Callicott And The Issue Of Pluralism In Environmental Ethics

Date

2024-7

Author

Ulutürk, Anıl

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J. Baird Callicott is known for his communitarian environmental philosophy adapted from Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic. His ecocentric views advocate a monist approach, particularly supporting a position against Christopher D. Stone's moral pluralism. Although there are various philosophers discussing why his communitarianism does not work well, I instead focus on the similarities between Stone’s pluralism and Callicott’s supposedly monistic ethic that he modified over the years and claim the viability of pluralism in environmental ethics. I argue that contrary to what Callicott argued, his theory has serious pluralist underpinnings that he failed to avoid throughout his career and discuss why the concept of complementarity is no way out of his troubles. I also look at Leopold’s Land Ethic as well as Hume’s sentimentalist theory and Darwin’s ecological views, all of which were the groundwork of Callicott’s philosophy, to underline why his agenda of constructing a holistic and monist environmental ethics might have been doomed from the beginning. To absolve pluralism in environmental ethics, I present the success of pluralist approaches in other fields like politics, economics, psychology, and bioethics and argue that pluralism is not the boogeyman which Callicott painted it out to be. Finally, I take a pragmatic stance in the monism vs pluralism debate, preferring pluralism due to its significant advantage in complex domains like environmental ethics, and present a contextualist reading for Christopher D. Stone’s pluralist approach, by viewing his ideas under John Dewey’s pragmatism. After arguing for contextualism, I come back to Callicott’s environmental theory and suggest two ways to redeem Callicott’s ethics: either by biting the bullet and labelling his most recent formulation as a theoretically pluralist ethical theory in its current form or going back to its original roots as a holistic—yet slightly eco-fascist or weak anthropocentric— environmental theory.

Subject Keywords

Land ethic, Pluralism, Aldo Leopold, J. Baird Callicott, Christopher Stone

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/110160

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis