Environmental ethics

Environmental ethics is the ethical part of discipline that deals with the normative correct and morally verantwortbaren dealing with the outside, not human nature. Within the environmental ethics can be distinguished between the philosophical and ethical, the political and legal level and the practical individual case work. The intellectual debate on the philosophical- ethical level leads to different conservation reasons that specify which values ​​the human actions towards nature -oriented. None of the conclusions of conservation reasons are compelling, since they are obvious compared to its alternatives. This conservation reasons are not enough to solve the environmental problems, and from them can not direct nature conservation objectives are derived. However, they offer citizens in practice the necessary justifications and insights that can be discussed and implemented on the political-legal and casuistic level of the individual case. However, the environmental ethics replaces any social and active movements and would not this be tantamount to an isolated special discourse.

Environmental ethics is a relatively new field of applied ethics. Therefore, some terms are still used in different ways. Often, environmental ethics, for example, also known as ecological ethics or erroneously as an environmental philosophy. Important parts of the environment ethics are

• The animal ethics, which deals with the moral verantwortbaren handling of animals;
• The nature of ethics that comes to dealing with biological entities such as populations, species, habitats, ecosystems or landscapes;
• Environmental ethics in the narrower sense, which deals with the use of natural resources and environmental media (eg, water, soil, climate, genetic diversity).

A central question of environmental ethics is what beings or things one eigenvalue should be attached to which beings are therefore to account for its own sake. For this purpose, there are different positions. Basically, one can distinguish between anthropocentrism and physiocentrism. In the former, only the man is relevant as beings; physiocentrism in the more natural is included. During the so -called Pathocentrism all pain-sensitive beings ascribe an intrinsic value, biocentrism and ecocentrism or holism go beyond that. In biocentrism all living creatures are considered morally valuable addition in holism even non- individual entities of nature (such as species, ecosystems or the biosphere in its entirety).

Although the environmental ethics can not provide a final proof of the intrinsic value of nature, but it offers a number of different arguments for conserving nature and the environment. Last but not least here obligations are to name towards future generations and natural aesthetic arguments. It differs from the environmental philosophy so far, but as this only provides explanatory models no policy guidelines.