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MSc Wijsbegeerte van een Bepaald
Wetenschapsgebied
Nature/Society in Epistemology and Morality:
On the Problem of Dualistic Thinking in the Age of Climate
Change
By
Dick Spruitenburg
Student no: 10470913
Submitted: 27-7-19
Wordcount: 17896
Supervisor:
Second reader:
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“The number 2 is a very dangerous number […] Attempts to divide anything into two ought to be regarded with much suspicion”
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I.
Contents
II. Summary ... 4
III. Introduction - the Eroding Modern Dualism ... 5
1. Latour’s Nature/Society argument ... 8
Latour’s modern constitution ... 8
Defining Nature and Society ... 10
Nature ... 10
Society ... 11
2. Dualistic thinking in morality – Subject/Object and the question of moral considerability ... 13
Moral considerability in deontology ... 13
Nature/Society and Kant ... 14
Deontological arguments against anthropocentrism ... 15
Sentient ethics ... 16
life centered ethics... 19
Conclusion on deontological ethics and the Nature/Society split ... 20
Moral considerability in consequentialism ... 21
Consequentialist ethics: Bentham, Singer, and Nature/Society ... 21
Conclusion on Consequentialism and the Nature/Society split... 24
3. Historical and philosophical background of Nature/Society ... 26
The Roots of dualistic thinking – the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Significance of the Wall ... 26
The roots of dualistic thinking – The Story of Genisis and the Hebrew view of Nature ... 27
The Roots of dualistic thinking – the Greeks ... 29
4. Nature/Society and our dealing with hybrid ecological crises ... 31
introduction ... 31
Nature/Society and the political & natural philosophy of climate change denial ... 32
Climate change denial and the definition of Nature ... 33
Dualistic epistemology and climate change denial ... 35
Conclusion on the epistemology of climate change denial ... 36
The scope of moral reasoning in the anthropocene ... 37
Moral thinking about climate change ... 37
Dualistic thinking in morality ... 39
Conclusion on dualistic thinking in morality ... 41
5. Conclusion ... 43
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II.
Summary
This thesis deals with the moral thinking about large scale crises such as climate change and the loss of biodiversity. These crises present us with a new scale of moral thinking, where our moral compass is challenged due to the disconnection between decision-maker, act, and consequences. Both in time and space, the effects of our actions are removed from us. The scope of our moral thinking is also challenged because not only are we to morally consider humans, animals, or plant life. We are to look holistically at the habitats we affect, and actions that we used to see as amoral. Areas where we previously saw no moral subject, will have to become moralized.
The analytic a priori dualistic distinction humans have long made between Nature as a special realm of objects on the one hand, and Society as the realm of the subject on the other, is actively problematizing this extension of our moral thinking and will have to be abandoned if it is to succeed. It does so in two ways. First, proper moral thinking about large geophysical crises such as climate change requires either an epistemological trust in the scientists who understand it, or a widespread proper scientific understanding of the crisis. The latter is difficult and the former has been specifically targeted by climate change deniers who employ the familiarity of our dualistic thinking about Nature and Society to sow doubt. They capitalize on the idea that the realm of Nature and the realm of Society are separate, and should be regarded as such. Secondly, proper moral thinking about large crises such as climate changes also requires an extension of what we consider to be a moral subject. The moral choices we face impact all life on earth. Efforts of a non-anthropocentric moral political framework have been made in the literature, however they do not question the Nature/Society dualism, which makes their application to socionatural hybrids difficult. Prime example of this can be seen in Animal Right Theory, where Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) provided a life-centered moral-political frame for domesticated (social) animals, wild (natural) animals, and the added extra category of ‘liminal animals’ that are neither wild nor domesticated. They themselves make the analogy between these animals and the most vulnerable legal persons: the stateless person or the refugee. This last category is necessary because the previous two aren’t properly mutually exclusive and hence require more attention to be made all-encompassing.
But how useful is this dualistic distinction then? We can already see that the two categories are not mutually exclusive, and that the scale of the climate crises transcends them – as there is less and less ‘pristine’ Nature untouched by humans left. Maintain such a dualistic view about Nature and Society in our moral
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thinking, then, has become obsolete and is dragging our moral thinking about large scale hybrid crises such as climate change down. Luckily these categories are a priori analytic separations, interpretations of the world rather than an empirical observation, and they can therefore be rethought. This is to be an important task if we are to succeed in proper moral thinking and moral practice on subjects such as climate change.
III.
Introduction - the Eroding Modern Dualism
In recent years the works of Bruno Latour have focused on the social and political implications of climate change. In his last book Latour went as far as stating that: “We can understand nothing about the politics of the last 50 years if we do not put the question of climate change and its denial front and center” (Latour, 2018, p. 2). His political analysis of climate change, best put forward in his last two books (Latour, 2017; 2018) is a continuation of his earlier critiques of modernism, especially his seminal book We’ve never been modern (1993). Latour’s critique generally focusses on forms of dualistic thinking, which he sees as a central attribute of modernist thinking. For example, he extensively criticizes the dualism of Nature and Society in We’ve never been modern (1993), or the political dualism between the Local and the Global in his last book Down to Earth (2018). His argumentation generally present a case as to why such dualistic thinking is not or no longer possible.
His central point is that the dualism between Nature and Society is the outcome of a particular political-scientific history, not an empirical observation. Dualistic thinking about a Nature full of passive objects and a Society full of active subjects, then, causes problems when political alliances between such actors in Society and objects in Nature are attempted, or when dealing with hybrid forms that can be classified neither as belonging to Society or to Nature. According to Latour, this is the difficulty environmental politics runs into, specifically in addressing climate change. Anthropogenic climate change clashes with dualistic thinking about Nature and Society in two ways. First, it constitutes the perfect hybrid of a socionatural problem: a problem that establishes itself in Nature (through what we name and study as ‘natural disasters’, such as droughts, famines, floods, hurricanes etc.), but that has a large social causation in modern industrial development. Attempts to deal with this problem politically run into problems, because the dualistic concept of Nature is very difficult to politicize: it has been designed precisely to limit human action from objective Nature which is outside off human influences. He notes that: "Every time we want to count on the power to act of other actors, we’re going to encounter the same objection: ‘Don’t even
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think about it, these are mere objects, they cannot react’ the way Descartes said of animals that they cannot suffer” (Latour, 2018, p. 65).
