PHI 1102 Lecture 11: Environmental Ethics I
11 Jul 2016
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Document Summary
Ulysses returns home after the trojan war and hangs 12 slave girls he suspects of misbehaving while he was away. Not a matter of lacking concepts of right and wrong: he considered the girls property, to be disposed of as he chose. Ethical structure of ulysses" society did not give rights to human chattel . Ecologically, a limitation on freedom of action in the struggle for existence. Philosophically, a differentiation of social from anti-social conduct. Origin of ethics: in the tendency of interdependent individuals or groups to evolve modes of cooperation - ecologically: symbioses, politics and economics: advanced symbioses - original free-for-all competition replaced, in part, by cooperative mechanism with ethical content. Extending ethical rules to our relation to the land is the next logical step in our ethical development: we no longer allow treating other people as mere property, to be used/abused/ destroyed as the owner sees t. Monday, march 7, 2016: same should go for nature.
