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On Environmental Ethics of the Tao and the Chi
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10246 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1986 |
8,455 Words |
| Author
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Chung-ying Cheng
Chung-ying Cheng is professor of philosophy at the University
of Hawaii at Manoa. |
METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Although environmental ethics is one of the applications of ethics arising from contemporary interest in applying and exploring certain ethical concepts and positions in relation to a set of concrete situations that human persons confront in their daily world, close reflection on this particular application leads to a metaphysical critique of certain basic ethical positions concerning relationships of human beings to nature, other human beings, and themselves. At the outset it must be said that ethics cannot be applied until we have a clear understanding of the underlying concepts of the human person and his/her end-values as well as a clear understanding of the objects or situations to which the applications pertain. Both understandings require a disclosure of presupposed reality and, therefore, a resolution on the order or scheme of things in which humans find themselves.
Methodologically speaking, we can treat problems of applied ethics at three levels: the metaethical level, where meanings of ethical terms are clarified; the metaphysical level, where the fundamental premises of the nature of reality are examined; and finally, the normative level, where ethical norms for actions and attitudes are formulated. Environmental ethics thus cannot be fully understood unless we deal with these three levels of the subject. This approach is particularly appropriate in view of the fact that environmental ethics is not yet a well formed system of ethical concepts and no system of norms has been fully formulated and agreed upon. This fact is not to be deplored, but welcomed, since identifying the problems, not to speak of resolving them, is itself a worthy methodological and metaphysical undertaking, with possible rewards of insight, not only into environmental-ethical issues but also into the foundations of ethics but also into the foundations of ethics in general. We may consider the three levels of understanding as dealing with the analytical, the teleological, and the deontological dimensions of environmental ethics.
ANALYTICAL CONSIDERATIONS
One central question for environmental ethics that must be raised before others concerns the meanings of the term 'environment'. Environment' is derived from environs, meaning "in circuit" or "turning around in" in Old French. The word is apparently a preposition, indicating an external relation without a context, and also certainly devoid of a relationship of organic interdependence. When we reflect on the experience of environment, however, we encounter many
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