As a self-described anthropologist of science it may not be surprising that Latour focusses his analysis almost exclusively on the (history of the) epistemological problems resulting from such dualistic thinking. He makes an effective connection between epistemology and social questions of politics, as he notes that: “questions of epistemology are also questions of social order” (Latour, 1993, p. 16). So Latour is well aware how the dualistic forms of thought, about Nature and Society, has affected our way of viewing the world and the place humanity takes in it, even going so far as attempting to sketch a new non-dualistic way of viewing the world in order to deal with problems of climate change.
It is surprising, then, that Latour’s work is so limited from the point of view of ethics, which he seldomly engages with explicitly. Other authors have also pointed out this underdeveloped angle to Latour’s work. Waelbers & Dorstewitz, for example, draw on the similarities between Latour’s and John Dewey’s critiques of modernism, as the latter did have elaborate writings on morality, in order to enrich Latour’s Actor Network Theory (ANT) with a moral framework. In making his argument on the possibility of political alliances between subjects and objects Latour did refer to Descartes’s view that animals were mere objects unable to suffer, but he did not take this fruitful opportunity to engage further with the moral literature on animals rights, the role of the Nature/Society dualism in ethics, and the implications for environmental ethics in the age of climate change.
This thesis aims to take up this opportunity to explore the moral implications of Latour’s work. The goal of this thesis is twofold. First I aim to show the close connection between Latour’s Nature/Society dualism and the history of moral philosophy. I find that, just like Latour’s preferred field of epistemology, the field of moral philosophy shows ample influences of dualistic thinking about Nature and Society that can be questioned. Secondly, I deal with the pressing question of environmental ethics in the anthropocene. Current changes to the global climate, the loss of biodiversity, and human interference in the nitrogen cycle are three instances in which humanity has breached the geophysical boundaries of our planetary system (Rockström, Steffen, & Foley, 2009), with severe consequences for all life on earth. In this discussion I show how Latour’s argument about the problems of dualistic thinking about Nature and Society also have implications for environmental ethics. Specifically, I argue that this dualistic thinking is at the root of our inability to properly think about the moral implications of the ongoing and impending environmental crises. Not only is the concept of Nature difficult to politicize, as Latour proposes, it’s even more difficult to moralize it. Given the tremendous implications of these crises for current and future life on earth this
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inability to rely on our moral compass is deeply troubling. Luckily dualistic thinking about Nature and Society is a simply a prior assumption, and providing better alternatives can help overcome this challenge and recalibrate our moral compass for the planetary scale of the Anthropocene.
This thesis will proceed as follows. In the subsequent chapter I provide a brief summary of Latour’s relevant works in order to establish what is meant exactly with the Nature/Society dualism, and explain the influences it has on epistemology and the relation between politics and the sciences. After this chapter two delves into the history of modern moral philosophy with the aim of answering the question as to how dualistic thinking about Nature and Society has influences our moral thinking. In this section I deal both with deontological and consequentialist ethics, and identify dualistic influences in both these schools of moral thinking. Chapter Three concerns the longer unmodern history of the Nature/Society dualism. I draw from the work of John Dewey (2012) to show how far back the roots of dualistic thinking about Nature and Society go, and emphasize how these roots have both a moral and epistemological side, adding to my case for a moral extension to Latour’s work. Having established the basis of both Latour’s work and the modern and unmodern history of the Nature/Society dualism I turn to the implications of dualistic thinking about Nature and Society when dealing with climate change. This chapter starts with an overview of Latour’s political epistemological analysis of climate change and its denial, in order to clearly establish the relation between the Nature/Society dualism and the hybrid problem of climate change. Then I turn to the field of environmental ethics to argue that the hybrid scope and scale of climate change inhibits our moral intuitions from properly assessing the risks and implications. Chapter five deals with recent intellectual developments that make a promising start in reconsidering the dualistic assumption on Nature and Society, and provides a research agenda for a non-dualistic environmental ethics.
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1. Latour’s Nature/Society argument
Latour’s modern constitution
In We’ve never been modern (1993) Latour starts his analysis of the distinction between Nature and Society with the history of the seventeenth century debate on the distribution of scientific and political power between natural philosopher Robert Boyle and political philosopher Thomas Hobbes. For this analysis he draws heavily on the book on this specific debate by Shapin and Schaffer (1985). The debate between Boyle and Hobbes, Latour argues, is an important and exemplary historical case because it took a prominent place during the forming years of modernism and shows exactly how dualistic thinking about Nature and Society has shaped our modern world. Both Latour and Shapin & Shaffer take the position that “questions of epistemology are also questions of social order” (Latour, 1993, p. 16). The central argument on this epistemological debate between these two philosophers proposes that it was this debate that signaled the separation of political power of representation of subjects and scientific power of representation of objects. Latour calls this separation between scientific and political power the “modern constitution” (Latour, 1993, p. 13). In the subsequent section I will first outline Latour’s argument on this debate, after which I will show how this argument is crucial for my argument on the moral and political problems of the anthropocene (as I discuss them further in chapter 4).
Latour’s modern constitution is meant to describe practically the separation of powers between the realm of Nature and the realm of Society. He draws on Shapin and Schaffer’s book largely because they manage to represent both Boyle’s political philosophy, and vice versa Hobbes’ views on natural philosophy, and how these two aspects of these authors’ work are intertwined. Both Boyle and Hobbes have a scientific and a philosophical side to their work, and understanding this is crucial to understand how the epistemological debate between these two philosophers can form the basis for Latour’s modern constitution on the separation of political and scientific power in our society.
The disagreement between Boyle and Hobbes focused on what one could expect to gain from experimentation, from scientific and political reasoning. Practically, this debate revolved around Boyle’s invention of the air pump, used to study the properties of atmospheric pressure and vacuums, and his methods of scientific argumentation. Boyle followed the principles of experimental science Francis Bacon outlined in his Novum Organum, and used an experimental setup in combination with a set of credible trustworthy and knowledgeable witnesses who can attest to the matters of fact that the experiment is to show. Boyle combined his invention that was to create a certain phenomenon with the powers of
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observation of credible witnesses who could attest to the outcomes of the experiments. This combination as a radically novel way of establishing scientific authority, breaking with the tradition of a priori reasoning and abstract logic as the way of establishing truths.
