied: we value X, in this case our sons, for "what" they mean to "us". We value them for the effect they have on our consciousness or happiness or existence or whatever we feel is relevant about "us", an effect for which they are the instrument, and we fill in the blanks left by the abstract "what" by "what they mean to themselves".7 131

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Now this way of analysing value, reducing all value to "instrumental value", is startling and prima facie unconvincing. But it would be too quick and question-begging to dismiss it immediately on those grounds. To begin with, put aside the issue of "what our sons mean to us" and consider another of Wissenburg's examples. His reductive account of value, he claims, "in no way excludes these possibilities: turning up for work because of the money or because of the joy involved in a praxis (i.e. having an interest versus being interested) are both admissible reasons. They both describe what our job may mean to us."8 Now, it is certainly true that we can distinguish different meanings that our work may have for us; it might be a purely money-making exercise, or it may be a joyful exercise in its own right (with money-making still an important consideration). But the straightforward way of making this distinction is in terms of instrumental and wow-instrumental value (i.e. means and ends), as in "my work means nothing more to me than a means to, or instrument for, making money", as opposed to "my work means more to me than just money, it is something I also enjoy for its own sake".9 Putting these two kinds of evaluation in the same, instrumental, category seems to prevent us from making this kind of distinction. If I enjoy my work for its own sake (rather than just the money), it is still true that I enjoy it; that is "why" I value it. This transforms it into instrumental value on Wissenburg's account; that is, what my work means to me is enjoyment - strictly speaking, I don't really value it for its own sake but as a means to my own enjoyment. I want to mention two immediate problems with this. First, it is unclear that my working and the enjoyment I get from my working can be distinguished in a way that allows me to say that the former is a means to the latter. Given that I am talking about my work as such (rather than, say, what I do with the money I get from working), it is not as if I work and then, as a result, I experience some enjoyment. Rather, I would say that (if I am lucky in my work) I perform certain actions, exercise and develop certain capabilities, the performance, exercise and development of which are enjoyments. Other things being equal, certain background conditions (such as the absence of excessive stress) being met, then to do X (i.e. work) is to enjoy oneself in a particular way. If this occurs in one's working life, then one values one's work for its own sake, rather than merely as a (tedious or onerous) means to making money: one's work is actually constituted by enjoyments.10 The same thing seems to be true of many "enjoyable" activities: sexual, artistic, sporting, academic, conversational some political ones? - and so on. Secondly, if I am wrong about such cases, and work, say, is only ever (really) valued as a means to enjoyment, money or whatever, it is still true that Wissenburg's striking enthusiasm for reductive instrumentalist 132

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analyses of value generates the following general objection. If every X that we value (including our sons) we do so only for the effect it has on our "consciousness, happiness, existence or whatever we feel is relevant about us", an effect for which X is an instrument, then the picture painted looks a very egoistic one. I may not be a nasty selfish sort of an egoist, always acting for consciously plotted, self-regarding reasons, but I do seem to conform to something very like the psychological egoist theory of human nature if in fact everything I value is for the effect it has on my consciousness or happiness and so on. There seems to be a familiar fallacy in here: the fact that when I value X, X is valuable to me does not entail that when I value X, it must be true that X is only valuable for me in the sense of an instrument to my valued self.11 Yet this latter, egoist, stance seems to be the only way to interpret Wissenburg's position. Something has to be an end (even if it is also a means to something else) for anything to count as a means. On his account, it must be oneself, or "whatever one feels is relevant about oneself". But does something have to be valued for its own sake, as an end? At one point in his discussion in Green Liberalism, Wissenburg raises the possibility that a chain of purely instrumental goods could stop with a "goal that is not a value at all", and so is neither instrumentally nor noninstrumentally valuable; "just something we have to do (live) or be (alive) and can do in different ways, thus giving rise to choices and room for moral codes". Then he says, "I shall not pursue this argument here, what matters is that we have no a priori reason to believe in the necessity of an infinite regression of instrumental values or in the impossibility of an ethics based purely on external value."12 By "external" value he seems to mean value that is not "intrinsic", thus apparently conflating non-intrinsic and instrumental value; I will say more on this below, but for now I want to make the following point. It is true that some philosophers have suggested that it is possible, in principle, to have at least an indefinitely long chain of instrumental values, with no "ends in themselves" in sight,13 although I am not convinced this makes sense. However, it is utterly mysterious (to me anyway) how a chain of purely instrumental goods can just come to a stop at something we just have to do or be - which Wissenburg calls a "goal" - without this being a value to us, indeed something we value, at least partly, for its own sake. His suggestion, living/being alive, surely is something we do/are, and value, for its own sake (although it is implausible, morally speaking, to view one's own life as the only end in itself that one is prepared to recognize). Maybe his point is that this doesn't count as a value because it is not chosen. However, this is not argued for, and nothing else he says implies that this should be so and, after all, the claim that X can be a value to us only if we choose to value it is 133

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highly implausible. Note that I am not claiming here that we must be able to identify (or believe in the existence of) something that is valuable only as an end in itself, something that is never at all valuable as a means to anything else; some kind of axiological equivalent of the unmoved mover. And it might be just this that Wissenburg is trying to rule out. Still, at least some things must be valuable as non-instrumental ends as well as means. Otherwise everything is valued only as a means to (what itself is only) a means to (what is only) a means to a means, and so on, which seems to involve an insane kind of normative restlessness, taking "deferred gratification" to absurd lengths. In this sense, the total reduction of all value to instrumental value seems to me to be out of the question. It also seems clear that we both do and should view some things noninstrumentally as well as instrumentally. I value my postman as a means to communicating with others, but also non-instrumentally as an end in himself. I don't view him as a mere instrument, a "living tool" or slave (of myself or the postal service). This means that I tend to think he should receive reasonable remuneration and have decent, non-humiliating working conditions, and not just because I (would) like the way such states of affairs (would) impact on myself, or because this will make him a more efficient postman. I also hope he wasn't coerced into being a postman, again not just because this would hurt my feelings (or hurt his feelings in a way that would hurt my feelings), or whatever I feel is important about myself, or because I think press-ganged postmen tend to offer a less cheerfully efficient service. I don't think I'm alone in this. I don't think my valuing my postman non-instrumentally as an end in himself, as well as for a variety of instrumental reasons, makes me a moral aberration, some kind of mutant super-altruist. It seems very likely that Wissenburg would want to agree with me about this.14 And certainly he does occasionally announce that some things have value as ends: "From a liberal democratic point of view ... all value can and must be considered instrumental to the end of fulfilling a plan of life."15 So Wissenburg does want to draw means-ends distinctions, at least in his characterization of liberalism. At the same time he wants to say that all value is instrumental. We seem to be left with one or more of the following four possibilities: (i)

His value theory is incoherent. If "X is valued as an end" means "X is valued non-instrumentally", then Wissenburg is asserting both that all value is instrumental value, and that something ("fulfilling a plan of life") is valued non-instrumentally. (ii) His value theory is vacuous in an important respect. If all value is instrumental and some values are valuable ends, so that the meansends distinction is drawn within the overall category "instrumental 134

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value", then "instrumental" is doing no work: "instrumental value" just means "value". (iii) The claim "all value is instrumental value" should be taken to mean only that nothing is only an end in itself: purely non-instrumental as it were. This might well be a truth, but it is one expressed in a highly misleading way. (iv) The claim "all value is instrumental value" is meant only as a denial of intrinsic value: no value is intrinsic value. But this is to conflate instrumental and non-intrinsic (or extrinsic) value, and would seem to be part of a general tendency to conflate the objective-subjective, extrinsic-intrinsic, instrumental-non-instrumental distinctions. I return to this shortly. My suggestion is that "instrumental" should not be applied at the level of the overall category of value, but reserved instead as a synonym for "means" (as opposed to ends). However, this would not prevent Wissenburg's value theory from being "reductively instrumentalist" in the sense that it leaves myself (or the fulfilment of my plan of life or whatever is important about me) as the only possible non-instrumental value for me. Thus it seems that Wissenburg's value theory reduces to some form of egoism. It might be replied that my criticism here rests on a confusion; in particular I am running together a value theory (X is valuable to me only if it is a means to satisfying my reasons) and a claim about what is noninstrumentally good (me), whereas Wissenburg is interested in, and committed to, only the former. But the fault here is not mine. Reducing all value to the instrumental roles things play in "satisfying my reasons" seems to me to leave nothing but egoism. Only I (or whatever is important about me) can have non-instrumental value - be an end - for myself. Notice, for example, that if we take "satisfying my reasons" as equivalent to "fulfilling my plan of life", and this is the only end in itself for me, then I can value the satisfaction of your reasons as an end for me, only if that happens to be part of my plan of life. This seems to exclude the possibility of valuing other people (and indeed independent nature), as ends in themselves; that is, granting them a respected status, independently of how, or whether, they tend to further one's own life plans. Apart from its inherent implausibilities, saddling himself with egoism seems to be in (rather extreme) tension with Wissenburg's general intention to operate with a formal framework representing a "liberalism of liberalisms". His aim is to show how "liberalism as such" can be "greened".16 But not every form of liberalism embraces egoism.17 Why, then, should "liberalism as such", representing a shared core of liberal commitments, be stuck with it? It is unclear why Wissenburg has to formulate a general value 135

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theory in the way that he does. The fourth possibility distinguished above appears to be the most relevant here: he seems motivated mainly by a desire to kill off the notion of intrinsic value, perhaps because those who believe in it might appeal to it as a mysterious source of authority over and above human individuals. The main mistake then, and perhaps the source of the trouble here, is a tendency to conflate the objective-subjective, extrinsic-intrinsic and instrumental-non-instrumental distinctions. Wissenburg clearly wants a subjectivist account of value, making value a function of subjective attitudes and/or sentiments, rather than a matter of objective properties that we either manage or fail to intuit. Hence his use of the phrase "value is in the eye of the beholder".18 I have argued that an objectivist - although not an intuitionist - analysis of the value conferred by nature's otherness works and is preferable.19 But I mean "objective" in Nagel's sense; objective values or reasons for action being those that operate when a person steps back from her more personal "subjective" viewpoint (say one constituted by her own plan of life) so as to achieve a more objective perspective (one not tied to that personal plan of life). I take it that Rawlsian "primary goods", for example, are objective goods in this sense, although presumably they are also instrumental goods. Notice that this conception of value objectivity is entirely indifferent to the phrase "value is in the eye of the beholder". However vehemently it is proclaimed, the reply is simply, "But are we talking about what the beholder beholds in her more objective moments, or what?"20 But let us say that all value is "subjective". Still it doesn't follow that it is all instrumental (say a means to my "subjective satisfaction", or whatever it is about my subjectivity that is held to be important). Non-instrumental value can be in the eye of the beholder too. Even the most unreconstructed emotivist can say "Hooray for X for X's own sake", as opposed to "Hooray for Y and hooray for X as a means to Y". Certainly, blanket subjectivism about value rules out the existence of intrinsic value.21 But even if we say that all value is subjective, and take this to rule out the existence of intrinsic value, we are not thereby committed to the view that all value is instrumental. To assume we are is to conflate the instrumental-noninstrumental (means-ends) distinction and the intrinsic-extrinsic distinction; that is, conflate intrinsic with non-instrumental (or "end in itself"). Eliminating intrinsic value would then be taken, mistakenly, to leave only means or instrumental values. But, as we saw in our discussion of the value of nature's otherness, and following Korsgaard, these are separate distinctions and it is quite possible to have values that are both extrinsic (i.e. non-intrinsic, or in virtue of extrinsic or relational properties) and noninstrumental.22 136

SOME O B J E C T I O N S Thus Wissenburg is wrong to argue as follows: [T]he question of the compatibility of liberal democracy with types of environmental ethics other than anthropocentric egalitarianism can only be answered affirmatively if one of two propositions is true. Either there must be indirect reasons for attributing value to non-human nature, reasons that make these parts of nature instrumental in advancing the human liberty of life, or liberal democracy must offer room for the idea of intrinsic value.23 Liberal democracy may offer room for the idea of non-human nature as an end in itself, such as is involved in the otherness view, without extending hospitality to the idea of intrinsic value. Wissenburg seems to think that the idea of intrinsic value is vague, confused and mysterious: not the sort of thing a respectable political theory like liberalism, which commands the allegiance of millions of decent, upright and forward-looking folk around the world, should be associated with (although if some people want to use the idea in their private lives ...). I have expressed similar views with respect to "blueprinting doctrines" and very strongly holist forms of environmental philosophy. However, my suspicion is that the vagueness, confusion and mysteriousness lies more in his discussion than in the notion of intrinsic value itself. It is true that "intrinsic" value, and similar-seeming notions, have been used in a confusing variety of ways in environmental ethics in recent decades. But Wissenburg's heroic attempt to impose order on this confusion24 seems to me to succeed merely in transferring it from "intrinsic" to "instrumental", and thereby intensifying it. Perhaps I am overlooking some important and subtle points and distinctions. Luckily, I do not have to defend the notion of intrinsic value; my own argument does not rely on it. What I must, and do, object to is the inference from "no value can be intrinsic" to "all value must be instrumental". This seems to me to be the non sequitur driving Wissenburg's value theory.25

5.3 No foundation for an environmental ethic? I have argued that nature's otherness confers extrinsic, non-instrumental value.26 It makes non-human nature a conditioned end (although one needs to resist the excessively Kantian implications of talk of "conditioned ends"). The condition of nature's value being realized in virtue of its otherness is simply that we exist so that the otherness relation holds. But

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this is not to say that our existence is instrumentally valuable as a means to nature's otherness or vice versa. Certainly other conditions might need to be satisfied in order for us to actually value nature for its otherness. For example, it had better not be presently threatening one's life, say in the form of a hurricane,27 but these don't need to be satisfied for it to be valuable as an end; all that is required is that the otherness relation actually be in place. The subjectivist-objectivist question then arises as a separate issue. Again, I argue that the value conferred by nature's otherness should be thought of as objective, but in Nagel's sense of objective,28 rather than, say, Moorean objectivity as non-natural property. However, there is an argument that, if sound, might be thought to tell against the otherness view of nature's value defended here. It involves a line of thought touched on briefly, and perhaps rather tentatively, by Wissenburg in the course of his critique of "intrinsic value". Following, for example, Regan,29 he suggests that if we believe all parts of nature to have non-instrumental value equally, as ends in themselves, we are left paralysed for the purposes of judging and deciding. "Consequently, any attempt to choose between, say, saving an antelope and starving a lion will end in deadlock: this type of independent value does not allow for ranking, for judgements of 'more' or 'less' value."30 Because the otherness view says that everything "naturally other" is non-instrumentally valuable as such, it seems that it also cannot allow for judgements of more or less value. This makes it useless from any practical point of view. As Regan might put it, to rest an environmental ethic on the otherness view is to rest it on a mistake; no genuine ethic can be grounded in such a way. To see why the otherness view is not damaged by this argument, consider first how peculiarly inapposite is Wissenburg's example just quoted.31 In so far as one is valuing nature as other, respecting its independent ways, then I take it that one shouldn't intervene on either side: lions try to catch and eat antelopes; antelopes try to avoid being caught and eaten by lions. That is what these animals do. Thus valuing nature as other does yield a determinate decision in this particular case, other things being equal.32 We can see the same point in a more nuanced way by considering one of Regan's examples. Say the deer population is damaging the local ecosystem.33 If all of nature is valued as an end in itself, including at the levels of individual deer, the deer population and the local ecosystem, all are equally ends qua natural, then the kinds of judgements people concerned about these matters want to make cannot be grounded with reference to such value. Something is either an end in itself or it is not, and killing some deer to protect the ecosystem, for example, is inconsistent with respecting those deer as ends in themselves. The same problem can seem to arise when individual deer, populations of deer and 138

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ecosystems are all valued, ηοη-instrumentally, in virtue of their natural otherness. But again the answer is simply that, other things being equal, the otherness view says leave things alone or, more realistically, minimize the impact of human activities on the entities and processes in question; ecosystems change, and this one is changing under the impact of the deer population. But of course, "things" tend not to be "equal". One of the most importantly relevant senses in which they fail to be equal is when we are talking about processes caused by human beings, or in which we have had a significant hand. Say human beings introduced the deer into the local ecosystem, or the deer population has grown because they have been singled out historically for particular protection, or human beings have acted in some other way to increase the vulnerability of the ecosystem to deer depredation. Under such conditions the language of "damage" or "disruption", as opposed to (mere) "change", becomes particularly pertinent from the standpoint of the otherness view. Killing some of the deer might well be sanctioned from this perspective, as a form of damage limitation. That this would involve "damaging" the unfortunate deer in question does not make the judgement involved impossible in principle; it makes it regrettable in principle. Ironically, the possibility of such judgements seems to depend on the fact that there is a sense in which, all of nature is not valuable on the otherness view. I mean the unqualified sense in which "nature" refers to everything that is and happens (supernatural and abstract entities aside), including us, our activities and their consequences. Remember that the otherness view explicitly specifies "nature" as it is, independent of us (which is one reason why I prefer to talk of "natural otherness", rather than just "naturalness"). I understand that primarily in terms of "nature's" independent origin and capacity for continued existence,34 and in terms of "nature" as it is independently of the significances attached to it within cultural landscapes.35 Remember also that this is not to equate nature as other with nature as (literally untouched) wilderness: nature as other is present within landscapes without reducing them to wilderness.36 One can make judgements about the extent to which landscaping proceeds with more or less respect for nature as other. Thus the otherness view allows us to make the judgements of "more" or "less" that we need to be able to make; our actions and practices can be more or less damaging with respect to independent nature (as other).37 Most importantly, if my arguments in Chapter 4 were right, they are judgements to which liberal political institutions and decision procedures should give weighty consideration, on non-instrumental grounds. But this brings us back to another sense in which things tend not to be equal. Such judgements are often going to conflict with different (often, but not necessarily always, "anthropocentric") ones that might also be very

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weighty. "Internal landscape matters" might be important in the deer and ecosystem case. For example, the deer may be especially favoured for aesthetic and historical reasons: they are cute and enjoy a tradition of protection dating from when they were the favoured quarry of feudal lords. Or the "local ecosystem" might, in fact, be parkland, managed and valued for a variety of aesthetic and cultural reasons. This is not to say that the otherness view will always lose out, but that there will usually be other considerations entering the decision-making process. But this will be true of any environmental ethic, indeed any remotely realistic ethic will have to recognize the existence of conflicting considerations and concerns. Let us take it then that a blanket non-instrumental valuation of independent nature for its own sake, rather than as a physical, spiritual or aesthetic resource for us to use, does not on its own provide a clear decision procedure, an algorithm of greenness to tell us just how to treat nature. Even so, the value judgement is still significant. It would change the agenda, at least to the extent that purely instrumental considerations would no longer take automatic priority.38 When it emerges from the otherness view, the value judgement will point in the direction of minimizing disruption of nature as other, locally or internationally. What exactly should be done, for example, how general policies and principles of state action, say the distribution of (especially property) rights, should be affected, depends on the circumstances of the society in question. It is a matter of having a "reasonable" political process, say, a deliberative democracy, with some constitutionally fixed requirement that reasonable landscaping should be high on the agenda.39 Compare this situation. Say it is argued that all human beings should be respected as ends in themselves, as well as means, and someone responds as follows: Your theory is all very well, but on its own it does not show how we should act in line with this respect: what we should do, for example, when the interests of two people are in conflict. Merely declaring that they are both ends in themselves on its own does nothing to show whose side we should take. The counter-response is: No, but pointing this out does not, on its own, show the claim that all people are owed respect as ends in themselves to be false.40 Nor does it show it to be vacuous (remember my postman), especially under conditions where it is not generally thought that people are owed respect as ends in themselves, and the prevailing mode of political theorizing is commonly taken to exclude such a way-out idea. 140

