Environmental Philosophy

Environmental philosophy is a branch of systematic philosophy that started addressing the global environmental situation in the second half of the 20th century. Environmental philosophy appears as a philosophical reaction to the worldwide deterioration in the environment and to its partial analysis by biologic and system sciences. This is, for example, a reaction to the general system theory (L. von Bertalanffy); new ethic and axiologic challenges of the so-called Earth ethics (A. Leopold); the first studies of the Roman Club authors (The Limits to Growth, 1972); and, indirectly, older concepts of life philosophy (H. Bergson) and process philosophy (A. N. Whitehead). The most influential forms of environmental philosophy comprise ecosophy, that is, the deep ecology (A. Naess); various forms of environmental ethics (J. B. Callicott, J. Passmore, C. E. Haergrove); and social ecology (M. Bookchin). Development of this philosophy is supported by the annually published studies (State of the World) of the WorldWatch Institute in Washington, D.C.

Even though the deep ecology and ecologic ethics achieved decent popularity due to their emphases upon the nonanthropocentric values and upon changes in the orientation of life from nature control and property amassing toward inclusion of man into the biotic community, they are weak in their insufficient ontologic anchoring. The systematic ontical conflict between culture and nature hasn't been clearly philosophically formulated yet, and therefore it hasn't also been accepted as the currently most serious philosophical problem. Except for evolution ontology, the relationship between culture and nature hasn't become a part of a wider philosophic ontology. The general public still lacks a generally understandable philosophical concept of the global environmental crisis, but there hasn't yet been processed the necessary ontological minimum for its understanding.

Philosophical analysis of the global environmental crisis requires interpreting man, nature, and culture from the viewpoint of the evolution ontology. This viewpoint implies that the current people, who appeared on the Earth at the very end of the Tertiary period, cannot be the climax and meaning of the natural evolution of the biosphere. The unfinished evolution of the life on the Earth still faces a few billion years of future development: It is hardly directed toward any climax, and therefore it cannot culminate in any biologic species. All of the currently living species, including the oldest ones (e.g. bacteria), are mutually interconnected, functionally cooperate, and complement one another, but they also fight each other, because many survive at the expense of the others. Therefore, the currently living individuals, populations, and species, as temporary elements of a higher system of life on Earth, establish the conditions for a slow evolution of the biosphere and, consequently, also for a comparatively stable frame of the human culture's existence and development. Because man, as the first biologic species, has succeeded in starting a cultural revolution, it is apparent that this species' peculiarity isn't based only in speaking ethnic languages, thinking, acting morally, learning, and believing. This peculiarity is best expressed in the thesis that man has established himself on the Earth as the second ontically creative force, as a small god, as an originator and creator of the nonbiological system of the culture.

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