Philosophica 39,1987 (1), pp.

59-76
ETHICAL PRINCIPLES VERSUS GUIDING PRINCIPLES
IN ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS.
Dieter Birnbacher
1. Introduction: ethical principles versus guiding principles
What is environmental ethics about? Whereas environmental ethi-
cists agree that environmental ethics is about the rules governing
man's relation to nature (or rather his natural environment, i.e.
those parts of nature immediately surrounding him), not very much
thought has so far been given to the question what kinds of rules
these are, and what the environmental ethicist is exactly supposed
to do about them. One thing he is supposed to do about them is
analysis, the clarification of relevant norms and criteria expli-
citly propounded, and the explication of implicit normative pre-
suppositions in the views of environmentalists and other parti-
cipants in the ecologic debate. Another task which he is supposed
to set -himself to is the normative one of proposing and justifying
moral principles destined to regulate man's behaviour towards
nature. What he is expected to do, and what he sees himself -to be
doing most of the time, is to put forward moral standards for
man's dealings with nature which reflect the newly awakened ecolo-
gical sensibilities and which are candidates for replacing some of
the traditional principles that have lead into ecologic disaster.
Naturally, these alternative standards need not necessarily in-
volve a complete abandoning of traditional moral principles. In
many cases it will be perfectly sufficient for the environmental
ethicist to retain the old principles and only to reformulate, in
view of the new problems, some of the axiomata media and the more
concrete directives following. from them.
Analysis and justification of ethical norms are central to
environmental ethics as they are to other pursuits in the field of
applied ethics. There is, however, a third task, easily overlooked
because superficially similar to the second one: the proposal
and justification of guiding principles. Guiding principles are
different from ethical principles because their functions are
different. While ethical principles of environmental ethics can be
expected to tell us what is morally right and what is morally
60 DIETER BIRNBACHER
wrong in our dealings with animals, plants, and nature at large,
guiding principles are expected to offer orientation and motiva-
tion in the endeavor to put to concrete action what is entailed by
the ethical principles. The primary function of ethical principles
is to show, by ethical reasoning, what is right and what is wrong.
The primary function of guiding principles is to insure t h a ~ what
is right is not only verbally recognized but is actually done.
Whereas the central role of ethical principles is the justifica-
tion, as ethically adequate,. and the criticism, as ethically ina-
dequate, of human behavior, the central role of guiding principles
is to motivate people to do what they themselves recognize to be
right by orienting their attitudes, and the understanding they
have of their role in the direction indicated by the ethical prin-
ciples. Evidently, guiding principles are called for only when the
relevant ethical principles are themselves unsuited to fulfill
this task. This will often be the case, however, especially when
the ethical principles are of a rather abstract kind, or when they
make high demands on people's selflessness.
Guiding principles, then, are deliberately functional, not
unlike ideologies (in one sense of the term), or legal norms.
Their merits and demerits are correspondingly to be judged not
only on criteria related to their content, but also on pragmatic
criteria such as practicability, simplicity, and emotional appeal.
Inevitably there will be differences between the content of the
ethical principles and the content of the guiding principles des-
tined to support their observance, sometimes of a quite radical
sort. It cannot be taken for granted that the best guiding princi-
ples to support broadly anthropocentric aims, such as safeguarding
the intactness of the natural environment for future generations,
will also be of an anthropocentric sort. It might well turn out
that the best option is a guiding principle of a decidedly non-
anthropocentric kind, requiring the individual to care for natural
objects for their own sakes. The thesis put forward by Robert
Spaemann
1
and (more tentatively) by Laurence H. Trib&, that some
anthropocentric ecological aims might only be attained if non-
anthropocentric guiding principles are adopted and followed, can-
not be dismissed as absurdly out of hand. True, there may be some
disingenuousness in such assertions, attempting, as they do, to
make non-anthropocentric principles palatable to an ingrainedly
anthropocentric political culture. Be that as it may, there is
nevertheless no absurdity in t!le supposition that, as a matter of
fact, only the widespread adoption of non-anthropocentric guiding
prindples is capable of effecting the changes in outlook and
policy required if widely shared anthropocentric aims of conser-
vation and preservation are to be attained. In fact, something
ETHICAL VS. GUIDING PRINCIPLES 61
will be said later on in favor of its being a genuine possibility.
