Roger J. H. King raises a question that seems to have no answer in his essay “How to Construe Nature: Environmental Ethics and the Interpretation of Nature”. He asks the reader, “Does Nature have moral value?”. The answer to this query must be yes because it is the entire reason for environmental ethics. This field would not exist without this belief that nature is something more than an economic entity (though this is often what we see nature as). Though this idea is central to the field, it proves extremely hard to prove and pin down. There are two approaches to proving that Nature has moral value. One, the foundationalist approach, is not a viable option because it assumes that Nature is a timeless thing of itself. In the present day, Nature is an “artifact of human cultural life” and cannot be separated out from that.
The second requires you to contextualize Nature and place it in to historical and cultural context before establishing its value. King uses the Puritans as an example and details how everyone approaches Nature through their own lens, which colors their perception of Nature. There are three specific values that people imagine nature having: religious, aesthetic, or economic value. This is a shift from the normal arguments of philosophers concerned with environmental ethics. Most picture nature as a victim of human actions. However nature can never be seen as apart from the emotional, technological, religious, and economic spheres we place it in.
An essential question to ask was raised from our previous readings: what is nature? This definition is vital in establishing whether Nature has a moral value, and from our discussion in class this question seems to be unanswerable. For one, there is no consensus on how people view Nature. Also, there is question as to whether there is even such a thing as an “objective Nature”. King seems to almost define this for us, but skirts this definition and asks instead how we must understand how we got to our present conception of Nature. He suggests we view nature in frameworks such as the eco-feminist, Marxist, or Deep Ecology views. By stating that we must place our definition in a framework distorts the definition of Nature from the beginning because we are already approaching it with a lens. And the lens that many western people have taken, an economic or capitalist lens, seems to be the problem in the first place. This view is what has stripped Nature of its morality and inherent value because we look to it solely for material things and monetary value.
This argument is extremely difficult, as King admits towards the end of his essay because there is nothing stable or free from influence on which to pin a definition of Nature. This relates directly to the problems with creating support for the environmental movement. The theory behind environmental ethics is that Nature has value in and of itself. If we cannot define nature this becomes difficult. Also, it seems impossible to show how Nature has value itself outside of the various contexts or frameworks we are used to seeing it in.
King seems to admit that it is almost futile to convince people of Natures inherent value and remedy our aggression towards nature because it requires a complete change in world view. Believing that Nature is valuable separate from what monetary value we place upon it, whether it is lumber, livestock, or simply a vacation spot, requires a view of Nature not through an economic lens, which is exactly how society depicts Nature for us currently. It seems to be a noble goal to change our perception of Nature to having moral value itself, but King does not seem to know where to point us for a solution. He points out that the most effective figures in the environmentalist tradition have been literary not philosophical writers. This results from their use of metonymy and making it easier to associate morals with Nature through ideas or narratives associated with certain places. These writers present “one avenue by which Nature can be reinvested with a subjectivity denied to it by current exploitive interpretations”, (King 357). Pieces written by these authors do not seem to be the answer to a shift in our cultural mindset, though they do put the respect of Nature in the back of our minds. In order to completely change people’s views towards the environment I feel like it is vital for King to establish a more concrete definition of Nature that is accessible to the public.
To end, I just wanted to mention how I thought that King very accurately pinpointed problems with America’s view toward Nature. We make it a commodity countless ways, but one that stuck out with me was our practice of selecting pieces of land to preserve for our personal enjoyment, so we can vacation to a seemingly pristing place. This can be viewed as not an act on Nature’s behalf because it has moral value itself, but simply because we want to reap economic benefit from the novelty of having a quiet place to get away from every day life. The fact that we pay to go to remote areas to recuperate from our stressful lives proves how disconnected we are from Nature the majority of the time. I wonder if our efforts to establish National Parks and wilderness areas are results of the same mindset. To reap some economic or psychological benefit from Nature, not preserving Nature for Nature’s sake.
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