Abstract

The aim of this paper is to critique the concept of nature that is used in order to reason the moral rules in environmental ethics. In the first part, I outline the contemporary tendency to restitution of the concept of nature itself in modern, post-industrial world. Starting with pioneer voices of sciencists emphasising ecological problems — Rachel Carson — I mark the cultural context that characterises the discourse of naturalness. Afterwards, with reference to Dieter Birnbacher’s ethics, where we can find the inspiration of John Stuart Mill’s philosophy as well as Richard Hare’s, I stress that the nature cannot constitute the moral rule in environmental ethics — the discipline that tries to reason the rules that orient the action towards natural environment and environmental protection. There are several reasons why the nature cannot be the rule in normative way — the naturalistic fallacy for example. In this article I mention also that the nature is in these days also a product of critique of modernism and that we are not able to distinct the nature and the art, because man lives in artificial world in order to survive in natural world. Next, I propose the frame of moral rules that are relevant on the ground of universalistic ethics without reference to metaphysics of nature and immanent values that are in nature itself. Key words BIRNBACHER, EINVIROMENTAL ETHICS