Thomas Hobbes rejected this method of proof, as he believed that one cannot know the actual causes of natural phenomena. In his book De Homine Hobbes urged that: “nothing can be demonstrated by physics without something also being demonstrated a priori” (Hobbes, Man and Citizen: De Homine and De Cive, 1991). In this way, Hobbes emphasized the scholastic tradition of a-priori principles as central to guiding and interpreting any natural phenomenon created in experiments. This epistemological position in Hobbes’ philosophy, Latour argues, is closely intertwined with his political philosophy as exposed in Leviathan (Hobbes, 1660). Hobbes equates knowledge with power. In his seminal work on the Body Politic, Leviathan, Hobbes makes his argument from humanity living in the state of Nature – the war of all against all (bellum omnium contra omnes) – and the necessity of a social contract and the establishment of a singular sovereign authority. Latour connects this to the epistemological question:
“some gentlemen proclaim the right to have an independent opinion, in a closed space, the laboratory, over which the State has no control. And when these troublemakers find themselves in agreement, it is not on the basis of a mathematical demonstration that everyone would be compelled to accept, but on the basis of experiments observed by the deceptive senses, experiments that remain inexplicable and inconclusive.” (p. 20)
For Hobbes, then, this epistemological method of proof is asking for social troubles while his social contract theory set out to establish, above everything, unity in government. If this was not established, the state of nature – war of all against all – was inevitable. In this frame, the methods of proof Boyle implemented, could only sow divisions and civil war.
This debate on the role of the experimental method is important for the history of the Nature/Society dualism because this debate leads to the separation between science and politics based on the division between scientific representation of objects in Nature and political representation of subjects in Society. Latour argues that the division Hobbes and Boyle are creating (between the realm of science and politics) both gain their authority from the exclusion from the other. Through political representation the Sovereign speaks for the citizens, and through scientific representation the laboratory scientist speaks for his objects of Nature: “The former translate their principals, who cannot all speak at once; the latter translate their constituents, who are mute from birth” (Latour, 1993, p. 29). It is this separation of scientific authority and
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political authority that, Latour argued, entrenched the separation between Nature and Society into our modern thinking and our modern world.
Defining Nature and Society
Before I can make an argument about the problems of the anthropocene, how they cross the Nature/Society divide, and how dualistic assumptions in our thinking interfere with our ability to respond to these problems effectively it is important to show how dualistic thinking manifests itself and where it comes from historically. In the subsequent section I will first clarify the definitions of ‘Nature’ and ‘Society’ as I will use it throughout this theses. In defining these terms it will already become clear that these definitions are often antonyms of each other, using the one to point to the exclusion of the other and vice versa. Moreover, the connections between the Nature/Society dualism and other dualistic distinctions such as that between object and subject or mind and body will also become clear.
Nature
This section deals with the definition of Nature. In discussing the definition of Nature I will use throughout this thesis I will also aim to show how differences in this definition affect our view of the world and the place humanity takes in it. I will argue here that there are two general definitions of Nature that clash in the politics and moral thinking of the anthropocene; a dualistic and a non-dualistic definition of Nature.
The dualistic definition of Nature
The dualistic definition of Nature poses that what we understand with Nature is everything in the material world that has not been made by or influences by human actions. In many ways it is synonymous with ‘the wild’, in the sense that it conjures up an image of a world without human civilization. This definition strongly separates humans from the rest of the material world, and it is likely to be the most generally intended definition of the word ‘Nature’ as it is used in everyday life.
The non-dualistic definition of Nature
The non-dualistic definition of Nature takes Nature to be everything in the material world that is governed by – but also includes – the fundamental forces of physics. This definition is much broader, and more importantly includes humans and human society within its frame. Whereas the dualistic definition is likely the most intended definition in everyday speech, this definition is the leading definition in the sciences.
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Society
In this section I aim to provide a working definition for Society, or the realm of the Social, as I will use it throughout this essay as the dualistic counterpart of Nature. This is in many ways the other side of the coin discussed in the previous section where I provided the two definitions (dualistic and non-dualistic) of Nature. For this section I largely draw on literature from environmental sociology, as this discipline has focused their efforts on environment-society relationships with a focus on the Social. An important point in this discussion is that these attempts to keep the Social out of the study of Nature has been mirrored in a movement to keep Nature out of the study of the Social, leading to a debate that is essentially symmetrical.
Providing a definition of the Social seems intuitively more straight forward. In thinking about the Social there is no straight-forward analogy with the dualistic/non-dualistic definition of Nature. Both our day-to-day definition and the definition used in the social sciences seem to define Society as the realm of human behavioral interaction at various scales and in various areas. But the sociological literature on relationships between the natural environment and Society has seen a discussion on the possibility of a non-dualistic definition of Society that takes into account the role certain physical factors play. From this perspective the sociological literature can be divided into four different categories: analytic separation, analytic primacy, balanced dualism, and conjoint constitution (Freudenburg, Frickel, & Gramling, 1995).
The first category of sociological literature places material or environmental influences strictly outside the realm of social, human, or symbolic influences. This is a strongly dualistic approach to (environmental) sociology, taking all physical and environmental influences to be external. The second category takes this separation between environmental-physical influences and social, human, and symbolic influences, and proposes to emphasize one over the other. Prime example of this line of reasoning is Durkheim’s argument that social facts should be explained only in terms of other social facts (Durkheim, 1933 [1893]). The third category of a balanced dualism attempts to overcome the debate posed by the second category of analytic primacy, arguing both realms have a significant role. The last category is the most novel, and most interesting for this thesis: conjoint constitution. This term was presented by Freudenburg, Frickel, and Gramling (1995) in order to start thinking about a sociology beyond the Nature/Society dualism. They note that when thinking about ‘environment’ and ‘society’, sociologists have both been helped and hindered by the hidden assumption of the separation between these two concepts. They work from this point to acknowledge that: “what [has] commonly been taken to be "physical facts" are likely in many cases to have been shaped strongly by social construction processes, while at the same time, even what appear to be
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"strictly social" phenomena are likely to have been shaped in important ff often overlooked ways by the fact that social behaviors often respond to stimuli and constraints from the biophysical world” (p. 366). Their analysis focusses on the concept of ‘natural resources’ as a hybrid term for something found in the biophysical environment that has a certain socioeconomic value. The fact that we can call it a resource, they argue, are both social and natural.
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2. Dualistic thinking in morality – Subject/Object and the question of
moral considerability
Latour’s central argument shows how the distinction between the Nature and Society closely follows the lines of the object/subject dualism, where the traditional line of thinking is that the realm of Nature is full of objects, and the realm of Society full of subjects. In this section I aim to answer the question how this dualism has affects our moral philosophies and moral judgements. This discussion focusses on the question of moral considerability – what is to be the scope of moral thinking – and the role of the subject/object definition in the application of morality. This section forms the basis for the argument in section 4 on the problems the fundamental assumption of a dualistic distinction between Nature and Society causes in the anthropocene. In that chapter I will argue that the ecological crises present moral questions at a scale that is completely novel and that crosses the Nature/Society divide in a way we haven’t experienced before. This, then, plays a large part in our inability to think effectively about the problems we’re facing. This section consists of two subsections. The first focusses on deontological ethics and how this school of morality deals with the question of moral considerability. In the second chapter I do the same for consequentialist ethics, and make a comparative analysis between these two schools of ethics with regard to the Nature/Society dualism.