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5.4 Realism, fundamentalism, reformism and anarchism Now, a common distinction in the area of green politics is between "realists", who, as Robert Garner puts it, are "willing to be pragmatic working within existing social and political parameters, building coalitions with other political forces and generally taking every opportunity that might advance the green cause", and "fundamentalists", who "adopt a principled stance, unwilling to compromise and working for radical social and political change in line with a belief system at odds with conventional thinking".41 In these terms, my aim has been to suggest a certain way in which realism can be principled. "Green principles can and should be commitments "within existing social and political parameters", as these are represented at the level of mainstream liberal political philosophy. Greening liberalism is a matter of bringing this out through showing an association with the otherness view of nature's non-instrumental value. As we have seen, this is not the same kind of green principle as the strong holisms42 often associated with being a fundamentalist, but it is still green,43 and principled. But the position I am advocating is "realistic" also in the sense that it requires compromise. Remember that the otherness view involves Nagel's conception of objectivity. In the previous section we were reminded again that the objectivity of the value of nature as other does not give it an automatically overriding status, not even over values that are relatively subjective. My aim has been to try to show that respect for nature's otherness should be high on the agenda of liberal democracy for its own sake, rather than that it should always trump all other (possibly conflicting) considerations in a way that ensures green outcomes of maximal radicalness (such as the suicide of the human race). In fact, fundamentalism, taken strictly and literally, is untenable in principle from the standpoint of the otherness view. The only question is where and when to compromise, not whether to compromise. The fundamentalist might reply that the real point is that too much compromise is inevitable in a liberal context given the usual extent of its anthropocentrism; liberalism is bound to involve what Goodin calls "brown evasions" of the green agenda. Even if I am right and these will not be entirely of the "mimicking" kind,44 they will be of the "swamping" kind. Swamping happens when genuinely green commitments are adopted but drowned out by different, competing considerations.45 It seems to me reasonable, in every sense, to say that "green values" do not have universal priority over other, sometimes conflicting, values. But still, having them taken seriously (e.g. as among the virtues of reasonable citizenship), always 141

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taking them into account politically, not ignoring or dismissing them in the process of landscaping, would have a profound political effect.46 In general it seems to me that the objection that a given theory cannot guarantee a particular outcome, say a green outcome, is a non-objection. It is foolish to pretend to guarantee anything about the outcomes of any political philosophy. Put in rather pompous terms, my aim has been to green the liberal Weltanschauung by showing how it can embrace a noninstrumentalist perspective on nature. In terms of Nozick's distinction between explanatory and coercive philosophy,47 talk of "guaranteeing outcomes" seems better suited to the coercive approach than to the explanatory one. Nevertheless, it is still open for someone with fundamentalist inclinations to make the following kind of argument. Even accepting that nature's otherness does confer non-instrumental value, and that the otherness view of nature's value has the affinity with liberal political philosophy that I suggest it has, still I have not paid enough attention to the difference between liberal theory and liberal practice. As a result, it might be thought, my position in this book is hopelessly jejune: just the kind of abstract story, naively detached from concrete material realities, that liberals like to tell each other to avoid confronting the painful need for radical change. Thus although it is possible, in principle, to have a green version of liberal political theory, not only does it fail to follow necessarily that liberal practice will turn out to be significantly green, or at all properly respectful of wider nature, but it is in fact extremely unlikely that this will happen. Significant reform of the status quo is, to all intents and purposes, impossible; the corruption of nominally liberal power structures is too severe and deeply entrenched. Anarchist opposition to the state as such is the only viable position for those with a truly realistic analysis of the ways of the world. "Fundamentalism", in the sense of an unwillingness to compromise with existing social and political parameters, is realism, and it requires anarchism not reformism. Now, of course, the actual practice of "really existing liberalism" can be criticized in many ways from a variety of radical points of view, including that of eco-anarchism. But it can be criticized also from a reformist point of view, which is what, in these terms, I am advocating: a liberal state, guided by green considerations, should take much more seriously than do actual self-styled "liberal" states, the likely consequences for independent nature of excessive centralization, militarization, poverty, inequality and the quest for unending economic growth, and how these factors are manifested in international power relations, and so on. Obviously, a "green-liberalism" has to qualify economic freedoms and private property rights, for example. But I have not, for reasons already given, set out 142

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detailed prescriptions on these issues. In that sense I have not set out a comprehensive green political theory. Nevertheless, it remains necessary to say something about the anarchist claim that the state cannot be reformed, and has to be done away with in order for there to be meaningful progress on environmental issues. A theoretically sophisticated and impressively thorough version of this claim is to be found in Carter's recent book, A Radical Green Political Theory. In this context I think the best form of defence is attack. Consequently there follows a critique of anti-reformist eco-anarchism focused mainly on Carter's theory as its contemporary representative. As a preliminary, I should emphasize that I am assuming a definite anarchist-reformist dichotomy. Given this and my acceptance of certain other crucial dichotomies, such as that between humanity and non-human nature, I will have to accept the label "modernist", as against "postmodernist". Perhaps little of what I say in this book will interest postmodernists, including postmodernist eco-anarchists, who have sought to move beyond such dichotomies. In this I am following Carter, who also sets up anarchism and reformism as alternatives.48 This is necessary in order to pose the important question: does a properly green politics require hostility to the state as such? Thus I will, for the time being, accept Carter's definition of anarchism in terms of both the normative opposition to certain substantive political inequalities and the empirical belief that they principally derive from, or are preserved by, or are embedded within, certain centralized forms of power. Hence all anarchists, on [this] definition, oppose the state.49 I take it that eco-anarchism adds "green outcomes" to those egalitarian ones to which the state is an insuperable obstacle. True, proceeding with an exclusive definition of anarchism brings problems simply because it seeks to categorize thinkers who (necessarily?) are an unruly and diverse lot. For example, as we have seen, Sale's decentralist bioregionalist vision is implacably opposed to overarching state structures. On the other hand, it is not strictly egalitarian; it allows that local bioregional organization might develop internal structures that are extremely hierarchical. One could argue that this represents the definitively anarchist attitude:50 it is up to local communities to run their own affairs as they see fit, without bowing down to (humanly) preordained moral and political principles. It is hard to see how this could be relied on to produce green outcomes (any more than egalitarian outcomes), but so be it; there would still be the contrast between implacable opposition to 143

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the state and ("merely") reformist attitudes towards the state. I am arguing against eco-anarchism as a theory opposed to reformism.

5.5 Carter's eco-anarchism Dismal instrumentalism The first thing to say about Carter's theory is that, like much ecoanarchism, it comes with a large measure of dismal instrumentalism. Consequently it seems vulnerable to the problems outlined in Chapter 1 : a tendency to generate chronic controversy about the extent and nature of the environmental crisis; fantasy and escapism as responses to the gloomy story; and, because the considerations motivating the theory are primarily instrumentalist, concerning threats to human interests, a lack of "greenness" in the theory.51 On the latter issue, Carter points out that the bare idea of an anarchist society, in which the elements of the current "environmentally hazardous dynamic" are negated, is neutral between ecocentric, instrumentalist and "more spiritual" forms of environmental concern.52 The environmentally hazardous dynamic is this: a pseudo-representative, quasi-democratic legislative located within, and ostensibly at the head of, a massive, centralized, impersonal bureaucracy [which] ordinarily acts so as to stabilize competitive, inegalitarian economic relations which develop "nonconvivial", environmentally-damaging, "hard" technologies, for their productivity supports the (nationalistic and militaristic) coercive forces that empower the state as a whole. The technologies chosen thus serve the interests of the centralized, impersonal bureaucracy - as well as serving the interests of the dominant economic class, which benefits directly from the economic relations the bureaucracy chooses to stabilize. Moreover, the competitive, inegalitarian economic relations that are stabilized are ones which maximize the surplus available to the state, and thereby allow it to finance its weapons research and pay for its standing army, secret service and police (i.e., the coercive forces) ... it is clear that any such dynamic would be environmentally damaging in the extreme ... [it] demands ever-increasing productivity, entailing a high consumption of resources and an equally high output of pollution.53 144

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It is true that in itself the mere idea of "negating" all the various elements of this environmentally hazardous dynamic is neutral between different forms of environmental concern. Still, Carter's eco-anarchism, constituted by those negations, is the conclusion of arguments driven almost entirely by dismal instrumentalist concerns.54 Carter makes a powerful case for reversing the old victory of Marxism over anarchism for the hearts and minds of the radical left. I agree that the old prediction of the state "withering away" ignored the importance of the state as a powerful, autonomous historical actor in its own right. But his case for anarchism seems full of the instrumentalist attitude towards nature characterizing the theories of his radical socialist forbears. This is true whatever the power of his case for a shift within the bubble of radical left theorizing. I have argued that the otherness view can be endorsed by mainstream liberal theory; indeed, it is highly consonant with it. The actual practice of "liberal" societies may need very substantial reform in accordance with that view, and presumably this must involve tackling elements of the hazardous dynamic that Carter describes. But an entirely different kind of background theory is not required. In so far as it assumes that it is required, green political theory rests on a mistake. And to the extent that it is thoroughly instrumentalist, it seems less than fully green anyway. Perhaps this point will be considered unimportant; after all, the label "green" has been applied to theories with varying degrees of anthropocentrism, as Carter himself shows. Still, Carter mentions Sylvan's characterization of "shallower environmentalism" as committed to the "sole value assumption":55 "deeper" forms of environmentalism reject this value assumption. My point is that Carter's own theory seems to proceed as if on the basis of this assumption. Not all eco-anarchism labours under quite such a weight of dismal instrumentalism. Compare Bookchin's social ecology. We have already seen that this certainly contains an element of dismal instrumentalism.56 But he also argues, more definitely and explicitly than Carter, that ending the "domination" of nature is an end in itself, one to which anarchist society is a necessary means. Only removing all other forms of domination within hierarchical society can end the domination of nature.57 Now we have already seen that, in so far as it involves what Rowlands calls the "historical priority thesis", this is an implausible claim.58 Still, it might be thought that any liberal reformist theory will ignore the way "hierarchy" is a comprehensive psycho-social condition, linking forms of domination together, so that liberation indeed needs to be across the board; ending domineering disrespect of nature requires the general negation of hierarchical relations. This is a theme familiar also from eco-feminism. For example, consider 145

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again Plumwood's rejection of "dualisms": instrumentalizing relations representing the mastery of one side over an inferior other.59 "Antidualism", she says, links ecological feminism with other liberation struggles.60 My claim is that, given liberalism's latent resources for overcoming humanity-nature dualism, such "liberation" needn't - shouldn't amount to eco-anarchism. This is not necessarily to deny that there are cultural/historical links between various dualisms: male-female, masterslave, reason-nature, mind-body, civilized-primitive, and so on. It is to deny61 that liberalism is irredeemably polluted by them, that it necessarily represents the perspective of the master lording it over all "others". Take the public-private distinction, clearly in one way or another an important feature of liberalism. We could represent "the public" as the sphere of lordly reason, embodying the "freedom, universality and rationality... supposedly constitutive of masculinity", and "the private", as the sphere of "dailiness, necessity, particularity and emotionality ... supposedly exemplified in and constitutive of femininity".62 Put like that, it looks like a dualism from which we should be liberated. But perhaps not if the liberal distinction at stake is unpacked in the light of Rawls's distinction between "the Reasonable" (political principles and institutions endorsed by all reasonable citizens) and "the Rational" (non-public pursuit of conceptions of the good life - "non-public" in the sense of not shared by all reasonable citizens, not necessarily "private" in the sense of occurring only at home behind closed curtains).631 have argued64 that respecting a sphere of political "reasonableness" (endorsing its constitutive institutions and principles as reasonable) precisely is (partly) to respect, not denigrate, a space of otherness. As a reasonable citizen, I would not view "the political" as "mine", or as a properly colonized extension of my (or some limited "our") particular interests, or take on the good life.65 And I have claimed that it is precisely such respect for otherness in the sphere of public reasonableness that is continuous with respect for nature's otherness.66 In this case "liberation from master perspective dualism" does not require a complete break with mainstream political theory, it requires a certain refocusing and extension. It might still be suspected, of course, that the very pervasiveness of dualisms implicit in white male Western culture will tend to distort the meaning of the necessary distinctions within liberal theory back into the very dualisms from which we (and nature) need to be liberated. But even if there is such a tendency, the important issue here is which standpoint to adopt from which to criticize and resist it. If I am right, a liberal reformist position has the resources to do this. In that case, the view that liberal states must maintain the domination of nature is unjustified, unless, perhaps, it is conjoined with further claims of the sort made by Carter, which I now proceed to criticize. 146

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State primacy Central to Carter's anarchist theory is what he calls the "state-primacy thesis",67 which may be crudely summed up as saying that the state selects those other features of society (economic forces and relations of production and so on) whose character or operations are functional for it.68 In present conditions this is a question of the aforementioned environmentally damaging dynamic.69 But is the state-primacy thesis true? This seems to me to be unlikely. If it is true, then one wants to know why the state has allowed the present environmental crisis to develop to the point where, supposedly, its very existence is threatened. Apparently it is motivated mostly by short-term interests, especially the interest it has in defending itself from external threats. So, for example, it has to maintain excessively capitalist, environmentally destructive, relations of production in order to generate the surplus value to fund a powerful military. But given the clear and present danger of the environmental crisis, why doesn't the state see this as its most pressing threat and change its actions accordingly? If the threat is real (or it is most rational to assume its reality), why isn't it necessary only to point out the threat to it?70 In selecting the changes necessary to secure its own survival in the face of new "environmental" facts, the state would then be the engine of environmental reform. Things are not so simple. Perhaps the state has insufficient power over the other elements in the dynamic to act in this rationally self-interested way. Or the political brain of the state has insufficient control over its own military muscle, which is too powerful, and too focused on its own raison d'être, to recognize anything not in military uniform, bristling with military technology, or organized in secretive terrorist cells, as a fundamental and overriding threat. Or the situation might be that all "state actors", as well as big business, are too locked into the mutually supporting dynamic to see what is in their real interests. Instead they see the environmental crisis only in terms of the need to defeat others (especially other states) in the competition for increasingly scarce natural resources,71 and in a scary twist to the fantasy response to dismal instrumentalism, think they can win and survive. Briefly and crudely, I think the upshot of this is one of two things (or maybe both of them). One is that the state is not strong enough to act rationally in cases where its fundamental self-interest is concerned. But this sits uncomfortably with the state-primacy thesis itself, and, given the dismal instrumentalist background, might provide a reason to actually strengthen the state: trade the perils of eco-authoritarianism against the risk of human extinction. On the other hand, the state, or its personnel are, and always will be, incapable of perceiving their fundamental self-interest before it* is too

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late. But this seems extremely implausible. Why think the myopia must be permanent or curable only by the shock of actual and extreme human disaster? Repeated statements of the need for reform, presented in a variety of ways, may yet succeed, and perhaps focusing only on the dismal instrumentalist case triggers too many habitual attitudes to be of much help. I am simplifying, of course, what is a much more subtle and complex theory. Once one accepts the need for a green political theory to explain why, for example, we are still so committed to economic growth despite decades of green objections, and that the explanation will be in terms of the interplay of material interests and economic forces, then it seems reasonable to give the state "primacy" within a complex of such causal factors. But I am not convinced that it is sensible to put all explanatory chickens in one basket, especially such a materialistic/instrumentalist one.72 Why assume that only one mode of explanation will be helpful? I think an important factor is what I have called the "intellectual fragility" of nature's otherness, the difficulty of keeping it in view in the cultural process of making and maintaining landscapes.73 This looks likely to be a problem that will need to be highlighted repeatedly whatever the cultural landscape. If I am right, "liberal ideology" can be refocused to accommodate this issue well. Of course actual "liberal" societies do not live up to their ideals now, never mind my suggested refocused version. As Carter makes clear, it is a mistake to think about environmental issues in isolation from other political issues and goals; things are interrelated - a major moral to be draw from ecology.74 Hence the connections often drawn between "ecology" and "radical": every element in the environmentally hazardous dynamic must be negated for real progress to be achieved. In these terms, Carter's theory is also a theory of liberation across the board from a set of interlinked forms of domination. But provided that "drawing morals from ecology" is not pushed to the point of blueprinting, liberal reformism can also recognize the interrelatedness of environmental and other political goals, be "ecological" in that way. Maybe if liberalism can incorporate the otherness view of nature's value, and therefore a deep commitment to environmental imperatives, it can make more progress on the more traditional themes of (meaningful) freedom, equality and democracy for all. If I am right, the coherent realization of political liberalism should involve real progress in all these directions. Utopias Defining real progress in terms of negating every element in the environmentally hazardous dynamic is highly problematic. Negating every 148

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element in the environmentally hazardous dynamic is conceivable, yes, but extremely unlikely in practice. All serious political ills are taken to be negated in the anarchist society. And this scenario is equated with the environmentally benign form of political life for human beings.75 Now Carter's account reminds me of Marx in the following respect. He develops a rigorous, clear-eyed and unsentimental (although not unquestionable) analysis of relevant aspects of the social world in terms of the interplay of material interests and forces, which loses its "realist" edge at the crucial point of the actual development of the "truly human" anarchist society. For one thing, the following line of anti-anarchist argument seems compelling (perhaps the definitively "liberal" worry about anarchism). Remember that the "circumstances of justice" include the fact that, assuming minimal freedom, different human beings develop and pursue different and conflicting conceptions of the good life76 (of course, they often share them as well). It is most implausible to dismiss this as mere "bourgeois ideology", or as a matter only of selfish individualism. As Larmore points out, if we suppose that in a post-capitalist, anarcho-communist society people all develop a strong habit of impartial benevolence to others, the circumstance of deeply conflicting claims about what to do for the best would remain: A situation where everyone is motivated by a paramount concern for everyone else need not be one where everyone agrees about the content of the good life. However benevolently inclined, A may not agree with B about what is in B's interest; and even if A and B both wish to promote the public interest, they may not share a common conception of what that is. A genuine concern for the welfare of others harbors no guarantee of consensus. Indeed, disagreement is what we should expect when people have the time to work out their views about the good life. So unless we conjoin with the Utopian hypothesis of universal benevolence the equally improbable hypothesis of unanimity of opinion and coincidence of interests, the internal circumstances of justice - the conflict between conceptions of the good life - will remain.77 Indeed, "The less we think in ideologically routinized ways, and the more we freely exercise our powers and cultivate our individuality, the more various and divergent will be our conceptions of the good life."78 Thus it is "utopian"79 to suppose that, even granting the hypothesis of universal attitudes of benevolence, there will not remain a need (one perceived under those conditions) for institutional systems of justice 149