As a point of environmental metaethics, "the distinction between
ethical principles an guiding principles seems to me important in
more than one respect. First it may prove to be of some help in
the proper understanding of what the one or the other environ-
mental ethicist has to say. Most environmental ethicists address
themselves to the ethical principle issue, but the few that are
primarily interested in the exposition of guiding principles are
frequently mistaken to belong to the same lot and unfairly criti-
cized for the Q.oubtful ethical credentials of their otherwise
quite attractive principles. Secondly it supports the suspicion
that the divisions between the different approaches in environmen-
tal ethics - anthropocentric, pathocentric, biocentric, holistic -
are perhaps not as rigid as they seem at first sight. There is a
chance, rather, that the divisions between environmental ethicists
are at least partly due not to any substantial disagreement con-
cerning ethical fundamentals but to different metaethical concep-
tions of what they are doing.
What follows should be read in the light of the metaethical
distinction outlined. The thesis for which I shall argue is two-
fold: first, that as far as the ethical principles of environ-
mental ethics are concerned, there are good reasons to prefer
pathocentrism as a general approach to both anthropocentrism and
biocentrism; second that "as far as guiding principles are con-
cerned, there are equally good reasons to prefer biocentrism (at
least a weak variant of it) to both anthropocentrism and pa-
thocentrism. The method followed by my defence of pathocentrism as
a general approach to environmental ethical principles could be
described as comparative. It proceeds through three steps: by
arguing, first, that pathocentrism is preferable to anthropo-
centrism; by arguing, second, that holism (in one if its senses)
is preferable to biocentrism; and arguing, third, that patho-
centrism is preferable to holism.
2. Preferability of pathocentrism to anthropocentrism
The thesis that pathocentrism is preferable to anthropocentrism
has almost become part of common sense and does not seem to stand
in need of much argument. The view that human duties extend in
some measure beyond mankind, into the realm of nonhuman animals,
is common ground between otherwise quite disparate ethical stand-
points. What is less clear, is how human duties towards animals
are justified and how far they exactly go - whether, for example,
they are essentially restricted to the human obligation to protect
62
DIETER BIRNBACHER
animals from cruelty, or whether they include the duty not to kill
animals prematurely, either for food, for sport .or for any other
kind of human benefit.
Defences of pathocentrism are frequently based on the thesis
that not only humans but also sentient animals are bearers of
interests and should therefore not be excluded from moral consi-
deration. This is the thesis underlying Leonard Nelson's defence
of the rights of animals. According to Nelson, animals are bearers
of interests on the ground that they are beings endowed with con-
sciousness. As possessors of interests, they have a legitimate
claim to be given moral. considerations alongside humans. Though
they are not themselves moral subjects (i.e. subjects of moral
duties) and do not enter into anything like reciprocal moral rela-
tions with humans, the possession of interests is, according to
Nelson, sufficient to lay claim to a moral status. Humans, in
their dealings with nature, ought to respect this moral status by
taking the interests of animals duly into account.
At least one feature of this defence of the pathocentric ap-
proach seems to me problematical: the central role it assigns to
the concept of interests. Partly as a consequence of the use envi-
ronmental ethicists have made of it, the concept of interest has
become notoriously unclear. Correspondingly, any conception of
pathocentrism basing itself on this concept is open to misunder-
standing. Nelson, for one, did nothing to cleat' the matter up. He
simply assumed the notion to be sufficiently uUdmbiguous to make
it the basis of his claim that animals are proper subjects of
moral rights. But "interest" can be, and is, construed in a. va-
riety of ways. Even what might be held to be a minimal condition
of the ascription of interests, the possession of consciousness,
is discarded by several authors. While according to the
traditional (including Nelson's) concept interests can only be
ascribed to individuals (or groups of individuals) endowed with
consciousness (not necessarily self-consciousness), environmental
ethicists such as Attfield and Teutsch ascribe interests also to
plants and other natural objects with some kind of teleonomic
organization, though denying them consciousness, however
rudimentary.3 Even if these authors should not be prepared to say
that a certain tree "has" an interest in being given water during
a drought period, they must at least be prepared to say that
giving water to the tree is "in the interest" of the tree. Even
that seems contrary to what most people find intelligible, if
taken literally.
Admittedly, these are extreme cases. But even among those who
restrict interests to sentient beings, it is far from clear on
what capacities of consciousness the possession of interests is
ETHICAL VS. GUIDING PRINCIPLES 63
to depend. If interests are construed as more or less articulate
desires, they presuppose some capacity for thought and a certain
amount of awareness of the non-immediate future. Only fairly
intelligent animals would qualify as bearers of interests. For
others, construing interests more liberally, the scope of the
possession of interest coincides with that of the capacity for
suffering. Naturally, under this construction, the class of beings
with interests turns out to be much more comprehensive.
