Ethical considerations are also needed to solve environmental problems, in addition to economic and legal measures.
 

 

With further damage to the ecological environment and deepening environmental catastrophes, people are becoming increasingly aware that in addition to economic and legal measures, ethical considerations are also needed to solve environmental problems. Studies on environmental ethics began in Europe and America in the 1960s. Several scholars have shared their opinions about current research  on this discipline.

Bringing philosophy into the wild
Environmental ethics have expanded the focus of moral studies from human relationships to the relationship between humans and nature. This discipline studies the moral attitude and behaviors that humans have and how they affect other creatures and nature.

“Environmental ethics have essentially changed the situation in which philosophy and ethics only focus on and are only responsible for mankind. Animals and plants have been included in the scope of moral consideration,” said Li Peichao, deputy director of the Institute of Ethics Studies, Hunan Normal University.
 

“Environmental ethics are the ethics of responsibility. They propose that humans should have proper respect and responsibility for life and nature,” said Yu Mouchang, a research fellow from the Institute of Philosophy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
 

Sun Daojin, a philosophy professor in the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Southwest University, said that environmental ethics advocate “bringing philosophy into the wild,” and expanding the border of the “moral community,” which is a theoretical innovation involving a “paradigm shift” from traditional ethics, and a guide to “pioneering thinking” in the construction of ecological civilization.
 

Open environmental ethics
Before the 1970s, studies of environmental ethics were mainly  anthropocentric, and under such a framework, issues of this subject were mostly discussed by Western ethicists. As the global environmental crisis deepens, this standpoint has been challenged by biocentrism.
 

Some scholars say that there was a paradoxical debate between anthropocentrism and biocentrism. “It is very difficult to make a reasonable choice between human and non-human interests,” said Sun.
 

Li says that the primary cause of the debate is the difference in understanding the connotations of anthropocentrism, and if such semantic misunderstandings are removed, the values and morals of “anthropocentrism” and “biocentrism” for humans  and the environment are basically the same. They both take into account human existence and destiny, interests and needs, value the human living environment, and worry about the prospects and future destiny of humans.
 

Yang Tongjin, a professor of the School of Public Policy and Management, Guangxi University, says that the natural environment can be protected from the “root” of values only when environmental protection is regarded as an internal factor for human “self-improvement,” and the moral status of a natural being is recognized. For this reason, he claimed that China’s environmental ethics should be open to all. He also suggested that schools of environmental ethics should be integrated.
 

Prioritizing innovations
China’s environmental ethics studies began with the translation of Western publications at the end of the 1970s. Today, scholars focus more on moral philosophy. Some suggest that applied ethics, which are closely related to moral practice in real society and inseparable from the legal establishment, should receive attention.

Yu suggested that a set of environmental ethical standards, ethical principles and codes of conduct, which are harmonious and consistent with the social situation, should be made through studies into different stakeholders in society, ethical attitudes of all kinds of people and ethical behaviors.

Demands for the localization of environmental ethics in many countries have become stronger since the 1980s in that the relationship between humans and nature is affected by specific social environments, cultural traditions, institutional arrangements and other social factors.
 

 “The top priority of environmental ethics research in China is forming an academic discourse system with Chinese characteristics and bringing new ideas to the Western environmental ethics system,” Sun said, adding that there has to be a reform in the view of humanity, ontology, epistemology, axiology and methodology in particular, and that this reform should take   the national conditions and needs of China as its foundation, while exploring and establishing Marxist environmental ethics.
 

Li said that if environmental ethics are to achieve practical effectiveness in China, they have to take root in China, which means they must be capable of fitting into the Chinese culture and meet Chinese people’s value needs at the same time.
 

With regard to the future development of environmental ethics in China, Li said that proper values regarding nature should be established. He argued in favor of  forming a supporting system for China’s environmental ethics, actively absorbing the positive aspects of foreign environmental ethics and enhancing the practical effectiveness of China’s environmental ethics.

 

 

 

Ming Haiying is a reporter at the Chinese Social Sciences Today.