Environmental ethics
Environmental ethics is an academic subfield of philosophy concerned with normative and evaluative propositions about the world of nature and, perhaps more generally, the moral fabric of relations between human beings and the world we occupy. In the future, human destiny may depend on our ethics. In particular, biotechnology and expansion in space can transform life, raising profound questions. Guidance may be found in Life-centered ethics, as biotic ethics that value the basic patterns of organic gene/protein life, and as panbiotic ethics that always seek to expand life. These life-centered principles can be based on scientific insights into the unique place of life in nature, and the biological unity of all life. Belonging to life then implies a human purpose: to safeguard and propagate life. The future of all life may be in our hands, and it can depend on our guiding ethics whether life will fulfil its full potentials. Given such profound powers, life-centered ethics can best secure future generations.
The goal of mastering the discipline
- To give an idea of environmental ethics as an inseparable and a concept of the ecological part of universal ethics.
- To show the increasing role of environmental ethics in regulating the interaction between society and nature.
-To illustrate the possibilities of applying its principles and methods in certain branches of biological nature management
- To point out the existence of important ethical restrictions in the exploitation of natural resources, including in terms of possible negative consequences.
- To create the preconditions for the harmonious development of ecologists and the education of their ecological worldview.
The skills you get
- Using of ethical standards by assessing of consequences in professional activity
- The ability to evaluate environmental activities from an ethical point of view
- The knowledge of basic ethical principles in ecology, anthropogenic threats to the environment and methods of its protection
- The promotion of changing in the attitude of society towards nature in order to prevent environmental disasters
Topics covered
- Introduction to Environmental Ethics. The origins of anthropocentrism
- Biocentrism and Ecocentrism. General ethical principles
- System of rules and standards of environmental ethics
- Industrial activity
- Ethical treatment of animals
- Human ecology and bioethics
- Nature as a recreational resource
- Environmental ethics in nature conservation practice
- Space activity
- Environmental ethics in the context of sustainable development
- Environmental movement
When instructed
- 4th year, 1st semester
List of references and sourses
1. Gardiner St. M., Thompson A. The Oxford Handbook Of Environmental Ethics: Oxford University Press, 2017. — 617 p.
2. Taback H., Ramanan R. Environmental Ethics and Sustainability: A Casebook for Environmental Professionals: CRC Press, 2014. — 264 p.
3. O'Brien K., Clair A.L.St., Kristoffersen B. (Eds.) Climate Change, Ethics and Human Security: Cambridge University Press, UK, 2010. — 247 p.
4. Resnik David B. Environmental Health Ethics: Cambridge University Press, 2012. — 319 p.
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