If it is hardly reasonable to defend pathocentrism as an ethi-
cal principle with reference to interests, how can it be done
at all? Two ways seem promising: by referring to the intrinsic
badness of suffering of conscious beings and the intrinsic good-
ness of their subjective well-being (or ''pleasure''), and by reca-
pitulating the more or less obvious deficiencies of purely anthro-
pocentric justifications of the protection of animals.
What makes pathocentrism preferable to anthropocentrism is a
very simple fact: its recognition that suffering is bad, no matter
whether it occurs in human or in nonhuman animals. In so far as
animals are subject to suffering they cannot be excluded from
moral considei ation. The crucial test for the inclusion of animals
in the class of natural objects with moral status is Bentham's:
"Can they suffer?" Not sentience is the point, but capacity for
suffering. Sentience by itself can hardly matter, morally. There
could well be sentience, i.e. some form of subjective awareness,
without hedonic tone, either positive or negative. A sentient
animal without the capacity to feel even rudimentary pains and
rudime'ntary pleasures would count for nothing more, morally; than
an au'tomaton with a scanner attached to it to provide it with
sensory information about the external world.
The second relevant consideration is that although even the
most explicit propounders of anthropocentrism rarely question the
duty of humans to protect animals from unnecessary pain, their
attempts to account for this duty on anthropocentric premises
invariably fail. A well-known example of a purely anthropocentric
argument for the protection of animals! from cruelty and from pain-'
ful but pointless scientific experiments is that given by Kant.
Kant's argument is consequentialist, though of a special sort:
cruelty towards animals is morally wrong not because animals are
made to suffer by it, but because it contributes to hardening
men's feelings against each other and thus to undermining morality
in its central, interpersonal application. It cannot be said that
this particular piece of Kant's doctrine earned him much fame.
Schopenhauer denounced it as simply morally outrageous. But one
might as well wonder that Kant even went so far as to pay tribute
to the protection of animals at all .. After all, within the meta-
64 DIETER BIRNBACHER
physical scheme of transcendental idealism, animals are nothing
but "appearances" no less devoid of metaphysical substance than
the rest of non-personal nature.
Kant's indirect argument is not only an illustration of the
extreme artificiality of exclusively anthropocentric arguments
against cruelty to animals, but also of their moral inadequacy.
For surely animals have a legitimite claim to being protected from
needless infliction of pain, fear, frustration and other kinds of
suffering. quite independently of the effects this has, or might
have, on h u m a n s ~ They deserve to be protected from cruel treatment
even when there is every reason to believe that other detrimental
effects are not to be expected, neither to concrete human beings
nor to abstract "moralityll.
3. Preferability of holism to biocentrism
These arguments are arguments from general plausibility, inde-
pendent of any particular preconception of intrinsic value. The
same can be claimed, I think, of the following argument designed
to show that if natural objects devoid of the capacity to feel
pleasure or pain are included in the class of natural objects
deserving moral consideration, holism is preferable to biocen-
trism.
"Holism", taken as an ethical concept, has a number of diffe-
rent interpretations. On one interpretation, "holism" is a value-
theoretical concept referring to natural wholes. "Holism" In this
sense means that the whole of nature, or natural systems as who-
les, carry intrinsic value over and above the intrinsic value
carried by their components. Holism in this. sense would assign
greater intrinsic value to a forest than to the aggregate of the
individual trees making up the forest.4 On this interpretation,
holism is a general approach rather than a concrete principle of
environmental ethics. One important point on which holistic ap-
proaches have to be further specified is the extent to which in-
trinsic value is to be assigned also to natural systems which are
modified, designed or even created by man.
The term "holism" has also been used for the view that intrin-
sic value should be assigned not only to living but also to non-
living individual natural objects.
5
In this sense, holism is an
extension of biocentrism, denying that there is any real boundary,
as far as intrinsic value is concerned, between the living and the
non-living in nature. Taken in this sense, holism is clearly pre-
ferable to biocentrism. It overcomes the central difficulty of
biocentrism, the exclusiveness with which biocentrism singles out
life as the only, or at least fundamental, good-making quality of
ETHICAL VS. GUIDING PRINCIPLES 65
natural objects. For my own part at least, I confess to have the
greatest difficulty in seeing why, if intrinsic value is ascribed
to non-sentient nature at all, natural objects with the quality of
life should be so radically privileged as they are by biocentrism.