Moral considerability in deontology
This section discusses the role of the Nature/Society split in duty ethics, with the aim of answering the question how the dualism has influenced deontological approaches to ethics. This discussion starts with a brief look at the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant, who exemplifies the argument for a dualistic separation between humans and other animals. This dualism is central to the question of moral considerability, but also returns in Kant’s teleological view of nature and his views on empirical science. After discussing Kant’s philosophy, I turn to modern-day environmental ethics by discussing Donaldson & Kymlicka’s Zoopolis (2011), where they provide an argument against anthropocentrism in deontological ethics, and in favor of an extension of moral duties towards animals. Lastly I turn to the most far-reaching scope of deontological ethics by discussion Taylor’s argument for the property of being alive as sufficient for being morally considerable (Taylor, 1981). I conclude that the deontological approach to ethics has shifted the definition of the subject to include animals, and in doing so incorporated them in the socio-political sphere of Society. However, the Nature/Society dualism can still be recognized in the distinction between wild and domesticated animals, as these are considered separately in the deontological argument for moral and political animal rights.
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Nature/Society and Kant
In deontological ethics the divide between Nature and Society can be most clearly seen in the foundational philosophy of Emanuel Kant. The most important feature of his philosophy that regards the separation between Nature and Society is the question of moral considerability: how far does the scope of our moral duties reach? Kant has a clear position of human exceptionality with regards to the reach of moral scope. For Kant the defining characteristic that makes humans, and only humans, moral beings is by virtue of their rational personhood. In Anthropology from a practical point of view Kant phrases this stance of human exceptionality as:
“The fact that the human being can have the ‘I’ in his representations raises him infinitely above all
other living beings on earth. Because of this he is a person, and by virtue of the unity of consciousness
through all changes that happen to him, one and the same person - i.e., through rank and dignity an
entirely different being from things, such as irrational animals, with which one can do as one likes.”
(Kant, 2006 [1785], p. 127).
This idea that rationality is the defining attribute that makes humans moral beings finds its origins in the idea that it is with reason alone that one can properly judge right from wrong, and that it is this capacity of the subject that morally restricts the actions of other subjects. In Metaphysics of morals Kant maintains that:
“As far as reason alone can judge, a human being has duties only to human beings (himself and other men), since his duty to any subject is moral constraint by that subject’s will […] Man can therefore have no duty to any beings other than men; and if he thinks he has such duties, it is because of an amphiboly in his concepts of reflection, and his supposed duty to other beings is only a duty to himself” (Kant, 1991 [1797], p. 237).
Kant therefore holds the position that it is perfectly possible that we ought to morally limit our treatment of animals in some way. These moral obligations, however, are not to the non-human animals themselves. Instead, such duties derive either from a duty to ourselves or from our duties to other humans. Thus, Kant places the (rational) moral subject firmly in human Society, separated from all other animals in Nature – any duties towards them are only derived through the effect on the moral human subject. This exceptionalism of humans and their capacity for reason also plays an important role in Kant’s discussion on the purposiveness of nature, which presents his views on the other side of the dualism. He presents his ideas of the purposiveness of nature in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement. He discusses the idea that
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Nature is open to the activity of reflecting judgment by humans, and how this faculty of Nature is the source of all our attempts to interpret it:
“Our classification of natural things into a hierarchy of genera and species; the construction of explanatory scientific theories in which more specific natural laws are represented as falling under higher and more general laws; the representation of nature as empirically lawlike überhaupt; and the formation of empirical concepts überhaupt” (Ginsborg, 2014).
Kant’s considerations clearly show the relation between the question of moral considerability and both the subject/object and Nature/Society dualism. It is the separation between passive objects without a will in Nature and the active subjects with the capacity to reason in Society that defines the realm of morality. This definition puts humans in the extraordinary position of being the only animal that is rational and moral, hence distinguishing them from all other species. This position of exceptionality is also seen in Kant’s general view on the relation humans have with nature. Where Kant’s moral philosophy reflects the Nature/Society dualism from the subjective Social field, his discussion on the purposiveness of nature shows the same idea from the other side of the dualism. In this discussion Kant presents his views on Nature and its relation with our cognitive abilities, and, more important for the discussion on the Nature/Society dualism, the relation between Nature and the empirical sciences. This shows the completeness of Kant’s thinking around the Nature/Society dualism, where moral reasoning and empirical science are neatly separated to the different realms of the a priori distinction between Nature and Society.
Deontological arguments against anthropocentrism
A discussion of Kant is the obvious first part of a discussion on deontological ethics. But more recently deontological arguments have been made that depart from Kant’s position that moral duties are only owed to humans. For completeness I will present two prominent such arguments made by Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) and Taylor (1981). Both arguments extend the realm of duty ethics to a different extend. The argument made by the former authors aims to include animals in our realm of moral considerations, and Taylor argues for an even broader conception of ethics where the faculty of being alive comes to constitute the defining moral attribute. In the last section of this discussion on deontological ethics and the question of moral considerability I will overview the role of the Nature/society dualism in this discussion. The subsequent section provides a similar discussion for consequentialist ethics, and includes a critical comparative analysis of the two schools.
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Sentient ethics
In their 2011 book Zoopolis Donaldson and Kymlicka present their deontological case for animal rights, which is grounded both in deontological moral theory and political theory of human rights. The goal of their argument is the development of a new moral framework that connects the treatment of animals directly to fundamental principles underlying liberal-democratic justice and human rights (p.3). The most important difference with Kant’s moral theory is the defining characteristic that makes the subject a moral subject, and thus marks the border of the realm of moral considerability. For Kant this was the capacity for rationality, which he attributes exclusively to humans. Kymlicka and Donaldson shift this definition of the subject, arguing that “Animals do not exist to serve human ends: animals are not servants or slaves of human beings, but have their own moral significance, their own subjective existence, which must be respected” (p. 4). Their definition of the subject seems to be inspired by utilitarian thinking (which is the subject of the next section) as they write that: “Animals are not machines-they are living beings who suffer, and so their suffering has moral significance” (p. 3).