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guaranteeing individual rights (to dissent for example). Even if everybody loves everybody else then, in the name of justice, there will still need to be limits to what individuals can do to one another in the name of that love. The extra hypothesis of shared environmental concern strengthens this point, as there will surely be disagreement about how best to act on that concern. Carter does not seem to address this issue explicitly, although some aspects of his account bear on it. One is his answer to the Hobbesian claim that people need a (strong) state to keep them in line; enough people are bad enough to make life without a state an unpleasant prospect. Carter's answer is that if people are inherently "bad", then we had better not concentrate power in anyone's hands, such as inevitably happens when you have a state. Hitler would have been just an "irrelevant little man" without the power of the state behind him.80 Translated into a direct answer to the problem of pluralism raised by the internal circumstances of justice (which, as Larmore's universal benevolence hypothesis shows, does not rely on Hobbesian pessimism about "unconstrained human nature"), this presumably means that a satisfactory solution cannot involve having stateinstitutionalized justice, for that will concentrate power in the hands of a few who will enforce their own conception of the good life. Presumably the liberal statist response is simply that although the neutrality of the state, or its underwriting of substantive freedom and equality, is never likely to be perfect in practice, significant success in these directions is feasible.81 The claim that such a state must always be, or degenerate into, a tyranny has not been made sufficiently convincing to make the attempt to bring about the Utopian anarchist scenario a political priority, perhaps unless the empirical claim is conjoined with a moral claim about the proper autonomy of the individual being incompatible with government altogether, which I discuss shortly. Carter does show (using the device of iterated prisoners' dilemma encounters from game theory) how coordination problems within and between decentralized communities may be solved in principle consistently with each individual's (and community's) rational self-interest.82 He also briefly (but relevantly, in this context) defends pacifism against the charge that it leaves justice undefended, by pointing out that it leaves justice to be defended non-violently.83 Now, as I have said, one can conceive of human beings living in decentralized self-governing communities, seeing "cooperative autonomy" to be in their self-interest, and non-violently enforcing just settlements of whatever occasional conflicts arise. But I hope I won't be thought too cynical or perverse when I suggest that (apart from some isolated, very short-lived examples, such as in 1930s Spain), what this scenario most resembles is an ahistorical, hypothetical state of nature such 150

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as that described by Nozick in Anarchy, State and Utopia. Certainly, many political theories, including liberal ones, posit ideal scenarios as a contrast to the status quo. The point here is that when the scenario is particularly Utopian, as well as held up as the only conditions under which we can be saved (the state cannot be reformed to any meaningful extent in the direction of the ideal), then the theory effectively opts itself out as a guide to political and environmental progress.84 It is worth pointing out that Carter seems to misunderstand Nozick, and also why Nozick's libertarianism gets discussed in the same breath as anarchism.85 Nozick's infamous "minimal state" is not an anarchist scenario, of course, and Carter rightly points out that such a state, restricted to enforcing voluntarily agreed contracts and protecting rights to non-interference with self and property, will need to be very powerful given the wide inequality in property likely to prevail (the night-watchman will need a very big stick86). But on its own this misses the point. The very strength of Nozick's posited individual natural rights to non-interference, and to punish transgressors, makes it a real question whether any kind of state at all is morally permissible (as Nozick himself recognized87). Nozick's "invisible hand" explanation of how a de facto minimal state might arise through a series of morally permissible steps (consistent with libertarian rights), involving the development of private protection agencies, is not at all convincing.88 Consistent Nozickian libertarians are thus stuck in the state of nature where, by hypothesis, they mostly respect each other's rights, dealing with whatever transgressions there are by hiring private protection/punishment services.89 One can conceive of human beings living in accordance with this hypothetical anarchist scenario. Interestingly, it could also serve as the basis of a non-socialist form of eco-anarchism (although such libertarians could voluntarily live in socialist communities if they wanted). An often overlooked, but notable, feature of Nozick's libertarianism is its negation of "limited liability".90 His state of nature is not "anarcho-c^p/'ta/z'si", if we understand "capitalism" to involve the large-scale, over-powerful business corporations that we are familiar with. The activities of these would be bound to violate the rights of others - impact on the lives and property of those affected without their permission - who would then have to be compensated. Such large-scale business activity would almost certainly be unprofitable: the compensation, or insurance, costs would be prohibitive. Limited liability was introduced by the (non-minimal) state to boost economic activity by increasing the likelihood of profitable returns on investment. This would not happen in a consistently Nozickian libertarian world. In the merely possible world in which people by and large respect (Nozick's) libertarian rights, there would be no state and no big business.91 151

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The private property rights of each (mostly) would be exercised in accordance with respect for the private property (and other) rights of all.92 The externalizing of environmental costs would be minimized. Presumably this would be an environmentally benign society, although there would not necessarily be much thought of the non-instrumental status of external nature, the focus being the rights of human individuals. This should remind us to distinguish abstract property rights, defended by some political philosophers, from the actual practice of capitalism, despite the ideological weight given to "private property" by the latter. Inviolable, pristine private property rights, as such, have never existed (nor been enforced in practice). The state has always qualified them in one way or another. Even if this has generally been to serve the interests of the "economically dominant class", or the state itself, at the expense of others, it is possible that it should qualify them for other reasons. For example, it might qualify them as part of an attempt to produce a distribution that is "to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged", or to produce a nongrowth economy dominated by "soft" technology.93 It seems most implausible to suppose that such reformist possibilities are as Utopian as the anarchist scenarios considered here, let alone more so.94

5.6 Reformism is reformism is reformism Let us take it, then, that it is a mistake to equate meaningful progress with the negation of every element in the environmentally hazardous dynamic and hence with the establishment of the truly anarchist society. But does eco-anarchism really have to be quite so Utopian? I want to argue that when the emphasis shifts to reforming institutions in the direction of the anarchist ideal, rather than abolishing them "in one go" in a single decisive shift, then there is not much difference between this and liberal reformism. Earlier I accepted Carter's conceptualization of anarchism as implying opposition to the state as such. But consider it again: for an individual to be an anarchist, he or she would have to hold both the normative opposition to certain substantive political inequalities and the empirical belief that they principally derive from, or are preserved by, or are embedded within, certain centralized forms of power.95 In the next sentence he writes: "Hence all anarchists, on the proposed definition, oppose the state." But the definition of anarchism offered 152

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doesn't strictly entail opposition to the state as such; rather, it entails opposition to states that generate, or support, "certain substantive inequalities". We could, of course, make it a trivial matter of definition that states necessarily do this. And we might try to justify this by pointing to the obvious tension between the ideas of, on the one hand, a state, and, on the other hand, substantive political equality. However, we have strong empirical evidence both that human institutions will never be perfect and that different kinds of state can do better or worse in these terms. Traditionally, liberal reformism has also been concerned with equal freedoms, real accountability, the capacity of voluntary associations to act effectively, the dangers presented by excessively concentrated and centralized power and so on. My suggestion is that liberalism has the theoretical resources to embrace, with urgency, green priorities for their own sake, as a supplement to these perennial concerns, or, perhaps better, as part of the same framework of ideas within which such concerns are articulated. One could also think of this as a matter of developing an expanded view of the external circumstances of justice, so that they include the idea of an independent nature to be respected for its own sake, as well as the traditional concerns of scarcity and insecurity of possession of natural resources. Now, Carter also talks about the development of "prefigurative anarchist forms" within which people are socialized towards "cooperative autonomy", thus creating appropriate conditions for anarchy.96 This is a matter of people "learning how to live without the state", through experience of such organizations and structures as workers' cooperatives and municipal direct democracy, rather than simply smashing it and taking things from there (obviously a disastrous strategy).97 Civil disobedience and direct action should be non-violent and undertaken as part of this wider process and, interestingly, might be integral to its development.98 Obviously such activities occur, and there are "bourgeois norms" deserving of contempt. However, assuming that the state allows cooperative autonomy to become widespread (although on the state-primacy view perhaps we should predict that it would not allow it), there may be no real problem for liberal reformists. If people voluntarily organize themselves this way, eschewing hierarchical and "diffident" social relations and so learn to do without the state, then fine; we would have a reversal of the old story of people voluntarily setting up a state, thus leaving the state of nature because of certain inconveniences they find there. The particular state-exacerbated inconvenience that motivates Carter's theory is the environmental crisis. The ongoing need for institutionalized justice notwithstanding, maybe liberals should not mind the idea of living in a cooperative autonomous way, but while we wait for this it seems 153

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reasonable to devote some time to exploring the possibilities for liberal eco-reformism at all levels, from theory to the practical policies of "liberal" states." Perhaps it will be thought that I am hiding behind an abstract, nonsubstantive (bourgeois) conception of voluntarism and simply ignoring the greater radical edge of eco-anarchism, wherein lies its greater appeal. On the contrary though, the more the greater radicalness of eco-anarchist activity, over eco-reformist activity, is talked up, the more the position slides back into the merely conceivable realms of unrealistic utopianism. Take the following "major problem" for eco-reformers (who tend to produce policy suggestions that state personnel find too radical) identified by Carter: "How can the state be employed to put such radical policies into effect when the whole complex structure appears to have been developed in order to pursue as effectively as possible the opposite course?"100 Eco-reformism can thus seem to be doomed to failure. But although the inherently conservative or reactionary tendencies of state personnel obviously bring problems for ecoreformists (just as the illiberal tendencies of many state personnel within "liberal" states brings problems for liberals), it is hard to see the ecoanarchist alternative as anything but more problematic. Eco-anarchists need to oppose the state and the other elements of the environmentally hazardous dynamic. This seems to be a matter of the aforementioned "prefiguring cooperative autonomy", with a general "radical disobedience' as its most influentially transformative feature (and a duty for all of us).101 I want to emphasize two problems with this. First, it is not just state personnel who have a tendency to balk at radical activity that would seem to undermine drastically their immediate material interests. We can expect a great many of those needing to make a living to support themselves and their family to be reluctant to "disobey radically" the competitive, hierarchical and diffident relationships and "hard", "nonconvivial", technologies constituting their immediately available opportunities. This "situational logic" applies even if they tend to sympathize with environmental causes. Secondly, widespread radical disobedience is problematic for just the reason it is supposed to be necessary; one cannot just explain the situation to state personnel (and other powerful actors in the hazardous dynamic) with the hope that they will act rationally (and morally) in accordance with environmental imperatives. They are too locked into the dynamic for it to be rational to expect them to be rational, other than in ways internal to the dynamic. But if this is true then they are likely to view any upsurge in radical disobedience, which manages to become at all widespread, as a huge threat requiring a military response. Perhaps they will not succeed in suppressing the disobedience, and they will begin to feel their backs pressing against the wall. But should this in 154

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fact happen, it is unclear, to say the least, how the presence of radically destabilized and very well-armed power structures (probably viewed with hungry interest by their rivals) will help. War is the greatest threat to the environment, including landscapes and local non-human nature (with nuclear war being the ultimate threat), as Carter knows. Thus it is necessary to assume some degree of rationality on the part of those in power, and benefiting in the short term from the status quo, in order for the strategy of widespread radical disobedience itself to be rational. If we assume that then it also becomes reasonable to continue to present the case for change within the system, and to find as many ways as possible to persuade such people to think in the right direction as a precursor to radical policy change. Carter seems to think that this is to increase the likelihood of a military coup, such being the probable result of focusing eco-reform on political relations with a view to radicalizing state policy in line with environmental concerns.102 But military coups are much more likely to be the result of large-scale, if non-violent (itself an unrealistic expectation), confrontations with the state and those other elements of the dynamic involved in maintaining the supremacy of its coercive forces. For me, the main worry emerging from such considerations is not that liberal societies are incapable of embracing meaningful change towards "eco-sanity", such that anarchism is the only hope. That hope seems more unrealistic - more Utopian in that sense - than that of liberal reform. The main worry is that those from the authoritarian end of the spectrum will convince people that the liberal mainstream is inherently incapable of reform, and so must be replaced by more coercive forms of green politics, and people from the radical left will help with the critique, provide no realistic, non-utopian alternative themselves, thus leaving the door open for the "Leviathan or oblivion" school: nakedly authoritarian, radically hierarchical programmes regarding substantive political equality as an obstacle to progress.103 Sometimes the point about the practical need to oppose the state is made with impatience about philosophy and abstract theorizing. This does not apply to Carter. But it does to Sale, for example, who denounces abstract philosophical discussion of ethical responses to the "environmental crisis", mainly because dithering over abstruse conceptual matters is to ignore the simple practical issue of scale.104 It would be better if those with such powerful rhetorical skills used them to further the green cause as continuous with furthering the liberal cause against more reactionary elements. Perhaps this is particularly true in the USA, clearly the main player in the scientific-industrial-capitalist global order and, in terms of environmental policy agenda, in various ways a beacon of unreconstructed unreason. That would probably be of greater practical benefit than giving 155

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fellow citizens of the modern world a collection of quasi-religiose blueprinting ideas coloured with the dismal tinge of an anxious instrumentalism. That is, it seems more practically feasible to seek to work with the flow of modernity in order to help channel it on to a course more respectful of nature. That it is, in principle, possible to do this within the terms of what is often taken to be the main political philosophy of modernity, has been the point of this book.

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Chapter I : Introduction 1. J. Gray, Post-Liberalism (London: Routledge, 1993), 286. Gray thinks liberalism is committed to normative individualism. 2. R. Sylvan, "A Critique of Deep Ecology I", Radical Philosophy 40 (1985), 5. 3. For example, T. Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (London: Routledge, 1984). 4. For example, P. Singer, Animal Liberation (London: Jonathan Cape, 1976). 5. Benthamite on the one hand and (at least to some extent) Kantian on the other. I am not convinced that utilitarianism can provide a satisfactory foundation for liberalism; nor am I committing myself to defending animal rights, Regan-style. Recent attempts at articulating "ecological justice" in the context of liberal theories of justice also seem to focus on entities with interests. See, for example, B. Baxter, "Ecological Justice and Justice as Impartiality", Environmental Politics 9(3) (2000), 42-64. 6. Thus I am endorsing the sharp distinction between "environmentalism" and "animal liberation" defended by, for example, M. Sagoff, "Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Bad Marriage, Quick Divorce", Osgoode Hall Law Journal 72 (1984), 297-307. 7. See for example, T. Hayward, Political Theory and Ecological Values (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), R. Eckersley, "Beyond Human Racism", Environmental Values 7 (1998), 165-82; and A. de-Shalit, The Environment Between Theory and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 8. Notice then that "being green" in this sense is not equivalent to "attaching great importance to the natural environment". Clearly there are purely instrumental reasons to take the condition of the natural environment very seriously. With this in mind, the term "green" could be reserved for the giving of weighty consideration to non-human nature, whatever the motivation. Then depths or shades of greenery may be distinguished, with "deeper", "darker" green applied to non-instrumentalist approaches (with the deepest and darkest not confined to biological individuals), and "light" or "shallow" applied to purely instrumentalist theories, directly concerned in speciesist fashion only with human interests. This makes a certain sense, and seems to be fairly common practice. But I want to avoid applying terms like "deep" and "dark" to the approach I will be advocating if only because they have some potentially unfortunate connotations, including excessively holistic, and possibly even misanthropic, ones. 9. Some of these will be indicated in a preliminary way later in this chapter. 10. Tim Hayward, for example, takes the view that human "chauvinism" and

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11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19.

20. 21.

"speciesism" adequately convey what is wrong with anthropocentrism but without the unfortunate conceptual and pragmatic baggage accompanying blanket condemnations of anthropocentrism (Hayward, "Political Theory and Ecological Values", 46f.). He considers the claim that this ignores aspects of nature (e.g. ecosystems) without interests of their own (ibid., 55). But he considers this as part of an attempt to justify treating anthropocentrism as something to be overcome. So he equates it with "ecocentrism", a position he rejects apparently partly because of its implied contrast with anthropocentrism (as something to be overcome), and partly because it either reduces to the claim that ecosystems are instrumentally valuable to humans and non-humans, or itself expresses anthropocentric considerations of an objectionable sort, that is, unrecognized spiritual or aesthetic prejudices. Now, I should not want the green perspective advanced in this book to be characterized as "ecocentric" because of the implied commitment to overcoming anthropocentrism, a project that I accept is flawed in the kinds of ways Hayward suggests. But nor is it merely anti-human, chauvinist or speciesist (i.e. against the arbitrary discounting of non-human interests). Whether this means it is the expression of unrecognized aesthetic or spiritual prejudices, the reader will have to decide. Hayward does concede the possibility of supplementing the focus on speciesism with considerations that are likewise continuous with, or at least intelligible to, our necessarily anthropocentric perspective (ibid., 17'In.). I hope the position advanced in this book is just that. Compare, for example, B. G. Norton, Toward Unity Among Environmentalists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). Marcel Wissenburg has argued recently that whenever we value X we do so because of what X "means to us". But he argues that this makes X's value instrumental. M. Wissenburg, Green Liberalism: The Free and the Green Society (London: UCL Press, 1998), 96-7 and "Liberalism is Always Greeners on the Other Side of Mill: A Reply to Piers Stephens", Environmental Politics 10(3) (2001), 31-4. I discuss, and try to refute, the latter claim in §5.2. W. Fox, "What does the Recognition of Intrinsic Value Entail?", Trumpeter 10(3) (1993), 101. See also M. Rowlands, The Environmental Crisis (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 21-2. Fox uses the term "intrinsic value" as the contrast to "instrumental value". I will be claiming (in $2.9) that this is a misleading way to characterize the relevant contrast. It also positively requires us to recognize instrumental values "within" non-human nature, as it were, for example, that antelope flesh has an important use value for lions and that fast, lion-avoiding legs have an important use value for antelopes. For example, J. Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 194-5. I return to this line of thought in §4.5. See also Rowlands, The Environmental Crisis, 21. Wissenburg, Green Liberalism, 122-36 and "An Extension of the Rawlsian Savings Principle to Liberal Theories of Justice in General", in Fairness and Futurity: Essays on Environmental Sustainability and Social Justice, A. Dobson (ed.), 173-98 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), esp. 190-96. Rawls briefly defends this version of the just savings principle in his Political Liberalism, 2nd edn (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 274. Wissenburg argues that his extension of it into the restraint principle should be acceptable in principle to all liberals (it is an implication of "liberalism as such") except natural rights libertarians (Green Liberalism, 134-6 and "An Extension of the Rawlsian Savings Principle"). Wissenburg, Green Liberalism, 123. For a description of the experience machine see R. Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia

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22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39.

