PhD-Thesis
Summary
In contemporary environmental ethics, a fruitful debate about the
moral sense of nature is hindered because of the fact that some
underlying, more fundamental philosophical problems are not
addressed properly. One of these issues concerns the relation
between nature and morality. The question at stake is whether
nature can still serve as a normative foundation, or at least as
a guiding normative concept, in ethical debates in our
postmodern, pluralistic time.
The different answers to this question all clearly show an
ambiguity. On the one hand, there is definitely a need for a
normative concept of nature; on the other hand the project of
trying to elaborate the concept of nature as a basis for moral
orientation has become very problematic. One of the main problems
is the existence of a plurality of conflicting interpretations of
nature. This plurality cannot be reduced to one all-encompassing
concept. Nor can it simply be considered as a set of equally
valuable positions. Although all previous attempts to legitimate
absolute moral standards have turned out to be mere projections
of ethical presumptions of a certain contingent age and culture,
we do not seem to be able to fashion our lives without
presupposing such a criterion.
I believe that this moral tension has its counterpart in current
environmental philosophy. Different environmental ethicists, each
in there own way, struggle with the moral sense of nature.
Whether or not this is explicitly admitted, each normative
position within the debate turns out to rely on a particular
normative concept of nature. However, the use of any of these
particular normative interpretations cannot by legitimized.
The starting point of this inquiry is the assumption that today's
environmental crisis is intrinsically related to this ambiguity
with regard to the normative meaning of nature. This ambiguity
has a foundational character, and the conflicts and dilemmas that
stem from it cannot be solved easily. In order to clarify this
relation between the environmental crisis and the crisis in
morality, I examine the work of the late 19th century German
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
Nietzsche does not provide an answer to the
environmental ethical question of how to relate to nature.
Instead, he radicalizes and deepens this question. According to
Nietzsche, morality itself must be thought of as a particular
relation within nature: morality is the naturally occurring
'organization' of the different passions and impulses within
ourselves. When we ask how to relate to nature, morality itself
comes into question as well; and with no moral framework to be
taken for granted, there is no obvious criterion with which to
evaluate our relation to nature. In other words, Nietzsche
radicalizes the environmental ethical question in such a way that
it leads to an abysmal critique of morality. Nietzsche seems to
make things worse.
According to Nietzsche, the current ambiguity with regard to the
normative meaning of nature can be seen as a symptom of a
fundamental crisis of our culture. The core problem of this
crisis - the problem of nihilism, or, 'the death of God' - is
that we do no longer seem to have a commonly accepted criterion
that can give us some moral hold, whereas at the same time, we do
not know how to live our lives without such a criterion.
Nietzsche's own stance towards normative concepts of nature is
ambivalent as well. On the one hand, he criticizes dogmatic
naturalism, which appeals to a particular concept of nature as a
self-evident moral point of reference. According to Nietzsche,
this dogmatism implies a contingent interpretation of nature that
should be understood as a tyrannical seizure of power over
nature. On the other hand, the concept of nature plays a
normative role within Nietzsche's critique as well. He pleads for
a naturalization of man. His critique of morality and his natural
philosophy cannot be separated from each other. Despite the fact
that Nietzsche does not solve but rather deepens our current
ambiguity, Nietzsche's thinking is of special interest to us,
because he addresses - explicitly and self-critically - the
problems connected with our contemporary ambiguous attitude
towards a normative concept of nature.
In this inquiry, I analyze the relation between nature and
morality in Nietzsche's work and ask whether his philosophy can
help us clarify the problematic relationship between nature and
morality in contemporary environmental ethical debates. What
could be the significance of Nietzsche's critique of morality for
environmental ethics?
After the introduction in chapter 1, I make two outflanking
movements in chapter 2 and 3. To get an overview of the relevant
problems and themes, I discuss the secondary literature on
Nietzsche's concept of nature in chapter 2. It turns out that the
ambiguity of his concept of nature is reflected in the reception
of his work. Some scholars emphasize that Nietzsche's philosophy
is profoundly naturalistic, whereas others stress that it is
fundamentally anti-naturalistic. Naturalists underline that
nature functions as a starting point: Nietzsche brings to light
the natural basis of different phenomena and then criticizes all
those philosophies that neglect or deny this natural basis. The
anti-naturalists, on the other hand, emphasize that Nietzsche's
philosophy has a strategic character: he criticizes naturalistic
moralities, which ground moral norms in a particular
interpretation of nature, by showing that there are alternative
interpretations of nature. I want to show that Nietzsche's
philosophy is fundamentally ambivalent and therefore can be read
in both ways: this ambiguity is at the heart of his philosophy
and gives rise to its strange dynamic. Each serious
interpretation should take this ambiguity as its starting point.