But Donaldson and Kymlicka do not just shift the definition of the moral subject to include animals. They also take the necessary subsequent step by arguing for the inclusion of animals into the sphere of politics by drawing on contemporary theories of citizenship. They recognize that humans have organized themselves in the Social in the form of political nation states that form the ethical communities where the citizens of the shared territory have special obligations towards each other. In line with this, they argue that a special citizenship should be extended to animals to ensure their rights in the political community – that they see as a mix of human and non-human animals. Also notable for a discussion on the Nature/Society dualism is the place they give to wild animals, which they argue form their own sovereign communities that deserve our protection from colonization, exploitation and other threats to their self-determination (p. 170-171). Donaldson and Kymlicka thus shift the definition of the moral subject to include animals, and add the subsequent conclusion that animals therefore are part of our Social realm and therefore deserve political rights. In doing so the authors shift the concept of the Nature/Society dualism, but they do not question it. The realm of Nature is shifted to become the realm of ‘wild’ animals “living relatively free of direct human management and meeting their own needs for food, shelter, and social structure”(p. 156), and the realm of the Social is to include all humans and domesticated animals. The realm of the ‘wild’ is given a specific moral and political status in order to incorporate these non-Social animals into the moral realm (as their sentience requires).
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However, this shift of the dualism causes a new problem the authors need to address in their last chapter before they can conclude their philosophical moral framework: “This domestic/wild dichotomy ignores the vast numbers of wild animals who live amongst us, even in the heart of the city: squirrels, raccoons, rats, starlings, sparrows, gulls, peregrine falcons, and mice, just to name a few” (p. 210). In this second-to-last chapter they invent the novel third category that presents an in between status for the “liminal animals” that live among us but cannot be said to be domesticated nor fully wild, in order to make their moral framework of animal rights exhaustive of all sentient life forms. Where domesticated animals are humans’ co-citizens in Society, and the wild animals autonomous sovereigns in their territory of Nature, creatures that inhabit the space between these two categories. It is this third category, I will argue, that is the most interesting development in Animal Rights Theory – and it will serve as the basis for my discussion on the morality of the ecological crises in chapter four.
The authors start their chapter on the moral and political position of liminal animals with the observation that their difficult position is caused by the Nature/Society dualism. Our dualistic thinking about our own constructed urban environment as the direct opposite of the natural wild environment places these animals in a in-between space, where they become invisible in our everyday worldview. And because we view the urban constructed environment as ‘ours’ and the wild natural environment without humans as belonging to animals (‘theirs’), these in-between animals often become “stigmatized as aliens or invaders who wrongly trespass on human territory, and who have no right to be there” (p. 213). The authors pick up on the incompleteness in animal rights theories caused by the Nature/Society dichotomy, noting that animal rights theorists have always focused on the liberation of domesticated animals and the protection of wild animals from human interferences:
“what counts as 'human interference' with pigeons, squirrels, and house sparrows? Is it interference to put up netting to prevent pigeons from roosting in a building, or to seal up a hole through which mice enter a basement? […] Whatever our obligations towards liminal animals, they cannot be captured by a principle of non-interference” (214)
Because of this, ethical obligations towards liminal animals cannot be given shape giving them the same status as the ‘wild’ animals as autonomous sovereign communities. However, these animals can also not be considered co-citizens like ‘our’ domesticated animals. These domesticated animals, the authors argue, are only co-citizens in our society given their domesticated status – with them we are able to cooperate, communicate, and build trust. These are the fundamental preconditions for relations of citizenship, that lack in liminal animals.
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Because of this alleged impossibility of liminal animal citizenship Donaldson and Kymlicka need to find a new status they can give to these liminal animals. For this, they offer the category of denizenship – a relational form that is governed by norms of justice, “but it is a looser sort of relationship, less intimate or cooperative, and therefore characterized by a reduced set of rights and responsibilities” (p. 214). However, the authors also quickly note that this relationship is theoretically undeveloped in the human case, and that an argument by analogy, like they did for human citizenship and animal citizenship, isn’t as easy. Instead, the examples they offer of denizenship in human society all seem to be groups marginalized in human society: refugees, seasonal migrant workers, illegal immigrants, and isolationist communities (p. 215). The authors continue to make a sketch of what this third in-between category might look like, an animal category that acknowledges the dependence of these animals on our human-constructed environment while also recognizing their independence from our society.
The discussion on liminal animals, then, is one of the most interesting development in animal right theory so far. Specifically because it deals with the Nature/Society dualism directly and because it already indicates a larger problem with it: the dualistic thinking creates the need for in-between categories, or what critic of (among other things) the Nature/Society dualism Bruno Latour (Latour, 1993) called the creation of Hybrids. Donaldson and Kymlicka note of the problems this dualistic thinking causes among humans. Often the bureaucratic idea of all citizens neatly within the boundaries of their own state clashes with the reality that states, borders, and categories of citizenship often cut through and clash with the people’s daily reality that is much less rigid and more organic. “Yet, like liminal animals, human beings have stubbornly refused to fit into these standardized state-designed categories” (p. 231). Taking note of the problems statelessness can cause in humans, the authors move to make a third category for liminal animals to prevent these animals from going unprotected completely. However, this solution to the problem keeps the Nature/Society dualism intact. The authors make critical notes on dualistic thinking, but do not take this logic through to the final conclusion: that there is no a priori distinction between Nature and Society, between ‘wild’ and domesticated, between stateless and citizen. This will be the basis of my critique of moral reasoning in the anthropocene in chapter 4. I will make the argument that it is these dualistic categories, and our seemingly eternal tendency to reproduce them in one form or another, that is at the root of many moral problems regarding the ecological crises in the anthropocene. However, for now I will continue with my discussion on deontological ethics by discussing life centered ethics.
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life centered ethics
But more far-reaching deontological arguments regarding the question of moral considerability have been made as well. These move the subject of moral consideration not based on the property of sentience, but on the faculty of being alive. Taylor (1981) aims to build such a life-centered theory of environmental ethics. He contrasts such a system of ethics with the anthropocentric views that hold that human actions affecting the environment and non-human animals are to be judged as right or wrong by virtue of their effect on humans, directly or indirectly (i.e. Kant’s line of reasoning). Instead, Taylor provides a three-part foundational structure for such a moral philosophy that holds that humans “are morally bound (other things being equal) to protect or promote [the good of wild plants and animals] for their sake” and that these obligations are “entirely additional to and independent of the obligations we owe to our fellow humans” (p. 198). Two elements of Taylor’s philosophy are interesting for the discussion of the Nature/Society dualism: his concept of ‘respect for nature’, and his view on and definition of Nature and ‘the natural world’.