The question is: Why should life in the purely biological sense be
intrinsically valuable, independently of any qualities for. which
the possession of life may be a necessary condition? Why should
beauty, or wholeness, or symmetry, or complexity of organization,
be of value in living natural objects and devoid of value in non
living objects? It is interesting to note, in this connection, the
"slip" in Albert Schweitzer's Kultur und Ethik, where he mentions,
among others, the "crystal" as a manifestation of the "will to
life" and its urge to perfection.
6
I take this as an indication of
the fact that even Albert Schweitzer, a protagonist of bioceri-
trism, was inclined to espouse holism when aesthetic and other
gestalt qualities were at stake.
Nor am I much impressed by Robin Attfield's assertion that if
the world of sentient beings should be completely annihilated it
would be. better if there was left a world of living things and not
a world of purely unliving matter. Unless there is a chance, how-
ever slight, for the living things to evolve into life-forms en-
dowed with some kind of consciousness, it seems to me that there
is little to recommend the one over the other. Both prospects are
equally bleak. Imagining that we are faced with a god-like choice
between spectator-less worlds, a preference for the living over
the unliving would seem rather arbitrary. Why not follow G.E.
Moore instead and say that what matters in a spectator-less uni-
verse is the spectator-independent beauty contained in it, and
that beauty may be better served by glaciers, crystals and rocks
than by algae and amoebae?
Some statements of biocentrism are additionally vulnerable on
other grounds. Schweitzer's ethic of "reverence for life" draws on
specifically vitalistic assumptions which seem scientifically and
metaphysically untenable. For Schweitzer, living nature was radi-
cally separate from unliving nature. For him, the principle of
life was a "mystery", inaccessible to scientific analysis and
making even the attempt at scientific analysis appear impious and
irreverent. But life in the biological sense (to which this ethic
is after all meant to apply) is not like that. Its nature and
origin are no more mysterious than the structure of matter in
general, and indeed far less mysterious than' the emergence, in the
physical universe, of the phenomenon of consciousness. What is
known about life does not make life and its manifestations appear
less impressive than it used to do. But it completely undermines
any specifically vitalistic argument for biocentrism as against
66
DIETER BIRNBACHER
holism.
4. Preferability of pathocentrism to holism
One feature makes the holistic approach to environmental ethics
particularly attractive: its faithfulness to the experience of
nature. However the details are filled in, holism is a far more
genuine expression of an uncurtailed experience of nature than
either biocentrism or pathocentrism. It is hard to deny intrinsic
value to the things one 1oves, or admires, or experiences as aes-
thetically satisfying. Objectivity of value is an inherent quality
of these experiences. And it is clear that the attribution of thts
objectivity is in no way restricted to living natural objects.
But the same feature that counts in favor of the holistic ap-
proach is at the same time a serious obstacle to its adoption.
Though objectivity of value is an inherent and necessary feature
of aesthetic experience (as well as of other, e.g. religious,
kinds of ex:periencing nature), this objectivity is a feature in-
ternal to this experience. Viewed from the outside, it dissolves.
Objectivity is necessary, but only as "notwendiger Schein". Even
if it is a necessary feature of the experience of beauty that
beauty is attributed to the object, as an inherent and autonomous
quality, it remains nonetheless true that beauty is in the eye
of the beholder. An indication (though by no means a proof) of
this is provided by the degree to which people differ in their
judgments, their attitudes, and their actual experience of the
features that make natural objects valuable for them. The facts
about the variety and relativity of aesthetic and other attri-
butions of intrinsic qualities to nature are such as to make it
seem ill-guided to attribute these intrinsic qualities to nature
itself. They are more adequately conceived of as values for man -
or even as values for nonhuman animals insofar as these have the
capacity to enter into contemplative (as against instrumental)
relations with their natural environment.
The last point is worth restating. What is claimed is that the
general framework of pathocentric environmental ethics is not only
perfectly sufficient to account for aesthetic and other kinds of
value experienced in contemplative relations with nature, but
that, in view of the variety and relativity of aesthetic and other
sensibilities, it is the more adequate approach. It does not le-
gislate what is valuable in nature but respects the multifarious
and changing sensibilities of those who do the valuing. It does
not fix, and thereby limit, what is and what will be of value. It
rather leaves the options open, allowing future generations to
make their own judgments and their own choices.