In chapter 3, I give a schematic overview of the development of
Nietzsche's thinking about nature. Throughout his work, the
concept of nature plays a key role in the articulation of his
critical normative ideal. However, the tone of his thinking about
nature changes drastically throughout its genesis. In the early
work, there is a strong romantic influence on the concept of
nature. Nature appears as the underlying basis from which all
human manifestations of culture arise. According to the early
Nietzsche, we need to make contact again with this 'dionysian'
nature in order to revitalize our culture. In his middle period,
Nietzsche criticizes his earlier work as metaphysical zealotry.
He has a growing appreciation for the strictness of the
scientific method, and as a result his concept of nature changes.
Knowledge of nature is seen as an antidote against what he now
sees as the main problem: the excess of metaphysics and morality.
In the last period, Nietzsche seems to succeed in developing a
synthesis of both, appearently contradictory, accounts. On the
one hand, he criticizes the unnaturalness of metaphysics and
morality; on the other hand, he questions the idea that with
science we could relinquish the unnaturalness of morality. He
stresses that the creative aspect of morality is itself natural.
In this final period, we can see most clearly the ambiguity of
his concept of nature.
In chapter 4, I give a thorough analysis of one of the key works
of this last period: Beyond Good and Evil. I focus on
the relationship between the critique of morality and the concept
of nature in Nietzsche's doctrine of the will to power. The book
centers on the tension between two ideas. One is that of a 'true'
interpretation of nature that can function as a counterbalance
against anti-natural and tyrannical metaphysical and moral
interpretations of nature. The other is the insight that this
'pure' concept of nature itself inevitably implies yet another
interpretative appropriation of nature. The tyranny of morality
is its nature. In Nietzsche's philosophy a strange dynamic arises
from the antagonistic tension between the idea of nature as a
critical instance facing morality, and the recognition of the
fact that each concept of nature implies moral interpretation and
appropriation. To designate these antagonistic poles, I introduce
the concepts of 'wilderness' and of 'seizure of power'.
In chapter 5, I present a critique of contemporary environmental
ethics. I show how, from a Nietzschean perspective, some central
concepts in today's environmental ethics, such as 'intrinsic
value of nature' and 'participating in nature', appear as moral
interpretations of nature and thus as problematic seizures of
power over nature. From this viewpoint, environmental ethics
appears as a paradoxical undertaking, on the one hand, interested
in nature in so far as it transcends human seizures of power
(wildness as a critical concept), on the other hand restricted in
its possibility to model this interest on anything else than yet
another interpretative appropriation. That is to say, we can
only articulate the moral significance of nature 'itself' by
interpreting it, but each interpretation inevitably implies a
moment of appropriation. Tendencies in contemporary environmental
ethics to reach a canonical account of things, even sharpen this
problem. Considering the positive role of the concept of nature
in Nietzsche's moral philosophy, I give a brief outline of such
an alternative account. I end this chapter with a review of the
work of some environmental ethicists that appear to do more
justice to this profound problematic character of our
relationship with nature.
In chapter 6, I test the newly developed perspective on its
fruitfulness for the case of 'new nature development'. In
discussions about our dealings with newly developed, ecologically
reconstructed natural areas, the concept of wilderness seems to
have a particular moral meaning which is not always made
explicit. Roughly speaking, two commonly used interpretations of
wildness can be distinguished - the 'objectivist' and the
'subjectivist' interpretation - both of which are criticized here
for being unable to do justice to this moral meaning of wildness.
The objectivist conception equals wilderness with pristine,
primal nature, untouched by humans, but has trouble explaining
why we (should) want to preserve such wild nature. The second,
subjectivist wilderness conception, localizes wildness in the
subjective experience of an unstructured landscape, but does not
succeed in explaining why we are interested in the authenticity
of the experiences we have. Both of these commonly used
conceptions of wildness should be viewed as inadequate
articulations of a more basic, critical wilderness
concept, referring to something that fascinates us, but cannot be
properly appropriated because of its radical otherness. Next, I
discuss and criticize the social constructivist account of the
wilderness debate, which does not take seriously enough the
critical ethical content of the wilderness concept. I develop,
using a Nietzschean perspective, both an alternative diagnosis of
the debate and a new interpretation of the (moral sense of)
wildness as a critical concept which enables us to distinguish
between more and less violent appropriations of nature, and thus
puts a limit to human exercise of power over nature. To conclude,
I show how the contemporary, postmodern desire for wilderness -
of which the popular new nature development is only a recent
expression - can be distinguished from the romantic desire for
nature. The contemporary desire for wilderness contains a
(self)critical moment that cannot easily be translated into
ethical frameworks and that radically questions the legitimacy of
human appropriations of nature.
In this thesis, I argue that environmental ethics should
concentrate on interpreting nature as that which resists
appropriation and full identification if it wants to prevent
itself from repeating the violence towards nature that it
criticizes. Such environmental ethics will always be paradoxical.
If environmental ethics is indeed the profound problematization
of our relation to nature, then it should take a critical stance
towards morality as well. Environmental ethicists should risk
questioning the ethical stance towards nature itself, because
only then it is possible to gain access to a profound moral sense
of nature, one which calls for human self-moderation and modesty.
A full-text version is available here (Webdoc - University Library Nijmegen).