Taylor promotes the adaption of a ultimate moral attitude towards nature, which he calls “respect for nature” (p. 202). This attitude is similar to the respect of persons in human ethics, and ascertains that the basic interests of an individual subject has intrinsic value that morally affects our actions towards it. In this sense, the attitude of ‘respect for nature’ is separate and not necessarily coinciding with a love of or interest in nature. It is a basic moral attitude that moral agents should have by virtue of being moral agents: being a moral agent is to have respect for the individual good of humans and of other life forms found in nature, as both these agents have an inherent moral worth.
This definition of a moral agent already reflects Taylor’s argument on an accompanying belief system that makes up the way of conceiving “the natural world”, and the place humans take in it, that makes this moral attitude possible. Taylor takes a biocentric outlook that views the earth’s biosphere as “a complex but unified web of interconnected organisms, objects and events” in which humans are but recently arrived creatures that entered “a home that has been the residence of others for hundreds of millions of years, a home that must now be shared by all of us together” (p. 207). In this way, Taylor moves away from most forms of human exceptionalism. However, while he makes a convincing argument for the evolutionary perspective on the place of humans on this planet and the moral attitude we should have towards other lifeforms, Taylor maintains the distinction between Nature and Society in the sense that he argues that “Our duties with respect to the “world” of nature would be seen as making prima facie claims upon us to be balanced against our duties with respect to the “world” of human civilization” (p. 198) and that these
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duties are “entirely additional to and independent of the obligations we owe to our fellow humans” (p. 198).
Our moral considerations are shifted away from being centered around the good of humans alone, in order to include the good of the other forms of life on this planet, as Taylor thinks that there is no good reason to maintain the single human point of view where we only judge our actions from the perspective of our own good. But this does not go as far as questioning the dualism between Nature and Society, even in is extensive argument against the philosophical history of human superiority. Because of this Taylor makes the choice to disregard a discussion on the intermediary forms of life (both domesticated animals and what Donaldson and Kymlicka called liminal animals: the city pigeons, rats etc.):
“I am not denying that other living things, whose genetic origin and environmental conditions have been produced, controlled, and manipulated by humans for human ends, do have a good of their own in the same sense as do wild plants and animals. It is not my purpose in this essay, however, to set out or defend the principles that should guide our conduct with regard to their good. It is only insofar as their production and use by humans have good or ill effects upon natural ecosystems and their wild inhabitants that the ethics of respect for nature comes into play.” (p. 200)
This is a shame, as the category of liminal animals is precisely the most difficult and interesting case for the discussion on the role of the Nature/Society dichotomy, and a broader discussion on environmental ethics in the Anthropocene. Donaldson and Kymlicka
Conclusion on deontological ethics and the Nature/Society split
The aim of this section of this thesis was to investigate the role the Nature/Society dualism plays in deontological ethics. This discussion started with the duty ethics of Kant, where it became clear that the dualism plays an important role in the question of moral considerability as it is essential for the definition of a moral subject. For Kant the divining characteristic of a moral being is its capacity to reason, as that is the capacity with which we judge right from wrong. This is then also the attribute he uses to distinguish humans from all other forms of life as being the sole moral being living in Society. More current deontological environmental ethicists have chosen different attributed to define the scope of moral reasoning with the aim of also including other lifeforms. However, in doing so, they did not question the Nature/Society dualism. Instead, the authors I discussed moved Nature into the Social realm by creating a place for it in the moral and political order of humans and prescribing a certain form of autonomy or sovereignty to wild animals. Interestingly, the status of liminal animals, that are neither wild nor
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domesticated, provide an interesting angle to a theory that would discard the Nature/Society duality altogether. In chapter 4 I will attempt to form an argument in favor of such a theory in relation to our moral obligations in the age of climate change.
Moral considerability in consequentialism
The previous section discussed the role of the Nature/Society split in duty ethics, with the aim of answering the question how the dualism has influenced deontological approaches to ethics. It became clear that the dualism is reflected in the central question of moral considerability of how do we define the moral subject. The discussion on Kant’s ethics also briefly turned towards Kant’s views on the empirical sciences, indicating a consistent Nature/Society duality in his works. This also showed how closely connected the dualism is to the way humans view their relationship to the world, as it defines our own ‘habitat’ in contrast with the rest of the world. In this section I will attempt a similar discussion for the consequentialist school of ethics. This section looks at the utilitarian philosophies of Jeremy Bentham and Peter Singer, focusing on how these philosophers deal with the question of moral considerability and animal rights. I conclude by contrasting the utilitarian approach to environmental and animal ethics by contrasting it with the previous discussion on deontology. I argue that both schools of thought, in differing ways and at different times, have shifted the subject/object dualism in order to include elements of Nature (i.e. non-human animals) into our realm of moral considerations. Especially utilitarian thinking made progress in moving animals from the categorization of being objects towards some form of subjectivity, because the central moral question of utilitarianism makes this reclassification quite obvious. However, while both schools in this way questioned the classification of animals into the realm of objects (Nature) – both maintain the duality between Nature and Society, and did not question it. In the previous chapter on deontological ethics we saw this in the discussion on the partition between wild, domesticated and liminal animals. In this chapter we will see that it is again in thinking about such a distinction between wild and domesticated animals that the Nature/Society dualism is maintained.
Consequentialist ethics: Bentham, Singer, and Nature/Society
Bentham opens his Principles of Morals and Legislation with a poetic sentence that basically entails the basis of the philosophy he goes on to argue for: “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do” (Bentham, 1789, p. 6). For Bentham these two forces, pain and pleasure, are the ultimate guide to be used to decide approvingly or disapprovingly over human actions. This
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consequentialist approach to ethics provides a method of ethical consideration for both individuals and collectives (i.e. governments). Utilitarian ethics was more quick in extending moral considerations towards non-human animals. For Bentham there are two types of agents that are under the influence of man’s direction that susceptible to happiness and suffering: other humans and other animals. He explicitly notes how the latter should deserve more attention than had thus far been given to them: “on account of their interests having been neglected by the insensibility of the ancient jurists, [animals] stand degraded into the
class of things” (p. 143). Bentham recognizes that animals have thus far been considered objects, and
objects do not derive moral consideration. But for him the question of moral considerability is different than for Kant: “The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?” (Bentham, 1789, p. 144). Bentham’s placing of the experience of pain and pleasure into the center of moral reasoning changes the moral subject, because it is evident that animals can experience pain and pleasure and are therefore not mere objects.
