Environmental virtue ethics
With the advance of environmental ethics and virtues since the 1970s, Thoreau has regained attention from philosophers who have been distracted by utilitarianism which is in most cases the source of the problem of the global commons such as climate change (Cafaro, 2001). Thoreau gives intrinsic value to nature in his famous Walden and lists virtues for good life such as health, freedom, joy, friendship, experience, knowledge (of oneself, nature and God), personal culture and satisfaction. Thoreau reformulates economy as contrary to classical utilitarianism in his central passage of Walden as “. . . to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. . . . I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow out of life . . . to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”11Thoreau, H. D. (1908). Walden, or, Life in the woods. London: J.M. Dent. pp. 81-82.. The direction of value is from human individuals as the source and towards wilderness as the locus of value.
Shaw (Shaw, 1997) recommends the environmental virtue ethics approach based on both the philosophical but also the scientific writings of Aldo Leopold during his profession as an ecologist. Leopold includes the existence of biotic and abiotic systems as the locus of value together with their instrumental value for humans. The land community is both the source and the locus of value depending on relations between humans and the environment as humans constitute a part of this community. To protect the harmony in the relations of humans with their biotic communities, Leopold adopts virtues based on humility and respect towards nature and recommends a paradigm shift moving bearer and locus of value from humans to the biotic community writing “When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man, nor for us to reap from it the esthetic harvest it is capable, under science, of contributing to culture.”22Leopold, Aldo (1970). A Sand County Almanac with Essays on Conservation from Round River . New York: Ballantine Books. pp. xviii–xix..
Rachel Carson includes wonder towards nature in addition to humility and is considered one of the founders of environmental activism (Stein, 2012). The problem of intangibility and difficulty to assign moral obligations towards nature is solved by Carson by observing and writing essays on the wonders of nature and disseminating these to children who would most appreciate them. The curiosity of children towards nature provides unforgettable events and puts wonder as a prior environmental virtue as Carson writes “It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with artificial things, and alienation from the sources of our strength.”33Carson, R., Kelsh, N., & Lear, L. J. (1998).The sense of wonder . New York: HarperCollins Publishers. pp. 42-43..