(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974), 42-4. To be clear, I do not intend these comments as a refutation of Wissenburg's restraint principle. Rather, they are meant to help establish the reasonableness of wanting to supplement that principle, or the anthropocentric concerns that motivate it, with non-instrumentalist concerns. See, for example, Hayward, "Political Theory and Ecological Values", 52-4; de-Shalit, The Environment Between Theory and Practice, 15-21. A good recent example of this is Alan Carter's A Radical Green Political Theory (London: Routledge, 1999), 1-19. And it is questioned. For example, consider the controversy around Bj0rn Lomborg's sceptical environmentalism. A point made by Lomborg, "Yes, It Looks Bad, But...", Guardian, 15 August 2001. See R. Garner, "The Scope of Green Realism", Contemporary Politics 6(2) (2000), 185-90, esp. 187. Carter, A Radical Green Political Theory, 1. Ibid., 221. I try to make good this claim in §5.5. As for "maximin", it seems an inappropriate way of understanding rational choice in any general way, outside the context of Rawls's "original position": for example, J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), Ch. 3. Even if, in that context, we add something like "a healthy biosphere" to the list of things to be secured by the choice of political principles, it is not clear that anarchism would be chosen ahead of a modified version of Rawlsian liberalism. Moreover, this remains a purely instrumentalist strategy aimed only at securing the interests of the choosing parties. I discuss Rawls's original position in Chapter 4. In Chapter 4. Avner de-Shalit points out that "it has been suggested that liberalism has been exceptionally effective in eliminating environmental illiteracy and raising environmental awareness", where "environmental literacy" is a basic grasp of ecology, the effects of carbon monoxide, species extinction and so on, and "environmental awareness" is the acceptance of such issues as moral issues (de-Shalit, The Environment Between Theory and Practice, 8-9). Liberalism has been effective in fostering these attitudes because of such features as its commitment to open debate and its implicit anti-chauvinism (ibid., 65-70). But he also argues that liberalism is unsuited to fostering "environmental consciousness": a recognition of environmental issues (presumably grasped through environmental awareness) as political issues to be tackled at the political level. In my terms, even if the unfolding of non-human chauvinist attitudes is part and parcel of the development of liberalism (next on the progressive list after the recognition of working-class, female and non-white human interests) that does not make liberalism fully green. Moreover, I will be arguing that liberalism has the resources to foster a fully green "environmental consciousness". In §4.4-4.9. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 245. See, for example, M. Sagoff, "Can Environmentalists be Liberals?", in Environmental Ethics, R. Elliot (ed.), 165-87 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). M. Midgley, "Duties Concerning Islands", in Ethics, P. Singer (ed.), 374-87 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 387. R. Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), Introduction. This seems to be a sense in which anthropocentrism is ineliminable. See Hayward, "Political Theory and Ecological Values", 45 (after F. Ferre, "Personalistic Organicism: Paradox or Paradigm", in Philosophy and the Natural Environment, R. Attfield & A. Belsey (eds), 59-74 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)). In this respect the otherness view is "anthropocentric" in another benign, if not inescapable, sense: claims that nature is valuable should be intelligibly connected to

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40.

41.

42.

43.

commitments already accepted (compare Hayward, "Political Theory and Ecological Values", 50). Moreover the main point of this book is precisely to claim an affinity between the otherness view and the liberal political perspective. See Hayward, "Political Theory and Ecological Values", 45-6. One of the human concerns that must obviously remain central is justice. It is not as if human-human moral and political relations are all in order and the only problem is the relationship humanity as such has to the natural world (see, for example, Hayward, "Political Theory and Ecological Values", 52-4). I should warn the reader that I shall be arguing in general terms for this incorporation without trying to formulate specific principles or policies reflecting it. I tend to think that it is up to free and equal people to discuss it with each other and decide. The point is to put it on the agenda as a fixed point alongside freedom and equality. Wissenburg, Green Liberalism, 81. Compare also de-Shalit: "Environmentalism implies state intervention justified by a consideration of the common good, and hence the relinquishment of neutrality as a justification for the liberal state and its policies" (The Environment Between Theory and Practice, 92). Although the arbitrariness will not consist only in the chauvinistic discounting of non-human interests. Chapter 2: Nature's otherness

1. J. Passmore, "Attitudes to Nature", in Elliot, Environmental Ethics, 129-41, esp. 137-8, 140. 2. Passmore also argues that non-humans cannot bear rights ("Attitudes to Nature", 139). This seems mistaken. From the fact that something that we owe respect is not a genuine member of our community, and does not engage with discussion or negotiation with us, it does not obviously follow that we cannot properly mark that respect by talking of its rights (say to respectful treatment). 3. Ibid., 140. 4. Such a line of thought is too much like a notion of otherness as something undifferentiated, awaiting categorization by rational minds, which in turn is too much like the idea of (mere) raw material. 5. I owe this line of thought, and the example, to Jonardon Ganeri. 6. For example, in Chapter 3 I shall be discussing at length, as a crucial aspect of nature's otherness, its "indifference": the idea that we cannot read off ends from nature, as if independent nature supplied us with moral and political lessons. 7. What about possible supernatural beings - gods, or God, or angels, and so forth? Those who believe there are, or who have discovered there are, such beings, and that they might be affected by human activity, should perhaps respect the otherness of such beings. In so far as they do, they will not gratuitously upset or thwart the plans of whatever supernatural beings they have detected or suspect the existence of. In the case of demons, evil spirits, jealous gods and such like, this might often be supplemented, or overridden, by prudential considerations. Notice though that the notion of otherness as it applies to such beings is likely to differ from the one applying to nature in lacking its "indifference" to humanity. 8. See, for example, R. Elliot, "Intrinsic Value, Environmental Obligation and Naturalness", The Monist 75 (1992), 138-60, esp. 151. 9. J. S. Mill, "On Nature", in Nature, the Utility of Religion and Theism, J. S. Mill, 6-33 (London: The Rationalist Press, 1904), 32-3, for example. See also E. Sober, "Philosophical Problems for Environmentalism", in Environmental Ethics: What Really Matters, What Really Works, D. Schmidtz & E. Willott (eds), 145-57 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 149-50.1 consider Mill's views in §3.3 and $3.6.

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10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

30. 31.

Elliot, "Intrinsic Value, Environmental Obligation". Ibid., 151-2. R. Goodin, Green Political Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), 27. Ibid., 28. He is gesturing towards something very important with this comparison. As will be made clear in Chapter 4, I think there is a much closer affinity between valuing the natural world and taking a certain approach to basic political matters than is suggested by Goodin's hint here. Ibid., 29-30, 32-6. See also M. H. Krieger, "What's Wrong With Plastic Trees?", Science 179 (1973), 446-55. Elliot, "Intrinsic Value, Environmental Obligation". It is not as if we have to assume a great deal of conscious intelligence or a very high order of intentionality: consider Sober's remark that "an anthill is an artifact just as a highway is" ("Philosophical Problems for Environmentalism", 154-5). On the other hand, it is one thing to treat anthills as part of the nature as other with which we are confronted; it would be another thing perhaps if Alpha Centaurians arrived, cleared a portion of the earth's surface, and built a technologically advanced alien megalopolis. This might require us to revise many of our concepts. One possibility would be to view them and their works as not part of nature ("as other" to us) on the grounds that they themselves have the intellectual and moral capacities in principle to recognize and value a nature as other to them. They would not (properly) view us as part of nature in that sense because they (should) recognize the same capacities in us. For some speculations on the likely moral resources of intelligent aliens see M. Ruse, "Is Rape Wrong on Andromeda?", in The Darwinian Paradigm: Essays on its History, Philosophy and Religious Implications, 209-46 (London: Routledge, 1989). R. Elliot, "Ecology and the Ethics of Restoration", in Attfield & Belsey, Philosophy and the Natural Environment, 31-43, esp. 36; B. Williams, "Must a Concern for the Environment be Centred on Human Beings?", in Ethics and the Environment, C. C. W Taylor (ed.), 60-68 (Oxford: Corpus Christi College, 1992), 65. Elliot, "Ecology and the Ethics of Restoration^, 37. H. Roiston, "Does Aesthetic Appreciation of Landscape Need to be Science Based?", British journal of Aesthetics 25(4) (1995), 3S(4-86. Ibid., 379. Goodin, Green Political Theory, 45-7. Ibid., 48. Ibid., 50-52. I shall say more about this in §2.6. Ibid., 51-2. Ibid., 37. See D. Miller, "Social Justice and Environmental Goods", in Fairness and Futurity: Essays on Environmental Sustainability and Social Justice, A. Dobson (ed.), 151-72 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 164n. Goodin more or less concedes this (Green Political Theory, 50). Goodin, Green Political Theory, 50-51. Although, of course, if we destroy enough of it then human life itself would be extinguished, and the question of its meaningfulness would no longer arise. In this sense the "larger context of nature" is necessary for meaningful human life, but only causally or physically necessary. This also raises the important issue of having an appropriate conception of the (relative) objectivity of the value judgement in question. I discuss this in §§2.10-2.11. Shared by Nozick's account of the "meaning of life" in his Philosophical Explanations, Ch. 6 (see also A. R. Lacey, Robert Nozick (Chesham: Acumen, 2001), 200-201), which is perhaps the main source of Goodin's account here (see Goodin, Green Political Theory, 37n., 38n.).

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32. Compare traditional cosmological arguments for the existence of God. 33. For one thing, this brings out the instrumentalism that seems to be latent within Goodin's account. I discuss this briefly in §2.9. 34. See for example, F. Mathews, "Letting the World Grow Old: An Ethos of Countermodernity", in Schmidtz & Willott (eds), Environmental Ethics, 221-30. 35. There may, of course, be good reasons to preserve or restore aspects of the landscape. 36. As Mathews seems to suggest (see "Letting the World Grow Old"). Compare a case where action - captive breeding - is taken to save a species from human-caused extinction, with a case in which the same action is taken to save a species from nonhuman-caused (i.e. "natural") extinction. It seems that the former may be motivated by the otherness view (assuming that care is taken to minimize the alteration and taming of the species involved in how its members are caught, kept and bred), although it would have been better if extinction had not been threatened in the first place. But the latter may not (although I am not suggesting there cannot be different grounds for seeking to save a species in that situation). 37. Goodin, Green Political Theory, 19, 30. 38. Thus in Goodin's terms I will be trying to bring together a green theory of value and a "theory of agency". Goodin, on the other hand, is most concerned to emphasize the distinction between these kinds of theories (e.g. ibid., 15-16, 113-19). In so far as Goodin's case against conflating green theories of value and agency rests on the claim that no form of agency (type of political activity and institution) is uniquely "natural", I wholeheartedly agree, although I will be suggesting that this important truth actually strengthens the link between the otherness view and liberal political theory. 39. Here I am anticipating the discussion of §2.11. 40. For a relevant discussion see M. Midgley, "Earth Matters", in The Age of Anxiety, S. Dunant & R. Porter (eds), 41-63 (London: Virago, 1996), 59-62. 41. Midgley, "Earth Matters", 61. 42. For example see §1.2-1.3 and J. B. Callicott, "Intrinsic Value in Nature: A Metaethical Analysis", Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy (http://ejap.louisiana.edu/ archives.html) (1995), 4-5. 43. K. Lee, "Awe and Humility: Intrinsic Values in Nature. Beyond an Earthbound Environmental Ethics", in Attfield oc Belsey (eds), Philosophy and the Natural Environment, 89-102. 44. Ibid., 97-8. 45. Ibid., 94-5. 46. See §2.9. 47. Lee, "Awe and Humility", 95-6. 48. Williams, "Must a Concern for the Environment", 67. 49. Hence the greater historical significance of Promethean fearfulness. Note also that when accompanied by the recognition of human handiwork as an important causal element behind such disasters, the fearfulness can degenerate into "dismal instrumentalism" (see §1.3). 50. Lee, "Awe and Humility", 98. 51. For example, V Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (London: Routledge, 1993) and Environmental Culture (London: Routledge, 2002). 52. Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 32. 53. Perhaps this misrepresents Descartes's own views. For example, see S. R. L. Clark, "Global Religion", in Attfield &; Belsey (eds), Philosophy and the Natural Environment, 113-28, esp. 117-18. 54. Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 48-55. 55. See §1.3. 56. Thus the otherness view is opposed to perspectives that emphasize the otherness of

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57. 58. 59.

60.

61.

62.

63.

64.

nature only so as to single out the specialness of humanity as having a uniquely noninstrumental status. In §3.4 I will use the eco-feminist notion of "dualism" to highlight some defects in J. S. Mill's discussion of "nature". J. O'Neil, "Varieties of Intrinsic Value", The Monist 75 (1992), 119-37, esp. 12. As, for example, Peter Reed appears to in his "man apart" account of nature as other: "Man Apart: An Alternative to the Self-Realization Approach", Environmental Ethics 11 (1989), 53-69. Perhaps this isn't right though. If we take "wilderness" to mean a part of nature that is completely unaffected by human activity, and take it literally, then it is already too late for the idea of preserving or protecting wilderness, in that sense, to have any practical application for us. Consider that man-made high frequency transmissions have been radiating out into space at the speed of light for some time now. If, as is thought to be the case, the first transmissions powerful enough to do this were television broadcasts of the 1936 Olympic Games, then at the time of writing they already constitute an expanding (although progressively fainter) "sphere of human influence" some 132 light years in diameter. David Cooper uses this phrase pejoratively to mark what he thinks is a too unwieldy concept of the (global) environment: "The Idea of the Environment", in The Environment in Question, D. Cooper & J. A. Palmer (eds), 163-80 (London: Routledge, 1992), 167. For an effective response, see A. Belsey, "Chaos and Order, Environment and Anarchy" , in Attfield & Belsey (eds), Philosophy and the Natural Environment, 157-68. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to give my house over to spiders; I don't have to grant spiders absolute rights to non-interference, or leave the room whenever they wander in, so as not to bother them. Consider again Goodin-style judgements about the way different landscapes may ride more or less roughshod over nature, as discussed in ξ§2.2—2.3. Compare also Mathews's account of "living with nature" (the process), a matter of "allowing the world to go its own way", which involves letting the artificial structures of the landscape "grow old", rather than frequently developing, erasing and redeveloping them for the sake of the new (and profit): Mathews, "Letting the World Grow Old", esp. 222—3. However, her view of "living with nature" is perhaps too close to being a nature-prescribed substantive conception of the good life. That this means it has to be distinguished from the otherness view will be made clear in Chapters 3 and 4. "Pointing to intimate links between industrialisation, militarisation, and conquest, the Greens argue that economic growth in the West has historically rested on the economic and ecological exploitation of the Third World" (R. Guha, "Radical American Environmentalism and Wilderness Preservation: A Third World Critique", Environmental Ethics 11 (1989), 70). There is nothing in the notion of respecting nature's otherness that automatically gives preserving wilderness precedence over tackling these "historical" issues. Obviously, landscapes are interrelated in various ways, including ecologically and economically. It is also obvious that certain kinds of economic relations can have deleterious ecological effects. See, for example, Plumwood's discussion of the effects of "globalizing" the pilchard market on the fairy penguin population of Bass Strait (Environmental Culture, 13-16). The otherness view - nature is non-instrumentally valuable in virtue of its otherness - is sensitive to this because, although it emphasizes the relationship between landscapes and the local nature, it does not confine itself to local nature: nature's otherness as it is in South Australia is still other with respect to people buying canned fish in supermarkets in northwest England. Presumably it is more difficult to keep in view, even more crowded out by local landscape pursuits, than is the otherness of local nature. But "out of sight, out of mind" is an attitude very much at odds with the

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65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

75. 76. 77. 78.

79. 80. 81. 82.

otherness view. Plumwood says that the fairy penguins' plight is symptomatic of an "ecological crisis of reason", which is embedded in the "global free market". Since I argue that the otherness view is a reasonable continuation of political liberalism, I will in effect be arguing that liberalism as such does not necessarily serve as an ideological foundation for that "ecologically irrational" system; rather, it can and should be an important source of critique of it. Compare W. Cronon, "The Trouble with Wilderness or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature", Environmental History 1(1) (1996), 7-28. Guha, "Radical American Environmentalism", 68-70. See, for example, the 1995 collection edited by George Sessions: Deep Ecology for the 21st Century (Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1995). C. Belshaw, Environmental Philosophy: Reason, Nature and Human Concern (Chesham: Acumen, 2001), 179-81. The fact that it does suggest such hostility, or at least insensitivity, towards the senses in which "anthropocentrism" is benign is a good reason not to employ the notion "ecocentric". See §1.1. Especially the "instrumentalizing" identification of wider nature with nature as "used" within cultural landscapes. Quoted in V Plumwood, "Nature, Self and Gender: Feminism, Environmental Philosophy and the Critique of Rationalism", in Elliot (ed.), Environmental Ethics, 155-64, esp. 158. J. B. Callicott, "Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics", Environmental Ethics 7 (1985), 257-74, esp. 272. A. Naess, "The Shallow and the Deep, Long Range Ecology Movement: A Summary", Enquiry 16 (1973), 95-100, esp. 95. John Seed, quoted in J. B. Callicott, "The Metaphysical Implications of Ecology", Environmental Ethics 8 (1986), 301-16, esp. 316. Naess has since acknowledged that "anything like 'nature mysticism' (the ultimate unity of all living beings and similar .. . views) has no place among views which supporters [of deep ecology] may have in common. The views about, and feelings of, the intimacy and kind of 'hanging together' may, of course, differ in terms of degree of tightness." (A. Naess, "The Deep Ecology 'Eight Points' Revisited", in Sessions (ed.), Deep Ecology for the 21st Century, 213-25, esp. 215) Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 176-82; see also Plumwood, Environmental Culture, Ch. 9. See especially Naess, "The Shallow and the Deep"; Callicott "Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory" and "The Metaphysical Implications of Ecology". See for example Belshaw, Environmental Philosophy, Ch. 8; Clark, "Global Religion"; Plumwood "Nature, Self and Gender"; Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 176-82; Plumwood, Environmental Culture, Ch. 9; and Reed, "Man Apart". I am updating Belshaw's remark that his claim "that Bill Clinton exists, is an entity, is real, is not to be understood in any way that challenges the laws of physics" (Environmental Philosophy, 189). Similarly, whatever else one thinks about President George W. Bush, his existence as a distinct individual appears to be consistent with the laws of physics. Relshaw, Environmental Philosophy, 187. Plumwood, "Nature, Self and Gender", 158-61. Callicott, "The Metaphysical Implications of Ecology", 311. And to foreshadow a line of thought from my discussion of "blueprinting" in Chapter 3 : even at the level of nature as a whole, current science does not straightforwardly suggest, let alone logically imply, an absolutist metaphysics such as would motivate our "identification with nature". (The lack of logical implication seems generally admitted. For example, see Naess, "The Shallow and the Deep", 98; Callicott, "The

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83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93.

94. 95.

96. 97.

98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108.

Metaphysical Implications of Ecology", 301-2.) It depends which bit of science is emphasized. Quoted in Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 179. Ibid. But again it should be noted that Naess does not identify such a view with deep ecology as such: "The Deep Ecology 'Eight Points'". Naess quoted in Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 180. See also, for example, Callicott, "The Metaphysical Implications of Ecology", 311. Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. On the otherness view, when unmodified by any other considerations, we should side with the fox, given that the chickens in question are domesticated and selectively bred by humans for human purposes. Plumwood, Environmental Culture, 199-200. Ibid., 200; see also Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 180-81. Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 181. The phrase "transpersonal self " in this context is associated with Warwick Fox (Transpersonal Ecology: Developing New Foundations for Environmentalism (Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1990)). Plumwood, Environmental Culture, 137. Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 182. Thus Passmore, for example, seems to go too far when he claims that recognition of mutual obligation is necessary for community membership (Passmore, "Attitudes to Nature", 116). Household pets are often part of the "community of the household", and not just in the sense of Aristotelian "living tools". Compare the complex interactions between a family and its dog, the cooperation and mutual accommodation that can occur, presumably without the dog explicitly "recognizing obligations", with the relationship between a family and its vacuum cleaner. J. B. Callicott, "Non-Anthropocentric Value Theory and Environmental Ethics", American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1984), 299-309, esp. 305. Perhaps the point should be that local communities should expand to encompass the local ecological community. This would still tend to undermine the distinction between landscape - local human communities and the marks they make on local nature - and local nature itself (as other). It also makes the position very close to the "bioregionalism" I criticize (including for its thoroughgoing localism) in Chapter 3. Callicott, "Non-Anthropocentric Value Theory", 304-5. Compare Richard Wollheim's discussion of the "satisfying vision" of a reality rendered whole, which, as much as the truth, is the real aim of severely monist metaphysics such as Bradley's absolute idealism: F. H. Bradley (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1959), 277-85. Callicott presents it as such: "Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory" and "Intrinsic Value in Nature". Callicott, "Intrinsic Value in Nature", 16-17. Although he is perhaps a little too contemptuous of domesticated animals. J. B. Callicott, "Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair", in Elliot (ed.), Environmental Ethics, 29-59, esp. 50-51. O'Neill, "Varieties of Intrinsic Value". At least for the time being. I will discuss objections to the idea that non-instrumental value can be applied here, or indeed anywhere, in §$5.2-5.3. C. Korsgaard, "Two Distinctions in Goodness", The Philosophical Review 92 (1983), 169-95. Ibid., 171-2. Ibid., 186. O'Neill, "Varieties of Intrinsic Value", 124-5. And our "respect" for nature had better not be entirely a matter of "Promethean tearfulness". See §2.4.

