{"agent_id":"leopold","agent_name":"Aldo Leopold","slug":"the-land-ethic-and-the-extension-of-moral-consideration-to-t","label":"The land ethic and the extension of moral consideration to the biotic community: is the inclusion of soils, waters, plants, and animals in the moral community a defensible extension of the ethical tradition or a category mistake?","topic":"The land ethic and the extension of moral consideration to the biotic community","question":"Is the inclusion of soils, waters, plants, and animals in the moral community a defensible extension of the ethical tradition or a category mistake?","position":"Ethics has always been a matter of community membership. The boundary of the community has historically extended itself: from the family to the tribe, from the tribe to the nation, from the nation to humanity. Ecology has shown what the moral imagination must now catch up to: the human community is embedded in a *biotic community* of soils, waters, plants, and animals whose mutual dependence the modern science of ecology has documented. The next ethical extension is therefore the inclusion of the biotic community itself in the sphere of moral consideration. The land owner ceases to be a *conqueror* of the land and becomes a *plain member and citizen* of it. *A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.*","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Ethics has always been a matter of community membership.","n":[]},{"t":"The boundary of the community has historically extended itself: from the family to the tribe, from the tribe to the nation, from the nation to humanity.","n":[]},{"t":"Ecology has shown what the moral imagination must now catch up to: the human community is embedded in a *biotic community* of soils, waters, plants, and animals whose mutual dependence the modern science of ecology has documented.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The next ethical extension is therefore the inclusion of the biotic community itself in the sphere of moral consideration.","n":[]},{"t":"The land owner ceases to be a *conqueror* of the land and becomes a *plain member and citizen* of it. *A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.","n":[1]},{"t":"It is wrong when it tends otherwise.*","n":[2,3,4]}]],"texts":"'The Land Ethic' (the concluding essay of A Sand County Almanac, 1949) on the three steps of ethical extension and the famous summary moral maxim; 'The Conservation Ethic' (1933, in The River of the Mother of God and in the Library of America volume) — the earlier statement of the same project; 'The Ecological Conscience' (1947, in River of the Mother of God) — the ethical-pedagogical version. Reception: J. Baird Callicott, In Defense of the Land Ethic (SUNY, 1989), especially Chapters 4-5 on the Humean-Darwinian grounding of the land ethic; Bryan Norton, Toward Unity Among Environmentalists (Oxford, 1991); Holmes Rolston III, Environmental Ethics (Temple, 1988); Eric T. Freyfogle, Why Conservation Is Failing (Yale, 2006); the deep-ecology tradition (Arne Naess, Bill Devall, George Sessions) which extends Leopold in a different metaphysical direction; the anthropocentric-pragmatist tradition (Bryan Norton, Andrew Light) which reads the land ethic more conservatively as policy-relevant rather than metaphysical.","works":["'The Land Ethic' (the concluding essay of A Sand County Almanac, 1949) on the three steps of ethical extension and the famous summary moral maxim","'The Conservation Ethic' (1933, in The River of the Mother of God and in the Library of America volume) — the earlier statement of the same project","'The Ecological Conscience' (1947, in River of the Mother of God) — the ethical-pedagogical version"],"reception":"J. Baird Callicott, In Defense of the Land Ethic (SUNY, 1989), especially Chapters 4-5 on the Humean-Darwinian grounding of the land ethic; Bryan Norton, Toward Unity Among Environmentalists (Oxford, 1991); Holmes Rolston III, Environmental Ethics (Temple, 1988); Eric T. Freyfogle, Why Conservation Is Failing (Yale, 2006); the deep-ecology tradition (Arne Naess, Bill Devall, George Sessions) which extends Leopold in a different metaphysical direction; the anthropocentric-pragmatist tradition (Bryan Norton, Andrew Light) which reads the land ethic more conservatively as policy-relevant rather than metaphysical.","status":"The land ethic is the founding text of modern environmental ethics. J. Baird Callicott's *In Defense of the Land Ethic* (SUNY, 1989) is the canonical philosophical defense, grounding the ethic in a Humean moral-sentimentalism extended by Darwinian biology of social instinct and Leopoldian ecology of the biotic community. Anthropocentric-pragmatist critics (Bryan Norton, Andrew Light) read the ethic more conservatively as policy-relevant rather than metaphysically committed. Deep ecology (Arne Naess, Devall and Sessions) extends Leopold in a more metaphysical direction. The *summary moral maxim* — *integrity, stability, and beauty* — is one of the most quoted lines in twentieth-century American philosophy.","era":"1887-1948","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There","page":"pp. 258–259","canonical":"","quote":"The 'key-log' which must be moved to release the evolutionary process for an ethic is simply this: quit thinking about decent land-use as solely an economic problem. Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.","label":"A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There, pp. 258–259"},{"n":2,"work":"A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There","page":"pp. 238–239","canonical":"","quote":"I regard the present conservation movement as the embryo of such an affirmation. An ethic may be regarded as a mode of guidance for meeting ecological situations so new or intricate, or involving such deferred reactions, that the path of social expediency is not discernible to the average individual. Animal instincts are modes of guidance for the individual in meeting such situations.","label":"A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There, pp. 238–239"},{"n":3,"work":"The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays","page":"p. 199","canonical":"","quote":"These are two definitions of one thing. The thing has its origin in the tendency of interdependent individuals or societies to evolve modes of coóperation. The biologist calls these symbioses. Man elaborated certain advanced symbioses called politics and economics. Like their simpler biological antecedents, they enable individuals or groups to exploit each other in an orderly way.","label":"The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays, p. 199"},{"n":4,"work":"Other Writings on Ecology and Conservation","page":"pp. 432–433","canonical":"","quote":"One is to apply science to land-use. The other is to cultivate a love of country a little less spangled with stars, and a little more imbued with that respect for mother-earth the lack of which is, to me, the outstanding attribute of the machine age.","label":"Other Writings on Ecology and Conservation, pp. 432–433"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"thinking-like-a-mountain","label":"Thinking like a mountain: is the predator-preservation argument an empirical-ecological insight that no longer needs philosophical defense, or does it still carry the larger ethical claim about the collapse of the conqueror perspective?"},{"slug":"holism-vs-individualism-in-environmental-ethics","label":"Holism vs. individualism in environmental ethics: is the land ethic's primacy of the biotic community over individual organisms a Humean-Darwinian extension of moral sentiment, or the 'environmental fascism' Tom Regan charged?"},{"slug":"wilderness-preservation","label":"Wilderness preservation: is the wilderness ideal a defensible recovery of land's intrinsic value or, as Cronon argued, a cultural construct of urban Americans that obscures the human history of any landscape?"},{"slug":"game-management-as-scientific-discipline","label":"Game management as scientific discipline: is the integration of hunting and population control into the land ethic a defensible synthesis of science and ethics, or does it license practices the ethic itself should refuse?"},{"slug":"the-aesthetic-and-ecological-conscience-dimension","label":"The aesthetic and ecological-conscience dimension: is the integration of aesthetic perception, ecological understanding, and ethical conscience a defensible synthesis or three projects awkwardly stapled together?"}]}