But such an answer to the question of moral considerability does not say anything about the outcome of such a consideration. In his essay on the equality of animals Peter Singer notes that: “The basic principle of equality, I shall argue, is equality of consideration; and equal consideration for different beings may lead to different treatment and different rights”. (Singer, All Animals Are Equal, 1974, p. 104). In a footnote under the discussion on the subjective status of animals Bentham defends to eating of meat using a utilitarian argument. Bentham states that there is a good reason for allowing ourselves to eat the non-human animals we like to eat, because we humans gain pleasure from it, while they (the animal we eat) are no worse off as: “They have none of those long-protracted anticipations of future misery that we have; and the death they suffer at our hands usually is and always could be speedier and thus less painful than what would await them in the inevitable course of nature.” (p. 144). So Bentham’s argument for the moral status of animals remains limited to inflicting needless suffering, while making an argument allowing killing of animals for nutritional satisfaction.
Like in the discussion on deontological ethics we can see again how the question of moral considerability leads us to questions on our treatment of animals, and a new distinction between ‘wild’ and ‘domesticated’ animals that draws heavily on our ideas on Nature and Society. For Bentham, the killing of an animal by a human causes less suffering and pain in the animal than the death that usually awaits them at the end of the ‘inevitable course of nature’. But what conception does Bentham have of this ‘Natural’ life? It seems like he speaks about animals in the wild, where it is true that animals end their lives horribly. But is this
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concept useful at all when talking about domesticated animals living in conditions made by humans – a ‘Social’ life? Or is this entire distinction only creating problems, not solving them? I will argue for the latter. It is with this different conception of an animal’s life that utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer recently came to a different conclusion regarding the eating of animals in his essay all animals are equal (1974). He presents a double argument against the eating of meat. First, he notes that there is no necessity for eating animals, as our nutritional needs could be easily (and more efficiently, in terms production) be met using a vegetarian diet (p. 108). Therefore, it is clear that the eating of meat is only to satisfy a particular culinary taste, and Singer notes that the only conclusion we can draw from this is that we regard the life and well-being of the animals we eat as subordinate to that culinary taste. Adding to this, Singer notes that our collective treatment of animals is perhaps an even clearer indication of our superiority over them than our preparedness to kill them:
“In order to have meat on the table at a price that people can afford, our society tolerates methods of meat production that confine sentient animals in cramped, unsuitable conditions for the entire durations of their lives. Animals are treated like machines that convert fodder into flesh” (p.108) Singer’s conception of the life of these animals under moral consideration is completely different from Bentham’s conception. For the latter even domesticated animals were relatively close to the lives they would live in Nature. However, as industrial development proceeded and fundamentally altered the way and scale of the ways in which we keep animals this conception shifted.
Take the life of a modern-day domesticated chicken. More specifically a chicken that is genetically bred to gain weight as quickly as possible, and is kept in the most economically cost-effective way of housing chickens. The genetic traits that this chicken was bred to have are good for farmers and consumers, as the bird grows quickly using less fodder. In Singer’s terms: this chicken-machine is a more efficient version of the original. However, these traits also make it impossible for the chicken to ever enjoy the independent life of a ‘wild’ bird, as she will likely die due to health problems even if she is spared by the butcher. Such a chicken clearly has no ‘natural’ life and so Bentham’s argument is of no use to us.
It is because of these difficulties, caused by the intermittent status of these animals between Nature and Society, that Taylor’s respect for nature had to explicitly put these cases aside in order to only deal with ‘wild’ animals fully in the realm of Nature (1981, p. 200) and Donaldson and Kymlicka had to add the extra category for liminal animals to fully incorporate all life-forms into their moral and political system. However, Peter Singer’s utilitarian argument deals with this by simply rejecting Bentham’s argument that
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the animal does not become worse off. Regarding the appalling treatment of animals in the meat industry Singer notes: “none of these practices cater for anything more than 'our pleasures of taste, our practice of rearing and killing other animals in order to eat them is a clear instance of the sacrifice of the most important interests of other beings in order to satisfy trivial interests of our own.” (p. 109). He makes, however, no mention of wild animals, nor does he refer to any form of ‘Nature’ throughout his argument; for him the ‘natural’ or ‘social’ life of animals is irrelevant – they are have a sentient life and are able to suffer and therefore deserve not to be killed or treated badly.
Conclusion on Consequentialism and the Nature/Society split
Utilitarian ethics places the ability to experience pleasure and pain as the two central forces that can instruct us about what we ought to do or not. In the discussion on duty ethics we saw that Kant did not recognize the subjectivity of animals, and that they therefore only enter our moral considerations indirectly through how our dealing with animals affects other humans. Later duty ethicists did argue for such a shift, leading to the duty ethics of animal rights. Utilitarian philosophy was quicker to establish animals rights, as founding philosopher Bentham already promoted these ideas. Where Kant placed rationality as the defining moral consideration, Bentham took the ability to enjoy pleasure and suffer pain as the essential measure for moral behavior. With this regard utilitarian thinking was one step ahead in finding a moral principle that was not anthropocentric. Their central moral question, how does this affect the total pleasure-over-pain ratio, made it clear that non-human animals deserve moral consideration because we observe that they can experience pain. This shift in the definition of the subject is different from the one made in deontological ethics as it reflects a complete shift in the view of the status of animals in the Nature/Society duality. I argued that Bentham’s argument for morally allowing the killing of non-human animals for human consumption follows from a specific view on what the ‘natural life’ and the ‘social life’ of these animals would be. In Bentham’s time, the scale at which the animals killed for human consumption were farmed was still small enough that Bentham’s argument that these animals were better-off living among humans (where they were fed and cared for before suffering a shift slaughter) than they would be out in the wild of Nature (where sickness, predators, or simple dumb luck in combination with infections could easily lead to a long road of suffering towards death) could seem reasonable. But the animals under consideration in Peter Singer’s argument are in a completely different situation. When we compare Bentham’s argument with Peter Singer’s utilitarian argument for animals rights the notable difference is the changed conception of both the ‘natural life’ and ‘social life’ of these animals. Singer describes the various cruelties animals suffer in order to make the large scale industrial production of cheap meat
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possible, from pigs in cages to the cutting-off of chicken beaks to prevent them from picking at each other from being stacked too close together. When considering this ‘social life’ of animals, Bentham’s argument can make no sense, and thus the utilitarian case for animal rights is expanded. This concept of (industrial) scale in relation to our ideas about Nature/Society and moral obligations will return in chapter 4 regarding our moral obligations with regard to the ecological crises of the anthropocene, where I will argue that a similar shift in scale has taken place, breaching geophysical and biological boundaries and crossing the Nature/Society dualism, and that this requires a change in our moral thinking in order to make effective moral reasoning about the crises in the anthropocene possible.