ETHICAL VS. GUIDING PRINCIPLES 67
This consideration connects up with a further theoretically
attractive feature of pathocentrism: its exclusive reliance on a
value-premiss that is acceptable to everyone. The moral relevance
of suffering is uncontroversial in a way in which the moral rele-
vance of any other values or disvalues are not .. To the extent that
the intrinsic disvalue of suffering (the central value premiss of
most pathocentric approaches) is a premiss universally accepted,
the universal (in the sense of intersubjective) validity claimed
by this premiss actually obtains, whereas the value premisses of
holistic approaches are generally bound up with highly contro-
versial metaphysical or other conceptions of nature for which a
claim to universal validity cannot easily be justified.
5. Details of pathocentrism: well-being
It was said above that pathocentric approaches make the disvalue
of suffering their central value premiss. Of course, there is no
strictly logical reason why this should be so. Taken literally,
"pathocentrism" means only that natural objects with the capacity
for suffering are given moral status, and does not imply anything
about the kind of values associated with this special class. In
fact, however, unless a central role is assigned to the disvalue
of suffering and the value of subjective well-being, there would
hardly be a rationale for singling out the capacity for suffering
as the criterion for inclusion. Preventing suffering is a cano-
nical value of pathocentric ethics, even though additional values
may be introduced.
One such potential additional value (of which it is not clear
whether it is a separate value at all) is the value of the ex-
istence of animals with states of consciousness of a positive
hedonic quality ("pleasure"). Obviously, the introduction or non-
introduction of this value will be of some importance for the
question of whether we are morally allowed to raise and to kill
animals for food. Unless we count the existence of animals as an
intrinsic value in its own right there does not seem to be any
compelling reason why animalf? should not be killed for food, even
long before their natural deaths.
This is not to deny that there are reasons for vegetarianism
even with the prevention of suffering as one's only value premiss.
I do not think, though , that these reasons are quite as good as
Petel:' Singer, a philosophical vegetarian from exclusively uti-
litarian motives, has made them out to be.
7
Both reasons Singer
gives for vegetarianism are of a broadly demonstrative kind: pre-
test against factory-farming and protest against the wasteful use
of cereals and other plants for the production of meat which might
68
DIETER BIRNBACHER
just as well be used to feed the hungry. Even if it is granted
that a boycott of the products of factory farming is effective in
stirring public concern for the often intolerably low quality of
life of animals subjected to factory farming, and to exert pres-
sure on legislation in this regard, it does not imply wholesale
vegetarianism. It only implies selective abstention from
the products of factory farming, including not only meat but also
other products, such as eggs from battery-hens. The other reason
given by Singer for demonstrative vegetarianism seems even less
convincing. A change in the dietary habits of the industrialized
wor ld would by itself do nothing to improve the situation in the
Third World. It would only reduce the overall quantity of cereals
grown and it might even worsen the situation in some countries by
reducing their exports. '
Though there seem to be no compelling reasons for moral vege-
tarianism, this does not exempt all forms of painless killing of
higher animals from moral criticism. The more intelligent the
members of an animal species and the more capable.of thinking of
themselves as distinct beings existing over time, the more the
painless killing of members of it will be morally comparable to
the painless murder of members of the human species. Peter Singer
has rightly pointed out that the death of one member of a pair, or
group, of higher animals may lead to reactions of fear and sorrow
in the remaining group similar to those exhibited by humans.
s
We
rightly condemn the murder of political enemies in secret as a
crime, even if the death of the political enemy was painless. and
not preceded by fear of imminent death. The justification of this
reaction lies essentially in its side-effects, such as the fear
and distrust caused by the "disappearance" of the man concerned.
To the degree that killing animals can be expected to have com-
parable side-effects on other members of the species, the same
considerations apply. The deliberate killing, for human purposes,
of animals which we must assume to possess considerable cognitive
and communicative capacities (such as dogs and cats) and perhaps
even self-consciousness (such as apes, whales, and dolphins) can-
not be much different, morally, from the deliberate killing of
humans. To be morally permissible, they stand as heavily in need
of convincing' justifying grounds as the deliberate killing of
humans.
6. Details of pathocentrism: being
Now, is the very existence of animals an intrinsic value? Would it
on the whole be better if there were, ceteris paribus, more higher
ETHICAL VS. GUIDING PRINCIPLES 69
animals with an overall positive quality of life? And if so, does
this follow (as the "total view" of utilitarianism would have it)
directly from the hedonistic basis of the pathocentric approach?
