Alfred North Whitehead’s metaphysics provides a means for overcoming the dualism embedded in J. Baird Callicott’s “postmodern” axiology. Indeed, the lessons Callicott draws from the new physics and ecology imply Whitehead’s position. While Callicott holds that subjectivity and valuing require consciousness, Whitehead argues that subjectivity and valuing characterize all metaphysically basic entities, conscious and non-conscious. Removing the constraint that valuing requires consciousness is a slight shift, but it makes all the difference. By jettisoning this constraint, we can develop a robust (...) account of intrinsic value that overcomes Callicott’s duality, while retaining his insights that valuing requires a valuer and fluent energy is more fundamental than discrete entities. (shrink)

Alfred North Whitehead’s metaphysics provides a means for overcoming the dualism embedded in J. Baird Callicott’s “postmodern” axiology. Indeed, the lessons Callicott draws from the new physics and ecology imply Whitehead’s position. While Callicott holds that subjectivity and valuing require consciousness, Whitehead argues that subjectivity and valuing characterize all metaphysically basic entities, conscious and non-conscious. Removing the constraint that valuing requires consciousness is a slight shift, but it makes all the difference. By jettisoning this constraint, we can develop a robust (...) account of intrinsic value that overcomes Callicott’s duality, while retaining his insights that valuing requires a valuer and fluent energy is more fundamental than discrete entities. (shrink)

In _Ecological Ethics and the Human Soul: Aquinas, Whitehead, and the Metaphysics of Value_, Francisco J. Benzoni addresses the pervasive and destructive view that there is a moral gulf between human beings and other creatures. Thomas Aquinas, whose metaphysics entails such a moral gulf, holds that human beings are ultimately separate from nature. Alfred North Whitehead, in contrast, maintains that human beings are continuous with the rest of nature. These different metaphysical systems demand different ethical stances toward creation. Benzoni analyzes (...) and challenges Thomas's understanding of the human soul, his primary justification for the moral separation, arguing that it is finally philosophically untenable. The author finds promising the alternative metaphysics of Whitehead, for whom human beings are a part of nature—even if the highest part; all creatures have a degree of subjectivity and creativity, and thus all have intrinsic value and moral worth, independent of subjective human valuation. Further, though there is difference, there is no moral gulf between God and the world. God is truly affected by the experience of creatures. Benzoni argues that if this vision of moral worth is articulated with sufficient force and clarity, it could help heal the human relation to our planet. “Eminently clear in concept and analysis, profound in insight, and precise in reasoning, this book not only contributes a distinguished study of Aquinas but also reshapes contemporary ecological ethics by relating it to basic issues of metaphysics. Both subsequent moral theory attentive to Aquinas and subsequent formulations of ecological ethics will be incomplete without taking account of Benzoni's argument.” —_Franklin I. Gamwell, Shailer Mathews Distinguished Service Professor of Religious Ethics, the Philosophy of Religion, and Theology, The University of Chicago Divinity School_ “In the introduction and conclusion, Francisco Benzoni makes clear the broader significance of this work for the field of ecological ethics and the future well-being of the human species on this earth. One can learn a great deal about the philosophy of both Aquinas and Whitehead in working through these pages.” —_Joseph Bracken, Xavier University _. (shrink)

The centerpiece of Holmes Rolston, III’s environmental ethic is his objective value theory. It is ultimately grounded not in the Cartesian duality between subject and object, but in the divine. It is not his value theory, but rather his anthropology that is the weak link in an ethic in which he attempts to weave together the natural, human, and divine spheres. With a richer, more fully developed theological anthropology, Rolston could more deeply penetrate and critique those aspects of the present (...) ways of being-in-the-world that are environmentally destructive. (shrink)