Dr. Christian Becker (Penn State)
Wednesday March 23rd, 2011
Wednesday March 23rd, 2011
"Sustainability Ethics"
In Environmental Ethics studies,
scholars always talk about the importance of sustainable practices (in
agriculture, energy, etc.), but what do they mean by sustainability?
Christian Becker's talk in the recent Sustainability Ethics Conference at Penn State University Park
focused on the ethical and philosophical meaning of the term
'sustainability'. Becker argues that sustainability has an inherently
ethical dimension which is complex and requires a new approach to
sustainability ethics that can address this complexity. The term
'sustainability' should be considered within the context of harmony
between our contemporary fellow human beings, future generations, and
nature. The term implies a certain type of continuance,
orientation, and set of relations that lead us to pose the
following philosophical question: What type of system do we want to
maintain?
Becker
introduces the term
'sustainable person' to describe the person who engages in practices
that align with principles of sustainability ethics. The important
question for
the sustainable person becomes "How should I live in regard to the
sustainability relations?" The sustainable person has a certain
understanding of the human being as emotional, rational, creative, and
communicative. (One of the audience members suggested that Becker add
being
permeable, embedded, and vulnerable to that list of characteristics.)
In addition,
the sustainable person has a relational sense of identity that
acknowledges temporality and interdependence, exhibits virtues such as
being respectful and caring, and has relational competencies such as
attentiveness and receptiveness.
Drawing on Aristotle's notion of a
virtuous
citizen, Becker argues that sustainability is not just an issue of
individual morality but also an issue of appropriate development of
social and global systems. Sustainability relations are mediated by
meta-structures such as science, technology, economy, and social and
global systems. Seeing this connection helps us to understand how
current structures operate to impede the development of sustainable
persons. This forces us to consider the role and responsibility of the
ethical individual
whose prospects for becoming a 'sustainable person' are limited by
social and global systems?
As a result Becker emphasizes the
need for sustainability research that is based on ethics and philosophy
and that considers the individual not as completely independent and
autonomous, but as existing within a set of sustainability relations
that characterize the development of social and global systems.
Try telling growing countries such India China Brazil about sustainability.All these countries are concerned about is profit.