I think that for any conception of intrinsic value that does
not only assign negative value to suffering, but also positive
value to a pleasurable overall quality of life, the answers to all
these questions must be positive. To show this, I shall outline
an argument proceeding in two steps: first by arguing that the
"repugnant conclusion" (as Derek Parfit has called it) of the
total view is inevitable, however counterintuitive at first sight;
second by arguing that what holds for humans must also hold for
other animals capable of subjective experiences of pleasure and
pain ..
The first step does not need much argument. For a good of what-
ever kind, it must be preferable to have more of it, ceteris pari-
bus, than less. This holds true no matter what kinds of intrinsic
values are attached to subjective states such as pleasure, or
to objective features such as beauty or the realization of po-
tentials. If, as we have assumed, intrinsic value is primarily
attached to subjective states of consciousness, the number of
consciousnesses enjoying such states cannot be indifferent. An
increase in the number of individuals enjoying a good or satis-
factory life must be better than a reduction in the number of
individuals enjoying such a life.
The same conclusion is suggested by the fact that we find it
plausible to make numbers count where it is a question of losses
instead of gains. No one who recognizes that suffering is bad,
denies that it is better if there are less people who suffer than
more. If this is admitted, it cannot consistently be denied that
it is better if there are more people with satisfactory lives.
The same must be true of animals. If animal suffering is bad and
animal well-being good, it cannot be indifferent how many feeling
animals have good or at least satisfactory lives. This does not
imply that the optimum would be a planet teeming with human and
higher animal life, leaving no room to species not directly or
indirectly serviceable to the existence and well-being of higher
life-forms. A "Calcutta-solution" in the realm of animals is as
little called for as in the realm of man. The optimum is not to be
obtained by maximizing the present population of higher animals
but by maximizing the aggregate population of men and animals over
their whole period of existence. It calls for intergenerational,
not intragenerational optimization. The obligation to leave the
environmental conditions intact on which the lives of future gene-
rations of higher animals depend must have the same importance
relative to obligations towards animals living today, as obliga-
70 DIETER BIRNBACHER
tions towards future generations have relative to obligations
towards the members of our own species living today.
If the objection should be raised that these conclusions are
wildly counterintuitive, I think it is a fair reply that as far as
ethical principles (and not guiding principles) are concerned,
reasoned principles should take precedence over "intuitions". What
is commonly called intuitions in moral philosophy are the ethical
. beliefs handed down to us by tradition. They reflect not only
underlying fundamental principles but also the historically and
socially contingent circumstances of practical morality. In a fast
changing society so-called intuitions are no more reliable a guide
to adequate moral judgment than the technical procedures of yes-
terday for today's technical problems. Even a "reflective equili-
brium" should be loaded to the advantage of theory and to the
disadvantage of "intuitions". The situation is different with
guiding principles. Since one of the desiderata of guiding prin-
ciples is practical effectiveness, they must not too radically
run counter to the pre-theoretical intuitions to which people
il1.cline.
If questions of quantity are given due weight, the existence of
satisfactory animals lives cannot be denied intrinsic value.' This
consideration makes the painless killing of higher animals for
food again appear in a different light. On the one hand, pain-
lessly killing an animal which would otherwise have gone on having
a satisfactory life is a reduction in the overall quantity of
well-being unless the killing is necessary to secure the existence
or maihtenance, or significantly raise the quality, of other cons-
ciouslives, both human and nonhuman. On the other hand, this
consideration does not strengthen the case for vegetarianism but
considerably weakens it, since non-vegetarians can be expected to
provide for the existence of a greater number of higher animals
than vegetarians. Of course, the existence of a greater number of
higher animals counts against vegetarianism only if the existence
of the extra animals is not so exclusively organized in the inte-
rest of food production to make it unsatisfactory or even into-
lerable for them.
7. Reverence for life as a guiding principle
There can be no question that Albert Schweitzer's doctrine of
"reverence for life" is seriously deficient both as a principle of
general and as a principle of environmental ethics. Most of these
deficiencies have been aptly pointed out by Helmut Groos in his
monumental study of Schweitzer's work.
9
Taken as a principle of
ETHICAL VS. GUIDING PRINCIPLES 71
general ethics, reverence for life is paradoxical in so far as it
morally condemns any termination of life that is not itself neces-
sary to maintain or produce life. It would not only condemn all
suicides except those that are committed in order to save the
lives of at least two other human or nonhuman beings, but also any
kind of population control designed to raise the average quality
of life, the cutting of weeds for aesthetic reasons, even the
extermination of harmful species of insects, fungi and bacteria
that threaten the health and well-being of men and animals but
not their lives. Taken as a principle of environmental ethics,
Schweitzer's principle appears unsatisfactory on other grounds.
"Reverence" is an attitude primarily directed to pre-existing
objects, especially to objects having a long history. It therefore
tends to encourage excessively conservative approaches to environ-
mental protection. If life as actually found to exist is holy, to
be revered instead of being manipulated, then nature is sacro-
sanct. It is something to be protected, but not to be improved,
even if its present state is deeply unsatisfactory in ecological,
aesthetic or sanitary respects and even if its present state is
almost completely' due to human intervention in the past.
All this does not preclude the principle of reference for life
to be attractive as a guiding principle - at least as a guiding
principle in a weak and cognitively perfectly innocuous sense.
10
In this weak sense, reverence for life would entail two things:
first, a presumption (in the legal sense) for the preservation and
against the extermination of life; second, the establishing of
emotional attitudes towards living nature which, without strictly
excluding the destruction of parts of it, make it an intensely
felt requirement to be given convincing justifying reasons for any
project involving direct or indirect destruction of living nature.
As a rule of presumption, reverence for life implies that the
burden of proof for any annihilation of life lies with the des-
troyer, not with the preserver. As an attitude, it provides the
emotional backing needed if this rule is to be consistently obser-;-
ved.
My reasons for thinking reverence for life a suitable guiding
principle are of a functional character and vary with the fields
of application. In its application to animals, reverence for life
might help to establish a general inhibition to kill or to harm
animals without evident necessity. Whereas according to patho-
centrism, only animals with the capacity for suffering are to be
protected for their own sakes, it seems illusory to assume that
human attitudes can be so finely tuned to the moral differentia-
tion between aniI:nals with and animals devoid of these. capacities
as to inhibit cruelty with the former but not with the latter.
72 DIETER BIRNBACHER
It cannot generally be expected that the emotional attitudes pre-
supposed by appropriately stable and reliahle tendencies to" action
function like the exact mirror-images of what is morally right in
any possible situation. I earnestly doubt whether it is realistic
to think that we can establish the mental habits and attitudes
necessary for preventing cruelty to animals capable of suffering
without also involuntarily protecting many species of animals not
capable of suffering. One reason for this is the improbability
that human sensibilities function in strict accordance with what-
ever is the objective truth concerning animal suffering. Human
sensibilities generally react to outer behavioral cues symbo-
lically linked to internal suffering, but not necessarily objecti-
vely correlated with it. The contortions of a worm which has been
cut with a knife may not correspond to any felt pain, but are
certainly so strongly suggestive of it that the inhibitions of
many people to subject it to the treatment are easily understood.
Even those who are firmly convinced that insects cannot feel pain
feel an inhibition to tear out wrings or legs from flies. However
"irrational" these attitudes may seem from a strictly objective
point of view, they can be seen to be "rational" in a sense if
looked upon as inevitable "spill-over effects" of our having in-
hibitions against cruelty to animals at all.
There 'is a further rationale for following a comprehensive
guiding principle in our treatment of animals: our ignorance as
to where to exactly draw the line between animals capable of suf-
fering and others. In .restricting the protection of animals to
mammals, or warm-blooded animals, or vertebrates, we run the risk
of excluding animals capable of suffering though phenotypically so
far removed from mammals or birds as not to inspire spontaneous
empathy. If our guiding principle, viewed from a God-like perspec-
tive, is "too comprehensive", it is better if it exaggerates by
doing animals too much good than by doing them too much harm.
ll
A different explanation is called for whenever the guiding
principles of reverence for life is applied to plants, ecosystems
and entire biological species. With them, following the guiding
principle cannot be explained as a simple extension from some
members of a class to all members, but must be justified in a more
indirect way. Part of the justification has been given by Aldo
Leopold in the context of his "land ethic" (which was a guiding
principle rather than an ethical principle
12
): the complexity and
time scale of the processes triggered off by human action in the
biosphere. Even if downright anthropocentrism should be the right
ethical principle concerning the environment, and human survival,
human health, and human well-being the only ultimate aim, the
causal chains leading from here and now to there and then seem far
ETHICAL VS. GUIDING PRINCIPLES 73
too long and far too involved to recommend anthropocentrism as a
guiding principle. Understanding and' adequately assessing the
indirect and long term effects of ecologically significant impacts
on the biosphere make heavy demands on human rationality, too
heavy demands, certainly, to be a significant motivating force for
the average individual. To achieve motivation, some more imme-
diately plausible orientation is called for. Reverence for life,
understood as an attitude that discourages human interference
with natural processes unless necessitated by convincing reasons,
seems well suited to play the role of a more immediate motive of
this kind. The other part of the explanation is even more frankly
instrumental: It is doubtful whether obligations to future gene-
rations are so urgently felt that they by themselves provide the
motivation necessary for the acceptance of policies demanding some
measure of present sacrifices and lost opportunities. Not everyone
can be expected to support environmental policies from which not
he himself, but uncertain future generations will profit. In the
light of this, it seems plausible to assume that on the whole the
interests of future generations are better served if the natural
environment is protected for its own sake. Even purely anthro-
pocentric aims like saving the living conditions of mankind and
the aesthetic resources of the earth from deterioration cannot be
attained, it seems, without shattering the predominance, in the
industrialized world, of the attitudes of domination, control and
exploitation associated with anthropocentric ways of thinking.