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109. Goodin, Green Political Theory, 42-5. 110. Although, as I have already suggested in §2.3, it seems that external nature is necessary for meaningful lives only in the sense that it is causally necessary, a physical requirement for our existence, and therefore our meaningful existence. Presumably this is a "materialist" consideration, if not a crass one. 111. It is hidden also by the terminology "consumer satisfaction": his account of why nature is valuable does not present it as something satisfying only when consumed. But that does not stop it from being an account of nature's anthropocentric instrumental importance. 112. G. E. Moore, Philosophical Studies (London: Routledge, 1922), 265. 113. I think this is implausible, if only because of the problems with Goodin's account of nature as the larger context of meaning mentioned in §2.3. 114. "Anthropocentric" in the sense of a purely instrumental view of non-human nature. See, for example, Callicott, "Non-Anthropocentric Value Theory", 305-6, and R. Elliott, "Meta-Ethics and Environmental Ethics", Metaphilosophy 16 (1985), 103-17. 115. Green, "Two Distinctions in Environmental Goodness", Environmental Values 51 (1996), 31-46, esp. 39. 116. Green, "Two Distinctions in Environmental Goodness", 39. 117. G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903), 17. 118. Moore also claimed that in asserting objectivism over subjectivism people mostly have in mind intrinsic value rather than objectivism as the mere denial of subjectivism. Subjectivism is inconsistent with intrinsic value for Moore because of the unconditional, not empirical or causal, necessity of Xs intrinsic value, given its intrinsic nature. This necessarily rules out X's value being contingent on the varying mental state of valuing agents. Thus "X has intrinsic value" implies "X has objective value", although the converse does not hold. "Being highly evolved" is his example of objective extrinsic value (Philosophical Studies, 253-7). My claim is that the value conferred by nature's otherness should be characterized as both extrinsic and objective. 119. J. Passmore, Man's Responsibility for Nature (New York: Scribner's, 1974), 28. 120. I take it such claims have been effectively refuted. See, for example, R. Attfield, Environmental Philosophy: Principles and Prospects (Aldershot: Avebury, 1994), Chs 2-3. 121. I will return to this issue in §4.7, where I distinguish the otherness view from Reed's "Man Apart", religious-cum-existential account of nature's otherness. 122. Korsgaard, "Two Distinctions in Goodness" and "Kant's Formula of Humanity", Kant-Studien 77 (1986), 183-202. My brief discussion of Kant here owes much to Korsgaard's thorough analysis in "Kant's Formula of Humanity". 123. I. Kant, The Moral Law: Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, H. J. Patón (trans.) (London: Routledge, 1991), 17, 61-2. 124. Korsgaard, "Kant's Formula of Humanity", 193. 125. Kant, The Moral Law, 99. See §2.1. 126. Korsgaard, "Kant's Formula of Humanity", 193. 127. Ibid., p.202. 128. T. Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). 129. Ibid., 5. 130. Ibid., 116-17. This is an aspect of Nagel's position that de-Shalit misses in his critical discussion of "reflective equilibrium" modes of deliberation concerning environmental matters (de-Shalit, The Environment Between Theory and Practice, 35). 131. Quite the reverse: see Nagel's determined assertion of realism as against forms of idealism in philosophy (e.g. Nagel, The View from Nowhere, 9-13). 132. See §2.4. 133. Nagel, The View from Nowhere, 5-8.

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134. 135. 136. 137. 138.

139. 140. 141. 142.

143. 144. 145. 146. 147.

Ibid., 152-3. Korsgaard, "Kant's Formula of Humanity", 189-90. T. Nagel, "What is it Like to be a Bat?", Philosophical Review 83 (1974), 435-50. Nagel, The View from Nowhere, 155-6. Thus a view of external nature as an objective end might be thought to slide into dark visions of human beings sacrificed to that end; say the kind of anti-humanist "ecobrutalism" Bookchin identifies among the hangers-on of deep ecology - those who say things like, "When I tell people how the worst thing we could do in Ethiopia is to give aid - the best thing would be to just let nature seek its own balance, to let the people there just starve - they think this is monstrous" (David Foreman interviewed by Bill Devall, quoted in M. Bookchin, "Social Ecology Versus Deep Ecology", in Schmidtz & Willott (eds), Environmental Ethics, 126-36, esp. 127.). It is, of course, misleading to say the least to associate deep ecology with such (precisely monstrous) views, as Bookchin does. Still, I think it is to the advantage of the otherness view that, by incorporating Nagel's conception of objectivity, it makes clear that ascribing objective value to non-human nature does not entail human interests being insignificant and being overridden automatically, even when they are relatively subjective. Nagel, The View from Nowhere, 9. T. Nagel, Equality and Partiality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), Chs 1-3. This is the criticism Plumwood makes of the "transpersonal" variant of expanding the self to identify with nature (Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 182; Environmental Culture, 137). See §2.7. It is not the only source of difficulty. For example it may be reasonable to adopt a value pluralist approach and characterize the value of nature's otherness as incommensurable with many anthropocentric values and concerns, as well as different nonanthropocentric concerns. See A. Brennan, "Moral Pluralism and the Environment", Environmental Values 1 (1992), 15-33 for a relevant discussion. From Die Grünen (the German Green Party) 1983 Election Manifesto, quoted in Goodin, Green Political Theory, 186. See, for example, Chapter 1. But not necessarily protecting them. I say a bit more about this in Chapter 5. See again §2.6. S. Schama, Landscape and Memory (London: HarperCollins, 1995), 61. Chapter 3: Against Blueprinting

1. Rowlands, The Environmental Crisis, 162-7. 2. For example, M. Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy (Palo Alto, CA: Cheshire Books, 1982). 3. Bookchin, "Social Ecology Versus Deep Ecology". 4. Rowlands distinguishes various "priority theses" in social ecology: historical priority (human-human domination was historically antecedent to human-nature domination); causal dependence (human-nature domination was causally dependent on prior human-human domination); strong conceptual priority (the concept of domination essentially applies to human-human relations; its extension to other areas is "strictly derivative and metaphorical"); and the strategic priority thesis (human "liberation" must precede the "liberation of nature"). Rowlands focuses on historical priority because it is "clearly the most central": The Environmental Crisis, 163-4. 5. Ibid., 166. 6. Ibid. 7. For Plumwood, Bookchin's social ecology "fails to confront the chief myth of progress and the other ideologies which surround colonialism, namely the

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8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

18. 19.

20.

confrontation with an inferior past, an inferior non-western other and the associated notion of indigenous cultures as 'backward' earlier stages of our own exemplary civilisation" (Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 16). Rowlands, The Environmental Crisis, 166-7. This is basically the "strong conceptual priority thesis"; see note 4. For example, Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom, 26-30. Rowlands, The Environmental Crisis. Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom, 274. Ibid. See, for example, Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom, 276-7. Ibid., 278. In a closely related theme, Bookchin talks of bringing human reason in line with an "objective reason", which permeates nature, provides values and goals and is invisible to a "scientistic value free" approach (for example, The Ecology of Freedom, 270f.). Apart from its Hegelian overtones and explicit anti-instrumentalism, Bookchin's thinking here is reminiscent of the Stoic view of nature and ideal society discussed in §3.4. I will re-emphasize this point in §4.6. The notion of "natural lessons" has been criticized before, of course. A particularly clear and effective recent critique is to be found in A. de-Shalit, "Environmentalism for Europe - One Model", Journal of Applied Philosophy 14(2) (1997), 179-85 and The Environment Between Theory and Practice, Ch. 4. Readers already inclined to reject "natural lessons" might find the point somewhat laboured here. They might like to proceed to Chapter 4, after considering the distinctions about to be made in the text. See SI.1. For example: It cannot be emphasized too strongly that the anarchist concepts of a balanced community, a face-to-face democracy, a humanistic technology and a decentralized society - these rich libertarian concepts - are not only desirable, they are necessary. They belong not only to the great visions of [humanity's] future, they now constitute the preconditions for human society. (M. Bookchin, "Ecology and Revolutionary Thought", in his Post-Scarcity Anarchism, 55-82 (London: Wildwood House, 1974), 69) It should be remembered though that Bookchin also rejects a purely instrumental view of nature. For example, in The Ecology of Freedom he describes "hierarchy" as a multifaceted "psycho-social condition" (compare the interrelated "dualisms" discussed in §2.5) not present in an "organic society" with an "ecological outlook" that recognizes ecosystems of interdependent things perpetuating nature's balances (e.g. The Ecology of Freedom, 4-5). He contrasts this "ecological outlook" with "environmentalism" thought of as the attempt to perpetuate human domination by "diminishing the hazards of reckless despoliation" (ibid., 21-2). "Environmentalism" here seems to correspond to what I have called "rational landscaping". But there is a false contrast here, at least to the extent that ecological knowledge of nature's balances is surely instrumentally valuable from an "environmentalist", rational landscaping perspective. Moreover, given the rest of Bookchin's system, there is an implicit claim that blueprinting and rational landscaping ("environmentalism") exhaust the alternatives: you either have the "ecological awareness" of non-hierarchical organic society (blueprinting), or a dominating, instrumentalizing outlook that, even at its best, cannot amount to more than "environmentalism". This seems to arbitrarily exclude the possibility of "reasonable landscaping": an outlook that is neither blueprinting nor purely instrumentalist. K. Sale, "Bioregionalism - A New Way to Treat the Land", The Ecologist 14(4) (1984) and Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision (San Francisco, CA: Sierra Book Club, 1985); see also Sale in A. Dobson (ed.), The Green Reader (London: Andre

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21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27.

28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

Deutsch, 1991), 77-83. Sale's bioregionalism looks distinctly eco-anarchist (and tends to be lumped together with other anarchist theories - see, for example, J. Connelly & G. Smith, Politics and the Environment, From Theory to Practice (London: Routledge, 1999), 51-2) - but there is a question (noted by Connelly and Smith, ibid.) whether it actually counts as a form of anarchism at all. If we take "anarchism" to involve a necessary commitment to egalitarian political community, and/or the need for a revolutionary break from the state-dominated status quo then, as we shall see, it seems that Sale's bioregionalism is not a form of anarchism. On the other hand, his call for radically decentralized, self-sufficient human communities (consonant with the naturally given division of the earth's surface into bioregions hence bioregionalism), not under the control of external, fixed hierarchical power structures, is clearly in accordance with traditional anarchist themes. What is of most interest here though is not whether Sale's bioregionalism should be dubbed "anarchist", but its commitment to blueprinting. If we think of it as a reformist doctrine, then it is clearly a non-liberal reformism, and one that seeks, however gradually, to bring about a more "authentically natural" human society. It is this latter, blueprinting element that I want to bring out here. It is also particularly worth considering here because of apparent similarities between the notions of "landscape" and "bioregion". Sale, Dwellers in the Land, Ch. 5. Ibid., 55. I return to the definition of "bioregion" in §3.8. Ibid., 62. Ibid., 63-6. Ibid., 66, see also 104-8. Also recall Bookchin's distinction between nature as provider of ethical model or paradigm (a notion he rejects), and nature as source of ethical meaning whose specific imperatives may be felt only within a non-hierarchical society. It is also worth noting Bookchin's endorsement of bioregionalism in general (e.g. Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom, 33-4), although, as we shall see, Sale's bioregionalism turns out not to be so determinedly non-hierarchical. The "first law of eco-dynamics" is that "living things seek to conserve their information, structure and behaviour". The second is that "natural systems tend towards stability" (corresponding to achievement of "climax state") (Sale, Dwellers in the Land, 68). Ibid., 73-4. Ibid., 82-8. See, for example, ibid., Ch.l, Ch. 12. Consider also Sale's pointed quotation of Lao Tzu: "To know harmony means to be in accord with the eternal. To be in accord with the eternal means to be enlightened" (ibid., 181). It is clear that his account of ecological laws we should follow is supposed to have more than pragmatic or instrumental significance, despite his occasional claim to be concerned only with what is practical (as opposed to "abstract theorizing" about ethical theory!). See ibid., 53. Ibid., 144. We will see later that his definition of "bioregion" turns out to be deeply problematic from the otherness point of view. Sale, Dwellers in the Land, 165-6. See, for example, Plumwood's interesting discussion (Environmental Culture, 7480). Sale does point out that self-sufficiency is not the same as isolation: self-sufficient communities don't need to ignore the outside world; they can cooperate with other communities, share ideas of best practice, when this seems appropriate to them and so on (Sale, Dwellers in the Land, 74). This might qualify, to some extent, the misgivings one might have about localism, but not much.

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36. Mill, "On Nature". 37. For example, Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature and Environmental Culture. See §2.5 for an outline of the elements of dualism. 38. See §2.5. 39. For example, Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 42-3. One of the dualisms on Plumwood's list is the public-private distinction. Since this distinction is crucial to liberal philosophy in general, and my argument for greening liberalism in particular, part of my argument in Chapter 4 will be to show that this distinction can be made in a "non-dualist" way. 40. Mill, "On Nature", 32. 41. Compare §§2.1-2.2. This argument implies a rejection of the Stoic injunction to "follow nature" in the sense of endorsing the purposes operating through universal nature. I discuss Stoicism as a blueprinting doctrine shortly. 42. Mill, "On Nature". 43. Ibid., 22. 44. Ibid., 23-8. 45. Ibid., 24. Notice the "victory over"; not training, cooperation with, guidance of, or even sublimation of, but victory over. 46. Ibid., 27. 47. Compare this comment of Bookchin's: "Which specific ethical imperatives we draw from an ecological interpretation of nature (as distinguished from the abstract, meaningless, de-subjectivized nature that chilled the Victorian mind by its 'stinginess' and 'brutality') depend ultimately on our exploration of a future ecological society" (Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom, 276). We might say that Mill's "Nature" provides a paradigm of the Victorian mind chilled in that way. But it is important that we don't identify the absence of that mental condition, or the means of avoiding it, with the blueprinting sensibility flourishing in Bookchin's future ecological society in which "ecological nature - and the objective ethics following from it - can spring into life" (ibid.). 48. Goodin, Green Political Theory, 47-8. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid., 51-2. 51. In §2.3. 52. Quoted in A. Belsey, "Chaos and Order", 165. 53. This will be to bring out its blueprinting character rather than to comment on, say, the paradoxicality of Stoic thought. In composing my rather compressed sketch I have drawn on the discussions in A. A. Long (ed.), Stoic Studies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), especially the papers by I. G. Kidd; M. Reesor, The Nature of Man in Early Stoic Philosophy (London: Duckworth, 1989), and A. Erskine, The Hellenistic Stoa: Political Thought and Action (London: Duckworth, 1990). It is intended to be a sketch of generic early Stoicism, ignoring differences between the various Stoic writers. This will be sufficient for my purposes here. 54. For example, Passmore, Man's Responsibility for Nature, 14-18; Belsey, "Chaos and Order". 55. It might be thought that the Stoic injunction is not that we emulate a part of nature, but "follow" the rational element animating all of nature, so it does not amount to blueprinting in the condemned sense. Moreover, if the Stoic picture is true and logos exists, then it would be irrational - precisely against reason - not to "follow reason" in that sense. It would indeed be irrational, if that were the case, but then this point undermines the former one, precisely by showing that it is the normative force of rationality that is decisive here. The Stoic injunction is a matter of following nature in so far as it is reason. There is no question of following nature minus reason; it is a

170

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56.

57. 58. 59. 60.

61. 62.

63.

64.

matter of following nature as a rational order. Reason/logos is out there as that aspect of nature that makes it rational to follow nature. I take this to be the definitive description of ideal Stoic society. Other Stoic writers, perhaps especially the later, Roman ones, discuss social and political questions, but as applied to the actual non-Stoic-ideal world. I am relying on Erskine's account of Zeno's Politeia as a statement of the purely Stoic society, one containing no "unwise" elements at all. See Erskine, The Hellenistic Stoa, 18-27. For example, G. Woodcock, The Anarchist Reader (London: Harvest Press, 1977), 17; Belsey, "Chaos and Order", 165. Erskine, The Hellenistic Stoa, 22-7. Ibid. G. Woodcock, Anarchism (Hardmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), 18-23. There are other arguments, of course, that anarchists have used to try to show that the best kind of human society is (or would be) a stateless one based on voluntary cooperation. My concern here is with the strand of anarchist thought that makes it plausible to see it as a modern reflection of the Stoic injunction to "follow nature". See, for example, Woodcock, Anarchism. Mill also argues against following "natural instincts", simply because they are "natural", because we have to judge which are consistent with virtue. However, as with external nature, Mill has a tendency towards blanket condemnation of "untrained impulse" (Mill, "On Nature"). The points I am making here do not imply that generally denigrating attitude, or "dualisms" of the mind-body or reasoninclination sort. The situation is not the same for all political theories founded explicitly on a particular view of human nature. Whatever their other defects, such theories are not necessarily committed to blueprinting. For example, consider Hobbes's "right of nature": the "blameless liberty" to do whatever one sees fit to preserve oneself. The positing of this right does not seem to involve an appeal to the order of nature as something to be followed. His main point seems to be that the most politically relevant aspect of human nature is that people are in general very strongly motivated to preserve their own lives and limbs, such that blaming them for doing (whatever they think it takes to do) so is irrational; it is supposedly "natural" in the sense of being what more or less anybody would do in a "state of nature". Thus, when without the protection of an up-and-running commonwealth (or, what amounts to the same thing, a generally respected agreement to shelter behind the protection of a particular sovereign), they have a blameless liberty to do what they think is required to preserve themselves. Perhaps there are echoes here of the Stoic emphasis on the naturalness of the self-preservation instinct, and maybe even of Goldsmith's "first law of ecodynamics": "Living things seek to conserve their information, structure and behaviour". But Hobbes's right of nature is not a duty or any kind of requirement. It is not that "nature" tells us to protect ourselves (or is full of organisms protecting themselves), therefore we should do that, because we should follow nature. Hobbes notoriously makes use of metaphors inspired by the developing mechanistic science of his day. For example, the principle of conservation of motion is part of the inspiration to view human societies as collections of objects in constant motion. But the thought is nothing like "natural objects are in motion, therefore so should we be, because we should emulate natural objects, or that part of the natural order which is motion". That we are like social atoms whizzing around in constant need of measures to maintain combination into stable wholes against the tendency to fly apart or crash destructively into each other, is a huge problem for the anxious Hobbesian, one to which strong government is the solution. Whatever its other defects, such as a thorough instrumentalism, this is not a blueprinting theory. Mill, "On Nature", 15.

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65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73.

74. 75. 76.

77. 78.

See §3.3. Mill, "On Nature", 16. Ibid., 22. Ibid., 17-18. Ibid., 18. See, for example, /¿uYf., 8. Ibid., 12. Ibid. It is worth noting that, although he does not mention it in "On Nature", Mill sometimes shrinks from thinking independent nature is full only of death, pain and destruction, such that people of quality would always avert their eyes from it. In his Principles of Political Economy, for example, he says this about the prospect of a world entirely tamed by human agriculture: Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the world with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature; with every rood of land brought into cultivation which is capable of producing food for human beings; every flowery waste or natural pasture ploughed up, all quadrupeds or birds which are not domesticated for man's use exterminated as his rivals for food, every hedgerow or superfluous tree rooted out, and scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or flower could grow without being eradicated in the name of improved agriculture. (Principles of Political Economy, Bk. 4, Ch. 6, par. 2; quoted in Passmore, Man's Responsibility for Nature, 121) This surely contradicts Mill's claim, in "On Nature", that every useful human action improves independent nature from the human perspective: agriculturally useful activity can worsen independent nature from the perspective of those who experience satisfaction in some elements of wilderness. See also P. H. G. Stephens, "Green Liberalisms: Nature, Agency and the Human Good", Environmental Politics 10(3) (2001), 1-22, for a reading of Mill's general political philosophy as containing more green resonances, certainly than are to be found in "On Nature". Mill, "On Nature", 18. Ibid., 23. The argument here is not based on appealing to a supposed "naturalistic fallacy", or the logical impropriety of deriving an ought from an is. The lesson against natural lessons does not require one to accept that a description can never entail an evaluation, for example, that "this is a case of unforced regularity" leaves it an open question, logically, whether or not "this" is good or bad. Following Gilbert Harman (The Nature of Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 17-20), I tend to think the open question argument itself is question-begging. Whatever the right position on this issue, it is a further issue whether a valued aspect of nature should be emulated or not. Even if "unforced regularity in nature is good" is taken to be necessarily true (by definition), it does not necessarily follow that we should seek to copy it in our social and political affairs. Maybe it is inconsistent with something even better that we should emulate. Or perhaps as, following Mill, I argue, we should not blueprint at all. Again, if there is an unbridgeable logical gap between "this is a case of unforced regularity in nature" and "this is good", it does not necessarily follow, simply as a matter of logic alone, that unforced regularity in nature should not be taken as a political model. The argument that it should not be is based on the substantive claim that to do so is to ignore, arbitrarily, the reality of nature's otherness. I do not claim, of course, that to describe nature as other, or to point to the fact of nature's otherness, necessarily is to "prove" that nature's otherness ought to be respected. Quoted in Sale, Dwellers in the Land, 191-2. Ibid., 22.

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79. Perhaps many find it too obvious to be worth stating - a mistake, I think. Compare the way Passmore talks of being almost ashamed to set out truths about nature's "strangeness" and "indifference"; they seem so "trite" and "obvious" (Passmore, "Attitudes to Nature", 137-8): see §2.1. 80. de-Shalit, "Environmentalism for Europe", restated in The Environment Between Theory and Practice, Ch. 4. Robert Goodin also cautions against a certain kind of appeal to the natural authenticity of particular ways of life (Goodin, Green Political Theory, 76-7), but perhaps not in a way that itself avoids blueprinting. He distinguishes two relevant senses of "authenticity" as used in the context of the "natural": authenticity as lack of artificiality (plastic trees are not authentic, or "real", trees; they originate in human artifice); and authenticity as lack of pretence or affectation - an authentic life is a life of "simplicity" (as he says, this corresponds to one of the various senses of "natural" distinguished by Mill). He points out that the first sense of "authenticity" is in keeping with his "green theory of value" (valuing something as "natural" involves valuing it as "authentic" in this sense). It seems to be in keeping with the otherness view as well (discounting the possibility of non-human artifice, which might be a mistake). As I understand him, he argues that the idea of the "authentic" life as simple life cannot be equated with that of the natural life, because naturalness is not simple but complex, and therefore valuing naturalness doesn't require living a simple life. I agree with Goodin that valuing naturalness (or natural otherness) does not require living a simple life. But I want to go further than him (or at least further than the position his argument seems to entail). He seems merely to replace the mistaken morally and politically charged inference - natural authenticity implies simplicity - with another: naturalness implies complexity. I want to say it implies neither simplicity nor complexity; no such straightforward "implication" is available. Whether nature is simple or complex in.a way that could generate a sense of "naturalness" to equate with "authentic" (so as to yield an "authentic lifestyle") depends on which bit of nature, or level of description you happen, or choose, to focus on. Nature as the totality of events and processes originating and occurring independently of human purposes, is presumably indefinitely complex. On the other hand, the fundamental laws of physics are relatively simple, even though they "unify" a vast diversity. A particular natural process might be relatively simple (wind erosion), or it might be relatively complex (chimpanzee brain function). The problem with Goodin's argument is that by apparently identifying "the natural" with complexity, he implies that complex lifestyles (rather than simple ones) are the "really authentically natural" ones. The point should be that independent nature gives no such definite prescriptions. 81. I was led to consider Plato's theory of justice as a blueprinting theory by reading Belsey, "Chaos and Order". 82. Indeed in the Laws, Plato advocates the execution of Godless natural philosophers for their impiety (G. Vlastos, Plato's Universe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 23). 83. Belsey, "Chaos and Order", 159. 84. "There is a marked aesthetic component here, which leads to a derivative use of kosmos to mean not order as such, but ornament, adornment; this survives in the English derivative, cosmetic, which, I dare say, no one, without knowledge of Greek, would recognise as a blood-relation of cosmic" (Vlastos, Plato's Universe, 3). 85. Ibid., 29. 86. Belsey, "Chaos and Order", 160. 87. Ibid., 164. 88. Plato, Republic, Bk V 89. Vlastos, Plato's Universe, 6. 90. Belsey, "Chaos and Order", 164. 91. For example, Nozick, Philosophical Explanations, 507-10.

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HOW TO BE A GREEN LIBERAL 92. Sale's tendency to invoke the authority of Gaia (or Gaea, as he prefers it) is a particularly unfortunate element of his bioregionalism. He talks of "rediscovering Gaia" as a matter of rediscovering the ecological wisdom of the Ancients, and refers to Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis as showing this rediscovery is actually taking place and has scientific credibility (Sale, Dwellers in the Land, Ch. 12). Lovelock, however, does not attribute personhood to "Gaia", much less godhood; Gaia is not a conscious, purposive agent (J. Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 15). He does occasionally refer though to humans as the conscious aspect of Gaia, the vehicle of Gaia's self-consciousness, as it were: "Through man, she has a rudimentary capacity, capable of development, to anticipate and guard against threats to her existence" (quoted in Belshaw, Environmental Philosophy, 286). But that need mean just that we are the only part of the earth's biosphere capable of knowing that we are part of the earth's biosphere. Lovelock's important empirical claim is that the earth's biosphere is a system that regulates itself to maintain lifesupporting conditions, and as such can be thought of as a living (super-) organism in its own right. Now, all these claims are controversial, except perhaps that the earth's biosphere is a continuous system, albeit with distinguishable sub-systems (see, for example, ibid., 285-8). The important point for us is that "Gaia" does not "tell us what to do", unless the claim that it does is meant only to reinforce the point that learning about how the natural world works is a prerequisite of reliably predicting the consequences for it of our actions. But we should do that whether our concern for nature is instrumental or non-instrumental, and whether or not it is alive, dead or neither, or whether it is or is not a fully self-regulating system. All that is really gained from emphasizing "Gaia" as an ecological law-giver is a source of heightened rhetoric reinforcing the supposed need to take "nature's ways" seriously as a model to be followed by the natural human society: as Gaia's ways they are not just principles and laws inherent in nature, they are divine commands. Maybe "Gaia" is just meant to be a vivid metaphor. Sale, rather unclearly, maintains both that the life embodied in Gaia must be "in some sense purposeful", and that this "need not imply overt consciousness or superarching intention — there is no point in being metaphysical or ideological about this" (Sale, Dwellers in the Land, 191). The otherness view does not imply there is no legitimacy or point to describing natural occurrences as metaphorical expressions or reflections of human events, concerns or feelings. It just says that they should not be taken literally. The sky might "look angry" sometimes but it is never really angry. And it is doubly absurd to argue in any way like the following: "the King is killed, and look the very sky is angry, our anger must therefore be legitimate - it is the natural response - one decreed by the sky itself". 93. Sale, Dwellers in the Land, 90. 94. Ibid., 91. 95. Ibid., 101. Sale endorses Bookchin's view that the activities of alpha males in primate groups do not amount to "domination" because they do not act through regular, organized, institutionalized systems of hierarchy (ibid., 98-9). Another "fundamental law" Sale considers is that "on its most intimate scale nature favours symbiosis, interaction, mutual dependence, as a means of survival" (ibid., 112). This is an important mutual-aid-style component of evolution. It is also "as apt a model as any for a successful human society" (ibid., 113). 96. Ibid., 91. 97. Perhaps we're not quite sure of this in some cases, certain higher primates for example, but that does not substantially alter the point. 98. Even if lack of formal political rule in external nature was the result of the conscious yet spontaneous libertarianism of non-human organisms, it would not follow that once we had discovered this we ought to emulate it. We would need extra grounds, beyond the fact that they do it, for thinking it right for us. Compare a traditional

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99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107.

parental admonishment of the easily led child: "I suppose if your friends put their hands in the fire, you would do that too!" Sale, Dwellers in the Land, 56-60. Ibid., 55, my emphasis. Ibid., 58. Salt mining is "natural" in areas where there is salt, but not in areas where there is no salt. But where it is natural, care has to be taken for it to be sustainable. Sale, Dwellers in the Land, 59-62. For example, ibid., 45. Ibid., 104-6. See $3.2. Sale, Dwellers in the Land, 108. Chapter 4: Liberal landscape

1. See P.I. 2. See S. Holmes, The Anatomy of Anti-Liberalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), for a controversial and stimulating discussion and refutation of various such strands of anti-liberal thought. 3. I shall discuss briefly in §4.9 some liberal lines of criticism that seem particularly important given the nature of my own argument. 4. Rawls, for example A Theory of Justice, 126-8; Justice as Fairness, 84, following Hume's account of justice as an "artificial virtue" (A Treatise of Human Nature, III, 2, ii, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, III, 1), see also C. Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 70-72. 5. For example, Rawls, Political Liberalism, xxvi; Justice as Fairness, 1. 6. In the absence of oppression, and given the "burdens of judgment", reasonable pluralism is inevitable. The "burdens of judgment", as distinct from factors such as irrationality, ignorance and narrow self-interest, include the conflicting and complex nature of empirical and scientific evidence (which makes it hard to assess and evaluate); the way the indeterminacy of our concepts requires we rely on judgments about (and interpretation of) them; and differences in background and life experience. See, for example, Rawls, Political Liberalism, 56-7; Justice as Fairness, 35-6. 7. For example, Justice as Fairness, 21. 8. "That is they regard themselves as being entitled to make claims on their institutions so as to advance their [permissible] conceptions of the good." This is in contrast to political conceptions which do not take this view of citizens' claims. "In this case their claims have no weight except insofar as they can be derived from the duties and obligations owed to society, or from their ascribed roles in a social hierarchy justified by religious or aristocratic values" (ibid., 23). 9. Ibid., 20. The "moral powers" are firstly, a "capacity for a sense of justice", that is, the ability to understand, to apply, and to act from, principles of justice that specify the fair terms of social cooperation; secondly, a "capacity to have, to revise and rationally to pursue a conception of the good". See, for example, ibid., 19. 10. See, for example, Rawls, Political Liberalism, 11-15; Justice as Fairness, 26-7. 11. A comprehensive doctrine: includes conceptions of what is of value in human life, and ideals of personal character, as well as ideals of friendship and of familial and associational relationships, and much else that is to inform our conduct, and in the limit [applies] to our life as a whole. A conception is fully comprehensive if it covers all recognized values and virtues within one rather precisely articulated system; whereas a conception is only partially comprehensive when it comprises a

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12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18.

19.

20.

number of, but by no means all, non-political values and virtues and is rather loosely articulated. Many religious and philosophical doctrines aspire to be both general [i.e. apply to all subjects universally] and comprehensive. (Rawls, Political Liberalism, 13) Moreover, conceptions of the good are normally "set within and interpreted by" comprehensive doctrines (Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 19), although mostly these will be only partially comprehensive (ibid., 193). Rawls, Political Liberalism,375. Ibid., 50. Ibid. Thus "reasonable pluralism" may be distinguished from mere pluralism, not only in being the outcome of the burdens of judgement, but as containing comprehensive doctrines that are reasonable in the sense that they would not imply the Tightness of suppressing other reasonable conceptions, or the liberties of thought and conscience, even when suppression is feasible. That reasonable pluralism in the latter sense is not fully realized in the actual world is of course acknowledged by Rawls. See for example, Political Liberalism, 64. Notice also that the relation between reasonable persons and doctrines is not viciously circular (in the sense of saying that doctrines are reasonable when accepted by reasonable people, and people are reasonable when they accept reasonable doctrines). The notion of a reasonable person is specified in terms of what might be called her attitude to the political, or the spirit in which she engages in social cooperation and the proposal and discussion of principles to regulate that cooperation. The notion of a reasonable doctrine is derivative: "a reasonable doctrine" is one that sanctions, or at least does not rule out, that attitude to the political. It is, of course, open to those disinclined to be "reasonable" in this sense, or with "unreasonable" doctrines, to object that the use of the term reasonable here is question-begging. But that is a different matter. See §3.4. See Rawls, Political Liberalism, 245-6, and $1.4. For example, excluded, along with all other substantive conceptions of the good, from consideration by the parties in Rawls's original position. By "constitutional essential", Rawls seems to mean the most fundamental political issues: those about which controversy is most divisive and damaging to the prospect of maintaining social cooperation between free and equal citizens. He mentions principles specifying the general structure of the government and political and judicial processes, and the equal basic rights and liberties of citizenship that legislative majorities must respect (for example, Justice as Fairness, 28). The place of nature, or environmental questions generally, do not enter into the "urgently needed" fundamental agreement on basic rights and liberties. They can enter in only later as a "matter in regard to which citizens can vote their non-political values and try to convince other citizens accordingly" (Rawls, Political Liberalism, 256). This might be a mistake; see Mary Midgley on wrinkles behind the sofa ("Duties Concerning Islands", 387) (§1.4). Rawls does say, in a brief footnote, "of course, these questions may become ones of constitutional essentials and basic justice once our duties and obligations to future generations and to other societies are involved" (ibid., 256n.). But these are questions of nature's instrumental significance; and without wishing to resort to dismal instrumentalism, one might well wonder whether it is getting a little late to be leaving them as questions that only might become constitutional essentials. Thus it might, in principle, count as a "primary good". Primary goods are "various social conditions and all-purpose means that are generally necessary to enable citizens adequately to develop and fully exercise their moral powers, and to pursue their determinate conceptions of the good". Rawls says they are "basic rights and liberties: freedom of thought and liberty of conscience and the rest"; "freedom of movement

176

NOTES

21.

22. 23.

24.

25. 26.

and free choice of occupation against a background of diverse opportunities"; "powers and prerogatives of offices and positions of authority and responsibility"; "income and wealth"; "the social bases of self-respect" (Justice as Fairness, 57-9). The startling absence of "environmental goods" does indeed suggest at least the "backgrounding" aspect of a humanity-nature dualism. This way of putting the argument was suggested to me by Mathew Humphrey. For similar concerns about, and arguments for, the supposed incompatibility of liberal neutrality and "green values", see A. de-Shalit, Why Posterity Matters: Environmental Planning and Future Generations (London: Routledge, 1995), 119, 124-7; The Environment Between Theory and Practice, 83f.; A. Dobson, Fairness and Futurity: Essays on Environmental Sustainability and Social justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 9-10; Miller, "Social Justice and Environmental Goods", 158-9; Wissenburg, Green Liberalism, 81. The original position, veil of ignorance and so on. I will return to these shortly. These are: "goodness as rationality" (the rational pursuit of conceptions of the good life and the fulfilment of basic human needs and purposes); "primary goods"; "permissible (complete) conceptions of the good (each associated with a comprehensive doctrine)"; "political virtues" (specifying the "ideal of a good citizen of a democratic regime", but presupposing no particular comprehensive doctrine); "the political good of a society well-ordered by the two principles" (of justice as fairness); "the good of such a society as the social union of social unions" (Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 141-2). Where does the good of non-human nature fit in? I think the good of nature as other, and the good of respect for nature as other can and should be on the list of ideas of the good endorsed by justice as fairness, and not simply as permissible non-political conceptions of the good, or as primary goods. I think they are consistent with what Rawls calls the "liberal principle of legitimacy: namely, that when constitutional essentials and questions of basic justice are at stake, the exercise of collective power, the power of free and equal citizens as a collective body, is to be justifiable to all in terms of their free public reason" (ibid., 141). Rawls himself is suspicious of the term "neutral", partly because of its misleading connotation of neutrality of effect (Political Liberalism, 191-4). He describes his account as having "neutrality of aim": "As a political conception for the basic structure, justice as fairness ... hopes to satisfy neutrality of aim in the sense that basic institutions and public policy are not to be designed to favour any particular comprehensive doctrine. Neutrality of effect or influence political liberalism abandons as impractical" (Justice as Fairness, 193—4). Whereas it is absurd to expect state activity ever to have an effect that is neutral between the plans and lives of all citizens, it can, when embodying a liberal political conception, be guided by basic principles, and operate constitutional essentials, that do not presuppose the special validity of a particular comprehensive doctrine over others. The political conception is "freestanding". Notice that the idea of neutrality invoked by Ronald Dworkin in his argument for preserving "natural resources" their destruction violates neutrality by destroying the possibility of some valued ways of life in the future - seems to be that of neutrality of effect (R. Dworkin, "Liberalism" m Public and Private Morality, S. Hampshire (ed.), 113-43 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978)). I will be following Rawls in confining the notion of political neutrality to that of neutrality of aim. The paradigm is a religious way of life, one informed by, and conforming to, a religious comprehensive doctrine. Is it all that implausible though? For example, if we think of "naturalness" as a matter of independent, non-human origin, it is an idea central to the otherness view. It is plausible to suppose that naturalness in this sense is widely valued; other things being equal many would prefer there to be "real trees" rather than say (even very

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27. 28. 29.