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3. Historical and philosophical background of Nature/Society
So far I showed how the Nature/Society dualism is closely connected to the object/subject duality, and the role this duality plays in the definition of the moral subject. This dualistic thinking is central to modern philosophy. Their origins, however, are far from modern and some philosophers have long challenged these dualisms. In this section I provide an overview of the philosophical history of the Nature/Society dualism with the aim of showing where it comes from, how it developed, and how it came to take up such a central role in the modern European worldviews. This discussion on the origins of dualistic thinking starts far back in history, with the myth of Gilgamesh and the story of Genisis, where the foundational roots of dualistic thinking can already be seen. Secondly, I turn to the role of the ancient Greeks in the development of dualistic thinking and the birth of the forms of rational discourse that came to shape modern European philosophy.
The Roots of dualistic thinking – the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Significance of the
Wall
Taking the epic of Gilgamesh as the starting point of the history of the Nature/Society dualism may seem odd at first. The dualism is so central to modernistic thought that such a dive into such a decidedly non-modern artifact of cultural literature seems absurd. However, as the recent critics of non-modernism and its dualisms have noted, these dualisms are essentially non-modern artifacts that have survived the renaissance revolution against pre-modern modes of thinking (Dewey, Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy, 2012; Latour, 1993). Recently, Czech economic historian Tomas Sedlacek, in his aptly named book The Economic of Good and Evil (2011), analyzed several major historical texts and literary artifacts for their relevance for the history of economic thought and science. His major general point is that these stories were created to satisfy the same human urge modern scientific thought is trying to satisfy: the urge to understand the world around us and to make sense of our lives and our existence. To this end, these ancient stories and myths form the starting point of humanities attempts to understand the world around us, and it is exactly here where one can already identify the roots of the dualistic thinking that has become so central to European modernism. In his book of meta-economics Sedlacek sets out to tell the larger history of economics (p.8), and formulates the aim of this chapter generally quite well: “History of thought helps us to get rid of the intellectual brainwashing of the age, to see through the intellectual fashion of the day, and to take a couple of steps back” (2011, p. 4). In the next section I will summarize the relevant content of the epic of Gilgamesh, Sedlacek’s analysis of the economic meaning of this tale, and the relation to the Nature/Society dualism.
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Gilgamesh is the demigod superhuman ruler of the city of Uruk. The tale centers around Gilgamesh’s efforts to construct a great wall around the city. For this effort he draws on all the men in the city, pushing them to increase their efficiency and performance at all times, and in doing so preventing them from seeing their families. Sedlacek notes that this aspect of the tale already tells a story of economic efficiency and what can be considered productive and non-productive activities. Gilgamesh is pushing his people to work mindlessly, all in the effort to construct the great wall, marking the border of his city. The symbolic significance of this demarcation of the city in contrast with the outside is important, as it signifies a contrast between Society inside the walls and wild Nature outside.
This significance is further strengthened by the introduction of the character of Enkidu, a wild and hairy man who lives amongst the animals of the wild, who is send by the gods to stop Gilgamesh’s efforts. However, Enkidu ends up befriending Gilgamesh, losing his wild traits (being domesticated by the city, in essence), and together they set out into the wild where they kill the great monster that guards the surrounding (sacred) cedar forest in order to take the valuable timber, making it a part of the construction of the city.
One of the points Sedlacek is trying to make with his analysis of this epic – the one that is relevant for this thesis – is that these stories contain apt illustrations of the idea that nature is literally outside the walls of civilization (p. 37-38). This tells an important story about humanity’s place in the world, that is no longer ‘outside’ in Nature but ‘inside’ in Society – a transition that is personified in the character of Enkidu. As a species we’ve moved from the wild natural environment to our own domesticated constructed environment that is both practically and symbolically marked with a great architectural feat. This construction of our own environment contains a certain drive for independence from nature, crafting a safe and constant habitat ‘inside’ where we are protected from the uncertainties of the wild: “Our menu is no longer dependent on harvests, the presence of wild game, or the seasons. We have managed to maintain a constant temperature inside our dwellings, regardless of whether there is piercing cold or burning summer.” (p. 29). Nature, then, becomes a dangerous place where one goes to gather resources to support life inside the city, which is our true ‘natural’ habitat. The flipside of this independence from Nature, however, is an increased dependence on each other: on Society.
The roots of dualistic thinking – The Story of Genisis and the Hebrew view of
Nature
In the previous section I discussed the Epic of Gilgamesh, and aimed to show how this old myth already reflects dualistic thinking about Nature and Society. It also became clear that such thinking about the
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relation between humans and nature had a close connection to the self-image of humans; how they regard themselves and their relation to nature. Central to these themes is the role of education, emancipation, and the origins of moral thinking. Towards the end of his discussion, Sedlacek concludes from his analysis of the Epic tale of Gilgamesh that for the Sumerians nature had to be transformed and domesticated: “Our nature is insufficient, bad, evil, and good (humane) occurs only after emancipation from nature (from naturalness), through culturing and education” (p. 32). This view of Nature and the place of humans in it is then contrasted with that of the Hebrews, which Sedlacek argues is substantially different. In this section I will take Sedlacek’s account of the Hebrew view of Nature to see how it influenced the Nature/Society dualism. I will argue that Sedlacek is correct when he contrasts the positive Sumerian view of Society with the positive Hebrew view of Nature, it is clear that both views support a dualistic thinking, albeit in a different way.
Sedlacek’s account of the Hebrew view of Nature draws primarily on the old testament and the story of Genesis. He notes how “Man (humanity) is created in nature, in a garden. Man was supposed to care for the Garden of Eden and live in harmony with nature and the animals” (p. 32). However, it is by the action of man eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – and thus gaining a sense of morality that the other animals in the garden did not have – that they are expelled from the Garden (an action that consequently in Christian thought became the ‘original sin’ of mankind, leading to longstanding theological debates on the sinful nature of man).
In this way, the story of genesis tells a dualistic story about the relation between man and nature, Nature and Society. It is especially notable how the story places the knowledge of good and evil at the heart of the separation between humanity and the rest of Nature (or, in this context, creation). It was the knowledge of good and evil that led humanity to be expelled humanity from Nature, gaining a sense of nakedness and searching for shelter and protection or the birth of the Social. Therefore the Hebrew and Christian story of creation provides us with a completely opposite view of Society and Nature in relation to human morality. In the epic of Gilgamesh the good, moral, and orderly was found inside the city walls where education and emancipation differentiated humanity from the rest of Nature. For the Hebrews, which Sedlacek emphasizes was originally a nomadic people that did not settle inside city walls, evil was rather found inside the city walls and it was in Nature – originally the garden of Eden – where harmony, order, and the good could be found.
One could easily say that these are but two old stories, handed down throughout the ages, but what is there relevance for our current day? The point of these stories was to interpret the world around us and