Biocentrism as a mere "cunning of reason" may not ~ p p e a l to
everyone. For my own part, I cannot conceal that I would rather
do without it. It should, however, be borne in mind that the in-
terpretation I have given to "guiding principles" makes them prin-
ciples of a very weak and uncommittal kind. Adopting such prin-
ciples in order to have one's actions and attitudes guided by them
is a far cry from sacrificium intellectus or any other kind of
self-imposed schizophrenia.
Universitat Essen
74
DIETER BIRNBACHER
NOTES
1. Robert Spaemann, "Technische Eingriffe in die Natu1?- als Pro-
blem der politischen Ethik", in Dieter Birnbacher, ed. Dko-
logie und Ethilr, Stuttgart, 1980, pp. 180-206, esp. 197.
2. Cf. Laurence H. Tribe, "Ways not to Think about Plastic Trees:
New Foundations for Environmental Law", Yale ... Law Journal' 83
(1974), pp. 1315-1348, esp. 1330 f.
3. Robin Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern. Oxford,
1983, p. 145; Gotthard M. Teutsch, Lexilron der Umwelte thik ,
Gottingen/Di1sseldorf, 1985, p. 17.
4. Holism in this sense was part of Aldo Leopold's "land ethic".
See his "The Land Ethic", in A Saund County Almanac and Sket-
ches Here and There. New York, 1949, pp. 201-226, esp. p. 204.
A much weaker position might also be termed "holism", the view
that natural systems or the whole of nature have derivative
value over and above their components. Taken in this sense, it
is no distinct position in environmental ethics, but part of
most pathocentric and biocentric conceptions.
5. Klaus M. Meyer-Abich, "Vom bi1rgerlichen Rechtsstaat zur
Rechtsgemeinschaft der Natur", Scheidewege 12 (1982), pp.
581-605.
6. Albert Schweitzer, Kultur und Ethik, Mi1nchen, 1960, p. 302.
7. Peter Singer, "Utilitarianism and Vegetarianism", Philosophy
and Public Affairs 9 (1979/80), pp. 325-337.
8. Peter Singer, "Animals and the Value of Life", in Tom Regan,
ed. Matters of Life and Death, New York, 1980, pp. 218-259,
esp. p. 248.
9. Helmut Groos. Albert Schweitzer, Grosse und Gre11.zen, Mi1nchen/
Basel, 1974, p. 543.
10. The idea of interpreting reverence for life not as an ethical
principle but as an ethically required attitude was put for-
ward by George Seaver as early as 1944 (cf. Helmut Groos. Ope
cit., pp. 528 ff.). The idea of introducing Schweitzer's prin-
ciple as a guiding principle in the sense of the present paper
is John Passmore's (cf. his Man's Responsibility for Nature.
London, 1974, p. 124).
11. Roughly the same idea was expressed by T .H. Huxley: Consi-
dering the terrible practical consequences that might ensue
from any error on our part, it is well to err on the right
side, if we err at all, and deal with them as weaker brethren.
("Animals and Human Beings as Conscious Automata", in Joel
Feinberg, edt Reason and Responsibility, Encino/Belmont (Cal.)
1978, pp. 264-272, 270.
ETHICAL VS. GUIDING PRINCIPLES 75
12. Cf. Leopold's own characterization of the status of the "land
ethic": "An ethic may be regarded as a mode of guidance for
meeting ecological situations so new or intricate, or invol-
ving such deferred reactions, that the path of social expe-
diency is not discernible to the average individual", (op.
cit., p. 203). That Leopold conceived of his "land ethic" in
functional terms is also suggested by other passages, see
especially p. 214.