30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

convincing) plastic replicas (see, for example, Goodin, Green Political Theory', 32-4, and the discussion in §§2.2-2.3). Perhaps such an evaluation is not always given much weight in the face of competing considerations. But perhaps this is also true for respect for other people as free and equal. Compare Sale on getting to know the features of the bioregion. See §3.2 and §3.8. See also the discussion of objectivity as stepping back from perspectives internal to landscapes (§2.11). See §3.8. When one considers the position of a megalopolis like Los Angeles, one wonders about this. I owe this point and example to Sue Kidd. See the discussion of Sale's definition of "bioregion" in §3.8.1 myself used to live in a white, flat-roofed, fairly small-windowed house in Cheshire. It was in a council (public) housing estate of many other such houses built like that in the early 1970s, partly because of the low short-term construction cost, and partly to create a kind of "Mediterranean" look to help entice people, especially from Liverpool as part of the "slum clearance" programme of that time. The estate, called "Mount Pleasant", was located on a gentle hillside, and did have splendid views across the plain with the Peckforton Hills and Beeston Castle on the horizon. Unfortunately, several of the roofs blew off in a severe gale one winter, and although the roofs were all strengthened, a tendency to dampness due to accumulated rainfall remained. Such problems with the original design could have been overcome, but only at high cost. The houses were not built to last and most have since been demolished; those remaining have received new sloping roofs, giving an impression of toupees. Neutrality of justification or aim must be distinguished from the impractical neutrality of effect. See §3.1 for the distinctions between "reasonable", "rational" and "blueprinting" landscapes. This objection was suggested to me by Mathew Humphrey. Am I assuming the falsity of general determinism here? I am not sure that I am, but there is no space to discuss that general metaphysical question. For example, Rawls, Political Liberalism, 146-8. For example, ibid., 201-4. For example, Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 184f. See also §1.2. Some disanalogies between human-human relations and human-external nature relations are inevitable, if there is to be a nature-culture distinction; certainly if there is to be one based on otherness! A failure to achieve "reflective equilibrium". Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 73-5. I shall say more on this below. See §2.11. M. Rowlands, "Contractarianism and Animal Rights", Journal of Applied Philosophy 14(3) (1997), 235-47. For example, Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 11-22; Political Liberalism, 24-6. It is important to remember that Rawls intends the original position as an heuristic device to aid reasoning about fair principles of justice and not as a metaphysical theory of the person (e.g. Political Liberalism, 27). Rowlands, "Contractarianism and Animal Rights", 243. For example, Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 152-7. Rowlands, "Contractarianism and Animal Rights", 245. See, for example, R. Attfield, Environmental Philosophy: Principles and Prospects (Aldershot: Avebury, 1994), 167-8. See §1.1. 178

NOTES

51. Rawls, Political Liberalism, xxiv, my emphasis, and ibid., 37. 52. See for example, Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 13. 53. Maybe this is a mistake and society is better viewed by political philosophy as essentially competitive, irredeemably riven by class, ethnic and religious conflict. I can't go into that huge question here, although I will touch on aspects of it in Chapter 5. 54. It should be acknowledged that liberal neutrality has been criticized for being less neutral than it seems because it is wrapped up with political theories whose abstract focus privileges the male perspective (see S. O'Neill, Impartiality in Context: Grounding Justice in a Pluralist World (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997), Ch. 2 for a particularly useful discussion of the "feminist challenge" to Rawls). Rawls's approach seems a paradigm of abstract reasoning about justice at the expense of an "ethics of care" that emphasizes the sympathetic awareness of the particularities of concrete relationships more characteristic of women's actual moral experience. Thus Seyla Benhabib argues that stripped of particularities behind the veil of ignorance, "the other" in Rawls's original position is a "generalized other", not a "concrete other", consequently his procedure for deciding principles of justice marginalizes the voice of women as informed by that experience. Still, she maintains "the recognition of the dignity and worthiness of the generalized other is a necessary, albeit not sufficient, condition to define the moral standpoint in modern societies" (quoted by O'Neill, Impartiality in Context, 48). Let us say this is right and Rawls's contract procedure inappropriately excludes consideration of concrete others (whether individual or collective; see ibid., 48-9). Still recognition of generalized otherness remains necessary to "political reasonableness"; and it is certainly necessary if the theory is to retain its "liberal" affinity with the otherness view of nature. Compare that view of nature in these terms. Although we can often be struck by the otherness of particular natural things (say the smoothness of a pebble as caused by natural processes), also important, certainly politically, is a generalized abstract notion of independent nature as other in contrast to landscaped nature. The latter is nature as it is used, shaped and modified as a material, aesthetic or spiritual resource, entwined as it were with the human "concrete collective" and assigned roles within its culture. The thing about nature qua absorbed within concrete collectives in this landscaping sense, is that it is no longer really other; its otherness has at least been drastically qualified precisely because it is no longer independent nature, but nature—culture hybrid. In order to recognize the otherness of nature as other we have to adopt an abstract "objective" perspective (see §2.11). Obviously we don't have the same concrete connection to nature in this sense as we do to the landscapes we inhabit; it has to be the subject of a general abstract recognition if it is to be given weight, and we are to avoid a purely instrumental view of independent nature. In this respect the liberal mainstream, including Rawls, takes insufficient notice of generalized otherness! Again it is important to emphasize that concern for the "generalized other" that is independent nature has to coexist with concrete "subjective" concerns internal to landscape. If Rawls's liberalism leaves too little room for consideration of the distinct needs of concrete human others, its replacement should not lose sight of "generalized otherness", both in the sense of reasonable landscaping, and in the sense of seeking a reasonable political conception. And part of the idea of a reasonable political conception is that it remains neutral, to a significant degree, with respect to the concrete plurality. 55. It may be objected that all arguments from analogy are fallacious. Against this I remind the reader that it is not a question of giving a deductive proof that liberalism logically entails the otherness view. My aim is to emphasize the affinity between the otherness view and liberalism (particularly at the moment political liberalism), and the arbitrariness of excluding the otherness view from the liberal conception of politics as it is applied to non-human nature.

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HOW TO BE A GREEN LIBERAL 56. Goodin, Green Political Theory·, 78-83. 57. Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity, 73-4; "Political Liberalism", Political Theory 18 (1990), 343. Larmore's distinction here is perhaps between two ways the phrase "way of life" might be understood. Both are maybe aspects of some of what Rawls calls "comprehensive doctrines"; those that tell one what to do and how to do it. 58. Larmore, "Political Liberalism". 59. See, for example, Rawls, Political Liberalism, xliii f. 60. To be "reasonable", such a view has to recognize a political identity, constructed for political purposes. Thus, although I may view my Roman Catholicism as essential to my identity, and not something that I just happened to choose, as if I could have chosen something else, and may find the idea of my apostatizing unthinkable, still I should recognize that, from a political point of view, I have the right equally with other citizens to belong to a different church, or to no church. 61. Partly it is their not appealing to them for that basic political purpose that is modelled by the representative device of the original position. 62. Rawls does endorse Amy Gutman's view that commitment to political values and virtues such as toleration can be just as definitive of a person's identity - "who I am" - as can commitment to religious doctrines (Justice as Fairness, 199n.). This is true, although it seems slightly odd to put things this way given the fact of reasonable pluralism. Under ideal conditions of the well-ordered society everybody (or nearly everybody) is committed to the virtue of toleration - so it can't enter into their identity as persons in the sense of distinguishing them from other persons or groups. It is part of the shared public or political identity; who we are as a political society. It is their non-public comprehensive commitments, whether religious or secular, that provides their identity in the sense of marking them as different from others or, as a member of a group defined by shared commitments, different from members of other such groups. (This is not a defect of political liberalism: in an enforced ideal theocracy comprehensive religious commitments could not serve to define personal identity in that sense either.) The crucial point is that the values constituting the society-wide public political identity are not simply the political expression of those constituting a particular comprehensive view; they do not represent the political enforcement of any such view. Whatever the relation between comprehensive and political commitments (Rawls says there can be various such connections - it is for those whose comprehensive commitments they are to work this out in explicit detail, should they want to) in the well-ordered society it is not identity in the sense of the latter being seen as legitimate only when expressing a particular comprehensive doctrine. This is the anti-expressivist element. The political commitments are to be neutral between all (reasonable) comprehensive commitments, even those dear to important strands of the liberal tradition, such as Kantian autonomy or Mill's ideal of "individuality". 63. Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 165. 64. Quoted in ibid., 165n. 65. Rawls's relative lack of focus on the family has, of course, been a major focus of feminist critique, especially given its crucial role in the reproduction of society and its culture (see, for instance, O'Neill, Impartiality in Context, Ch. 2, for discussion of the issues). For example, if the principles of political justice do not apply directly to the internal structure of the family, then it can seem that he ignores the fact that the traditional domestic division of labour has led to serious injustice in terms of equality of economic and political power and opportunity. No doubt Rawls could have done a lot more through his various writings to dispel this impression. But at least in Justice as Fairness he makes clear that the principles of justice as fairness are meant to prevent such injustice, and may be invoked to reform its traditional patriarchal sources (Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 166f.). What precise measures need to be taken to

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66. 67. 68.

69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76.

77.

78.

79.

overcome hierarchical, patriarchal family traditions, as they conflict with justice as defined by political principles, is a matter of the latter's implementation through democratic deliberation. If a basic ... cause of women's inequality is their greater share in the bearing, nurturing, and caring for children in the traditional division of labor within the family, steps need to be taken either to equalize their share or to compensate them for it. How best to do this in particular historical conditions is not for political philosophy to decide. (ibid., 167) This may still not address such a source of profound injustice with enough urgency for many feminists, who might think it leaves the issue too marginal to the theory. There is no space here to discuss fully the adequacy of Rawls's theory with respect to these issues. The point to be taken from here is that even if the principles of justice as fairness may be invoked to reform the traditional patriarchal family, it does not follow that family members have to relate to each other entirely in terms of their public identity as citizens, so that the public-non-public distinction is abolished. In that sense they retain a non-public identity, "internal to the family", to which political principles of justice do not apply directly. Conversely, this non-public identity is not one that is assumed in some special "private space" entirely apart from the political (ibid., 166). See §2.11 on the objectivity of the value of nature's otherness involving standing back from relatively subjective perspectives without entirely obliterating or replacing them or their constitutive values. I am thinking here of the backgrounding and instrumentalizing aspects of "dualist" versions of the humanity-nature distinction. See §2.5 and §3.3. Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity, esp. Ch. 5. He acknowledges that not every writer brought under the umbrella term of Romanticism has been committed to thoroughly anti-liberal forms of expressivism. See, for example, "Political Liberalism", 344. Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity, 93. See especially §§2.7-2.8 for discussion of the ways the otherness view is not a holistic eco-philosophy. That is, unless all qualifications of the view of nature as pure resource, including that involved in the otherness view, are necessarily excluded by the ideas and principles of the political liberal conception, which is not the case. Larmore, "Political Liberalism", 351. For example, Rawls, Political Liberalism, 157. John Stuart Mill, this means you. See §3.3. Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 118. Statements from Die Grünen Election Manifesto, Sec. I, 7, quoted in Goodin, Green Political Theory, 186. My point is that some such general commitment, which I associated with the otherness view in §2.11, should be constitutional commitments of the politically liberal state, alongside human freedom and equality. On the other hand, political liberalism is consistent with the "classical republican" view that "the safety of democratic liberties . .. requires the active participation of citizens who have the political virtues needed to sustain a constitutional regime" (Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 142-4). On the other hand, it is consistent with the view that the implementation and maintenance of effective protection of independent nature requires the active participation of citizens who have the virtue of respect for nature's otherness, in addition to the virtues needed to sustain a constitutional regime. Say, for example, a "comprehensive libertarian motoring" view, which sees the world as significant only as something to drive around on, in pursuit of an ideal equating human excellence, or true freedom, with maximal "gas-guzzling" car-use: everything

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80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93.

94.

95. 96. 97.

98.

99. 100.

else is a means to that end, and any restriction of it an unbearable infringement of liberty and an assault on the very meaningfulness of one's life. Does anybody really hold such a view? Perhaps it is an exaggerated version of a view held not all that uncommonly, although less single-mindedly. Goodin, Green Political Theory, 39. de-Shalit, "Environmentalism for Europe". Although they might not always think it is being given enough weight in policy terms. See, for example, Clark, "Global Religion". See §2.10. Reed, "Man Apart". Ibid., 56. Ibid., 56. Ibid., 68-9. "Humility" is perhaps a bit strong, a bit too religiose, but it is much better than "awe" in the political context. Reed, "Man Apart", 56. For example, B. Barry, Justice as Impartiality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) and Culture and Equality (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001). See §4.2. "I see no way to secure liberalism by trying to puts its core values beyond any but internal or consensual reasoning. The resulting slide into relativism leaves a disastrous parallel between 'liberalism for the liberals!' and 'cannibalism for the cannibals!'" (M. Hollis, "Is Universalism Ethnocentric?", in Multicultural Questions, C. Joppke & S. Lukes (eds), 27-44 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 36). I am assuming here that the supposed relativism may be replaced by explicit universalism while keeping the rest of the theory constant. Perhaps that is impossible. Maybe changes in a perfectionist or comprehensive (or some other) direction would also have to be made in order to justify the newly universal scope. I think it is possible, but I don't need to show that here, for I will shortly consider perfectionist and comprehensive liberalism anyway (I am assuming that other changes are either not needed or not relevant). For example, J. Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). Raz's position is the anti-universalist one that this is the case in societies where "social forms are to a considerable extent based on individual choice" (ibid., 391). Raz himself resists this particular move for liberal societies on the grounds that it is intrinsically disrespectful of the autonomy of individuals, and that penalizing their choice of worthless or repugnant options without interfering with their other choices is impracticable (ibid., 418-19). One might say that recognizing the non-blueprinting aspect of nature as other is importantly related to autonomy in that it seems difficult to reconcile being autonomous with a view of nature as "dictating" the right way to live. But what if the liberal perfectionist sees "living in accordance with nature" as a perfectionist value, one that should be part of any autonomously pursued life, if it is to be much good? We need to be able to see a close link between liberal perfectionism and the otherness view. This is not to say perfectionist liberalism has any trouble in principle recognizing external nature's instrumental importance. So, for example, teaching lives might generally do better than gambling lives, not because they are judged inherently superior and the state wants to promote more of them for that reason, but because the good of education does not presuppose the superiority of any particular (reasonable) way of life. The effective provision of this good is something the state may reasonably seek, consistently with neutrality.

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101. For example, Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 152. 102. Coincidentally, Rawls's recent examples of "perfectionist" values are environmental ones (ibid.). A problem that the proposed incorporation of the otherness view is supposed to overcome is that legislators might not consider independent nature's value in their policy formulations. If it is incorporated then, in theory, that problem is overcome, whether or not the value of nature's otherness, or respect for nature's otherness, are called "perfectionist values". 103. Again, it is significant without being absolute; obviously it is not neutral between perfectionism and anti-perfectionism. 104. In practice the rights, liberties, benefits and burdens distributed by the perfectionist liberal state may involve subsidizing some valuable ways of life - for example, certain kinds of artist, at the expense of others, including, say, professional footballers - but this will be because it is feared that that kind of artistic endeavour, being of minority interest, would not survive without subsidy, not because it is judged inherently superior to professional footballing, although both may be judged superior to life as, say, a couch potato. 105. The most eminent modern example of comprehensive liberalism is provided by Rawls himself: ("pre-political") Rawls, A Theory of Justice. "[J]ustice as fairness is presented there as a comprehensive liberal doctrine . . . in which all the members of its well-ordered society affirm that same doctrine" (Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 179). 106. B. Barry, Culture and Equality (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), 25. Perhaps one ought in a similar spirit to say that, analogously, the otherness view could not be accepted by those inclined to blueprinting and/or a purely instrumental attitude to nature without painful adjustments and side effects. 107. Ibid., 120, 343n. 108. A different form of comprehensive liberalism departs from Rawls in seeking a more discursive approach to setting the terms of justice. Thus O'Neill draws on some communitarian and feminist criticism of Rawlsian liberalism to show that what is good and important about it - mainly its affirmation of the priority of right and impartiality as a response to reasonable pluralism - needs to be recast in the more dialogical, contextualist setting provided by Habermas's discourse ethics (O'Neill, Impartiality in Context). From this perspective, not only is it inappropriate to fix substantive "environmental" principles in advance of public discussion and democratic deliberation, but specifying principles of justice and sharply delineating a political domain in advance is also inappropriate in the context of reasonable pluralism. Such matters must be left as open questions "to leave room for the potential voices of social groups who have not yet articulated their own needs and interests" (ibid., 32; see also de-Shalit, The Environment Between Theory and Practice, 21-36, for similar concerns, expressed in an explicitly "environmentalist" context, about what he takes to be the insufficiently public process of reflective equilibrium in Rawls's approach.) So, for example, the original position should be abandoned as a device for fixing once and for all the basic principles of justice (even if only for liberal democratic societies). O'Neill's theory counts as "comprehensive" because it draws on substantive and controversial theories of morality and language (see Rawls's "Reply to Habermas" in Political Liberalism, 372-433). Now although this is a large claim, one that I have no space to make good here, I suspect that in so far as the resulting theory remains recognizably liberal (affirms the priority of right and so on to preserve reasonable plurality) it retains the affinity with the otherness view of nature. Perhaps it does so even more than Rawls's political liberalism, which it in effect condemns as insufficiently reasonable, for having exclusionary tendencies towards previously suppressed (reasonable) minorities. 109. I discuss this dimension, "degree of expressivism", in Hailwood, Exploring Nozick: Beyond Anarchy, State and Utopia (Aldershot: Avebury, 1996), Ch. 1.

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HOW TO BE A GREEN L I B E R A L 110. So might some theories that claim not to be liberal at all. I think this applies to John Gray's pluralist theory, which says that the proper aim of politics is to protect valuable ways of life and establish a modus vivendi between them, where the form of the modus vivendi need not privilege characteristically liberal values. See, for example, J. Gray, "Where Pluralists and Liberals Part Company", International journal of Philosophical Studies 6(4) (1998), 17-36. 111. This was pointed out to me by Piers Stephens. 112. See P. H. G. Stephens, "Picking at the Locke of Economic Reductionism", in Environmental Futures, N. B. Fairweather et al. (eds), 3-23 (London: Macmillan, 1999) for an interpretation of Locke along these lines. Chapter 5: Some objections 1. Wissenburg, Green Liberalism. 2. T. Regan, "Does Environmental Ethics Rest on a Mistake", The Monist 75 (1992), 161-82. 3. Carter, A Radical Green Political Theory. 4. See §2.3. 5. Wissenburg, Green Liberalism, 97. 6. See Stephens, "Green Liberalisms"; Wissenburg, "Liberalism is Always Greener", 33. 7. Wissenburg, "Liberalism is Always Greener", 33. 8. Ibid. 9. Compare §1.2. 10. We usually say the actions are enjoyable, rather than en]oyments, because the conditions under which they are actually enjoyed aren't always met. One of the ways "having enough money" is instrumentally valuable is that it "means" one might then be able to experience work, and other activities, as an enjoyment. 11. I take "psychological egoism" to be the claim that I only ever act out of self-interest: I only ever (aim to) do X if I want to do X (more than something else); thus, whenever I do X I am doing what I want (even if this is an apparently altruistic act to help you out), and so acting "for myself", or out of self-interest. One response is this: (many) acts have specific objects; acting out of self-interest is an act with a specific object in mind - myself, or my own interest - as opposed to some other object, say your interest. If I act for the sake of your interest (the furtherance of which is what I want), it in no way follows that what I am (really or ultimately) aiming at is my own interest via the furthering of your interest. Put another way, the mere presence in me of a second-order desire for the satisfaction of my first-order desires (whatever they may be) does not transform them into desires with my self (interest) as their object. 12. Wissenburg, Green Liberalism, 96. 13. For example, Regan, "Does Environmental Ethics Rest on a Mistake?", 164; Belshaw, Environmental Philosophy, 207. 14. See his views on his "home help"; Wissenburg, Green Liberalism, 107. 15. Ibid., 103. 16. See for example, Wissenburg, "Liberalism is Always Greener", 24. 17. As opposed, perhaps, to supplying reasons for embracing liberal politics, which even the purely self-interested can endorse. 18. See Wissenburg, Green Liberalism, 97-103. 19. See §§2.10-2.11. 20. Notice also that "value is in the eye of the beholder" is not strictly true, at least not when "value" is given a dispositional analysis, such as one that talks up the analogy between values and "secondary qualities". If "x is red" means something like "Λ: is such that, under appropriate conditions, it will have a certain sort of appearance to

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21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28.

29. 30.

31.

32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39.

beings with a certain sort of perceptual apparatus that are suitably located relative to it", then "x is red" can be true even in the (contingently) permanent absence of such beings. The same mutatis mutandis for "x is valuable". But when χ is valued specifically in virtue of a relation it has to valuers, then that specific value seems to presuppose the actual existence of the valuers, as is the case with naturalness or natural otherness. Even if nature before we evolved was, and nature after we are extinct will be, valuable in virtue of its otherness, this value presupposes our existence in the meantime. If it had been true that we never had existed, and never would exist, then, strictly speaking, nature would never be valuable in virtue of its otherness or naturalness (relative to us). The most that would be true is that, given the possibility of our existence at some time, nature would be potentially valuable in virtue of its otherness (to us), because potentially other (to us). Dispositional theories of value as such do not presuppose the actual existence of valuers, yet specific relational values do. At least as it has been traditionally most often understood, but compare, for example, Elliot, "Intrinsic Value, Environmental Obligation". Korsgaard, "Two Distinctions in Goodness"; see $2.9. Wissenburg, Green Liberalism, 68. Ibid., Ch. 4; Wissenburg, "Liberalism is Always Greener". I should emphasize that this is not to deny the importance of Wissenburg's arguments for incorporating the instrumental significance of nature within liberal political theory. See $$2.9-2.11. Compare conditions that might need to be satisfied for one's work to be an enjoyment. A reason for action - or restraint from action - endorsable as such from a perspective achieved by "stepping back", or abstracting, from a relatively subjective perspective, such as one constituted entirely by significances and imperatives internal to one's local cultural landscape. Regan, "Does Environmental Ethics Rest on a Mistake?", 175-7. It is one of the ways Regan suggests that environmental ethics might "rest on a mistake". Wissenburg, Green Liberalism, 96. Belshaw makes what seems to be the same point when he critically discusses the notion that all parts of nature have equal intrinsic value, in the context of "biocentric egalitarianism": Belshaw, Environmental Philosophy, 220-21. To be fair to him, he does not have anything like the otherness view in mind when he offers the example, and has since expressed reservations about this argument (private correspondence). Remember that the (conditioned) end represented by nature in virtue of its otherness is a negative, rather than positive, end. A "negative" end has the status of something not to be interfered with, as it were. A "positive" end though is an end of action, in the sense of something aimed at; something to be realized, a goal. See $2.1. Regan, "Does Environmental Ethics Rest on a Mistake?", 175-7. Compare Lee's "autonomy" and "non-teleology" theses. See $2.4. See $2.2. See $2.6. Consider again Goodin's comparison of the English countryside with the Los Angeles megalopolis. See $2.3. See $1.2. I am appealing here to a distinction like the one Kenneth Goodpaster draws between moral "considerability" and "significance". For him, "morally considerable" entities have satisfied some condition sufficient to be taken into account by moral agents; "moral significance" marks the separate issue of relative moral weight ("On Being

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40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55.

56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66.

67. 68. 69. 70.

Morally Considerable", Journal of Philosophy 75 (1978), 308-25). Even when it is true that establishing considerability (even as an end) is not sufficient to establish (degree of relative) significance, it does not follow that considerability cannot be established, or that it is somehow pointless to establish it. Compare Eckersley, "Beyond Human Racism", 175. Garner, "The Scope of Green Realism", 185. See §2.7. See ξΐ.1. The adoption of "green conclusions for brown reasons" (Goodin, Green Political Theory, 93-4), that is for instrumental reasons focused only on human interests, especially narrowly economic interests. Ibid. See §1.2. Goodin seems to think something similar about the adoption of his "green theory of value". See ibid., 96-112, especially the discussions of economic growth and property rights. Nozick, Philosophical Explanations, Introduction; see §1.5. Carter, A Radical Green Political Theory, 24, 26-34. I also sympathize with his brisk dismissal of postmodernism (ibid., 148n.73). Ibid., 261. Which is why I said earlier that Sale lets the anarchist cat out of the bag. See §3.8. See §1.3. Carter, A Radical Green Political Theory, 235n., 351. Ibid., 203-5. See especially ibid., 2-19. And for an indication of the thrust of his thought consider the opening lines of the preface to his book: "We are standing at a crossroads. All roads but one lead to oblivion, and it is certain that our one escape route does not lie straight ahead" (ibid., viii). Ibid., 349-50. This is not to say that all forms of anthropocentrism are avoidable, or even unwelcome. See Chapter 1. See §3.1, n.19. For example, Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom, 76-8. And it seems to be wrapped up with a blueprinting attitude. See §3.1. See §2.5 and §3.4. For example, Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 40. Contra Plumwood, for example, ibid., 141-5. Ibid., 45. See §4.2. See §4.7. The negative, excluded, inferior, contrast here - Unreasonable - attaches to those viewing "the political" as properly their own "private" domain, through which to enforce comprehensive commitments and purposes, in the face of the fact of pluralism. I am not claiming of course that Rawls, or his followers, have noticed this "ecological continuity". Far from it (see §1.4). Nor do I claim that the point can be made only in specifically Rawlsian terms (see the extensions discussed in §4.7). Nor do I claim that Rawls's own presentation of the Reasonable, and related politically liberal concepts, is invulnerable to the charge of being insufficiently "inclusive" in all other respects. He formulates this thesis via a critique of G. A. Cohen's "techno-primacy thesis", his intention being to establish his analytical anarchism as superior to Cohen's analytical Marxist reading of historical materialism. Carter, A Radical Green Political Theory, Ch. 4. Ibid., 201-30. If it is not real, or not so pressing, then what is the "eco-" problem, given the thorough instrumentalism of these considerations?

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71. See Carter, A Radical Green Political Theory, 205. 72. I am sceptical about grand sociohistorical theorizing anyway. It is not as if the only alternative is irrationalism or "post-modernist theoretical nihilism" (ibid., 148n.). It might be that a more piecemeal form of theorizing is better suited to the historical facts. 73. See, for example, §2.4. 74. For example, Carter, A Radical Green Political Theory, 230-34. 75. For example, ibid. 76. See §4.2. 77. Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity, 72. 78. Ibid., 113. 79. "Utopian" in the pejorative sense of "extremely unlikely to be realized". 80. Carter, A Radical Green Political Theory, 263. 81. Compare: judges - and the justice system itself - can never be completely impartial. They will always be influenced to some extent by arbitrary factors such as social background. Therefore we would be better off without them - and it. 82. Carter, A Radical Green Political Theory, 244-51. 83. Ibid., 238-9. 84. Compare Rawls on how ideal theory should be both ideal and yet some guidance in non-ideal contexts; it should be "realistically Utopian" (e.g. Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 13). 85. By David Miller, for example. See, for example, Carter, A Radical Green Political Theory, 258-9. 86. However, this point needs to be considered alongside the no-limited liability point made below. 87. Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, ix, xi. 88. Ibid., Ch. 2. See also J. Wolff, Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State (Oxford: Polity Press, 1991), Ch. 3; Hailwood, Exploring Nozick, Ch. 3. 89. Apart from independent-minded "John Wayne-types" - to use Jonathan Wolff's memorable image - who prefer to exercise their own DIY punishment options (Wolff, Robert Nozick, 45-6). 90. "A corporation's liability to those involuntarily intertwined with it will be unlimited, and it presumably will choose to cover this liability with insurance policies" (Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, 133-4). 91. See S. Hailwood, "Why 'Business's Nastier Friends' Should not be Libertarians", Journal of Business Ethics 24 (2000), 77-86, for more discussion of this. 92. And consistently with the triadic analysis of private property that Carter sensibly favours: "property is not simply private to an isolated person. Rather, it consists in a triadic relation - a relation between persons with respect to things" (Carter, A Radical Green Political Theory, 273, his emphasis). 93. "Soft technology" is a term Carter borrows from Amory Lovins, to refer to technologies that are "flexible, resilient, sustainable and benign" (ibid., 203n.20). 94. I am inclined to push this point a bit further. In my book on Nozick (Hailwood, Exploring Nozick), I emphasized the problematically hypothetical nature of his libertarian scenarios. I also drew attention to his "experience machine" thoughtexperiment, in which people are subjected to pre-chosen artificially produced experiences that they believe to be real while they are plugged in to the machine. Nozick claims we would not want to plug in for a lifetime, although short spells in the machine would be enjoyable and therapeutic (Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, 42-5). I suggested that they would be particularly beneficial for those most troubled by the nature of the actual world, and that this includes would-be libertarians appalled at a world dominated by non-minimal states. Given the extent to which it is hypothetical, merely conceivable, Nozick's account of goings on in a libertarian state

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95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104.

of nature seems better suited to be a programme for the experience machine than a political philosophy for the actual world (Hailwood, Exploring Nozick, 56-61). I wonder if eco-anarchism, such as defended by Carter, should be in the same category: an excessively Utopian narrative, the illusory experience of which would provide a temporary therapeutic escape from a grim reality. (If so, which programme would provide the best experience from a green point of view?) Is eco-anarchism itself here a kind of escapist response to its own dismal instrumentalism? Carter, like many ecoanarchists and others from different perspectives, is an active, committed member of the green movement, and as such of course actively engaged with reality. But his theory might have elements that tend to push in the direction of dreamy escapism. It is not as if the latter phenomenon will remain unheard of until the invention of the experience machine. Needless to say, it is functional for the environmentally reactionary state if serious green alternatives are associated with Utopian political theorizing. Carter, A Radical Green Political Theory, 261. Ibid., 266-72. Ibid., 266-7. Ibid., 268. With my own proposal lying at the more theoretical end of the spectrum. Carter, A Radical Green Political Theory, 294. Ibid., 304-6. Ibid., 294-5. Consider how rightly alarmed a thinker like Carter is by the Ophuls, Hardins and Heilbronners of this world. Carter, A Radical Green Political Theory, 24-6. Sale, Dwellers in the Land.

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Index

Aristotle 68,69 animals 10, 19, 22, 28, 35, 40, 41, 43, 44, 47, 53, 56, 58, 72, 82, 83, 99, 106, 138-40, 157, 158, 163, 165, 173, 174 anthropocentrism 2, 5, 6, 12, 13, 29, 37, 54, 106, 139, 141, 158, 159, 164, 166, 167, 186 anti-expressivism 15, 16, 99, 102, 11113, 115-17, 122, 123, 125-9, 180, 183; see also otherness view of nature Barry, Brian 127,182,183 bioregionalism 14, 62-4, 77, 78, 82, 83, 85-8, 143, 155, 165, 168, 169, 172, 174, 175, 178, 186, 188 blueprinting 14, 15, 25, 29, 61-5, 67, 71-7, 79, 81-5, 87, 88, 93, 100102, 108-11, 122, 137, 156, 164, 168, 169, 171, 172, 173, 178, 182, 186 Bookchin, Murray 14, 57-60, 73, 82, 145, 167, 168, 169, 170, 174, 186 Callicott, J. Baird 13, 38, 42, 43, 48, 162, 164, 165, 166 Carter, Alan 8, 9, 17, 131, 143-55, 159, 184,186,187,188 chauvinism 2, 10, 29, 107, 157, 158, 159, 160 circumstances of justice 91-4, 98, 109, 117,149,150,153 classical anarchism 58, 63, 71, 73, 82, 87, 107, 108, 171 communitarianism 63, 128, 183 cosmos 14,80,81,173

deep ecology 36, 37, 164, 165, 167 democracy 4, 80, 87, 123, 124, 137, 140, 141,153,181,183 de-Shalit, Avner 79, 81, 120, 157, 159, 166, 168, 173, 177, 182, 183 dualism 13, 14, 32-4, 50, 65-7, 70, 75, 76, 84, 93, 146, 163, 168, 171, 177, 181 Eckersley, Robyn 157,186 eco-anarchism 8, 9, 17, 57-60, 62, 87, 131, 142-7, 149-52, 154, 155, 159, 169,186,188 ecocentrism 36, 37, 144, 158, 164 eco-feminism 13, 32, 34, 50, 65 eco-theism 49, 50, 121, 122, 145 Elliot, Robert 22, 23, 28, 34, 159, 160, 161,166,185 experience machine 6, 158, 187, 188 feminism 41, 55, 179, 180, 181, 183; see also eco-feminism Fox, Warwick 13, 37, 158, 165 future generations 2, 6, 7, 10, 16, 176 Gaia 64, 82, 83, 86, 87, 122, 174 Garner, Robert 141, 159, 186 Goodin, Robert 13, 22-8, 34, 46, 47, 67, 68, 112, 120, 131, 141, 161, 162, 165, 167, 170, 173, 178, 180, 181, 182, 185, 186 Gray, John 1,157,184 "green" 1-3, 5, 7, 11, 12, 17, 27, 46, 61, 88, 107, 131, 141, 144, 145, 157, 159, 186 Green, Karen 48, 49, 166

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Hayward, Tim 157, 158, 159, 160 holism 12, 36, 45, 47, 50, 116, 117, 128, 129,137,157,181 communitarian/moral 18, 41-4, 48, 56, 165 metaphysical 37-41, 43, 165 political see anti-expressivism Hume, David 43, 175 instrumentalism 1-6, 10, 12, 13, 16, 20, 23, 29-33, 44-7, 50, 61-3, 66, 72, 76, 78, 84, 86-9, 91, 93, 94, 102-4, 107, 117, 119, 120, 129-37, 140, 144-6, 148, 156-8, 162, 164, 166, 168, 171, 174, 176, 179, 181, 182, 184, 185, 186, 187 dismal 7-9, 11, 34, 62, 103, 144, 145, 147, 148, 156, 162, 176, 188 Kant, Immanuel 43, 46, 51, 54, 69, 128, 166 Korsgaard, Christine 13, 44, 45, 136, 165, 166, 167, 185 landscape reasonable vs. rational 15, 16, 61, 62, 65, 72, 76, 78, 86-90, 101, 103, 111, 129, 140, 168, 178 see also blueprinting, otherness view of nature Larmore, Charles 112, 113, 116, 127, 128, 149, 175, 180, 181, 187 Lee, Keekok 30-2, 34, 44, 162, 185 liberalism 1-5, 9, 11, 12, 15, 17, 28, 37, 55,60,67,80,91,119,127,131, 135, 139, 141, 142, 145, 146, 148-55, 157, 158, 159, 160, 162, 164, 170, 175, 179, 183, 184 comprehensive 16, 105, 113, 116, 123,126-9, 183 contractarian 10,11,91 perfectionist 16, 123-6, 129, 182, 183 political 15, 16, 55, 90-94, 96-101, 103,105,107-12,116-23, 125-9, 148, 164, 175, 176, 177, 179, 180, 181,183,186 universalist 16, 123, 124, 129, 182 Lovelock, James 174 Matthews, Freya 162 Midgley, Mary 11, 29-31, 159, 162, 176 Mill, John Stuart 14, 21, 65-8, 71, 74-7,

79, 81, 83, 88, 128, 160, 163, 170, 171, 172, 180, 181 modus vivendi 5, 103, 104, 122, 184 Moore, G. E. 47, 49, 166

Naess, Arne 13, 37, 39, 164, 165 Nagel, Thomas 13, 51-5, 136, 138, 141, 166, 167 naturalness see value, otherness view of nature, blueprinting normative individualism 1-3, 10, 89, 106, 157 Nozick, Robert 11, 142, 151, 158, 159, 161,173,186,187 otherness view of nature and anti-expressivism 99, 102, 11, 115-17,122,125 and fragility 13, 29-31, 49, 50, 52, 56, 88,116,148 and landscaping 13-16, 24-6, 28, 29, 34-6, 41, 49, 50, 53, 54, 56, 64, 65, 84-6, 90, 93, 99-102, 104, 109, 114-16, 119, 121, 139, 140, 148, 163, 165, 178, 179, 185 and nature's indifference 14, 18, 19, 24, 25, 31, 43, 70, 77, 78, 83, 88, 93, 122, 160, 173 and nature's "neutrality" 15, 99-105, 107-11,116,117,122 and nature's value 12, 13, 19-23, 28, 30, 33, 36, 44-51, 53-6, 61, 64, 78, 84, 85, 90, 93, 104, 109, 118-20, 124, 130, 136-41, 166, 181, 185 as reasonable political commitment 16, 90, 97, 98, 102, 105, 107, 109-11, 114, 116-20, 122, 123, 126, 128, 129, 146, 183 see also blueprinting Passmore, John 18, 19, 41, 77, 160, 165, 166, 170, 172, 173 Plato 14,72,79-81,173 Plumwood, Val 13, 32, 33, 38-41, 146, 162, 163, 164, 165, 167, 169, 170, 186 political neutrality 15, 16, 94-114, 116, 117, 120-26, 128, 129, 150, 160, 177, 178, 179, 180, 183 postmodernism 43, 143, 186, 187 Rawls, John 5, 10, 11, 15, 90-92, 94, 96, 103,105,107,108,110,112-15,

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INDEX 118, 119, 123, 125-9, 136, 158, 159, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 183,186,187 Raz, Joseph 182 "reasonableness" 15, 16, 89-92, 97, 99, 109-11, 114-22, 126, 140, 141, 176, 179, 180, 183, 186 Reed, Peter 121, 163, 166, 182 reformism 8, 17, 58, 142-4, 146-48, 152-5, 169 Regan, Tom 130, 138, 157, 184, 185 Roiston, Holmes 13, 24, 28, 161 Rowlands, Mark 57, 58, 105, 106, 145, 158, 167, 168, 178 Sagoff, Mark 157,159 Sale, Kirkpatrick see biorgionalism Singer, Peter 157, 159 social ecology see Bookchin, Murray sole value assumption 1, 2, 10, 89, 106, 145 speciesism 1, 2, 10, 106, 107, 157, 158 Stoicism 68-74, 168, 170, 171 Sylvan, Richard 1, 145, 157

toleration 89,113,118,122,180 value conditioned/unconditioned end 45, 56, 51, 105, 137, 185 intrinsic/extrinsic 13, 30, 44-7, 49, 51, 133, 136, 137, 158, 166, 185 and naturalness 13, 21, 22, 24-8, 46, 120, 173, 177, 185 negative/positive end 13, 20, 21, 28, 44,51,104,105,185 objective/subjective 13, 14, 29, 41, 43, 48-56, 64, 136, 138, 161, 167, 181, 184,185 see also instrumentalism, otherness view of nature wilderness 13, 34-6, 45, 49, 56, 139, 163, 172 Williams, Bernard 23, 31, 162 Wissenburg, Marcel 5, 9, 16, 130-37, 158, 159, 160, 177, 184, 185 Zeno of Citium 14, 68, 69, 71, 72, 171

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