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those of India, both the Hebrew and the Greek traditions |
made human beings the centre of the moral universe - indeed |
not merely the centre, but very often, the entirety of the morally |
significant features of this world. |
The biblical story of creation, in Genesis, makes clear the |
Hebrew view of the special place of human beings in the divine |
plan: |
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Practical Ethics |
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: |
and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and |
over the fowl of the air, and over the earth, and over every |
creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. |
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God |
created he him; male and female created he them. |
And God blessed them, and God said upon them, Be fruitful, |
and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have |
dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, |
and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. |
Today Christians debate the meaning of this grant of 'dominion'; |
and those concerned about the environment claim that |
it should be regarded not as a license to do as we will with other |
living things, but rather as a directive to look after them, on |
God's behalf, and be answerable to God for the way in which |
we treat them. There is, however, little justification in the text |
itself for such an interpretation; and given the example God set |
when he drowned almost every animal on earth in order to |
punish human beings for their wickedness, it is no wonder that |
people should think the flooding of a single river valley is nothing |
worth worrying about. After the flood there is a repetition |
of the grant of dominion in more ominous language: 'And the |
fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of |
the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth |
upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your |
hands are they delivered: |
The implication is clear: to act in a way that causes fear and |
dread to everything that moves on the earth is not improper; |
it is, in fact, in accordance with a God-given decree. |
The most influential early Christian thinkers had no doubts |
about how man's dominion was to be understood. 'Doth God |
care for oxen?' asked Paul, in the course of a discussion of an |
Old Testament command to rest one's ox on the sabbath, but |
it was only a rhetorical question - he took it for granted that |
the answer must be negative, and the command was to be |
explained in terms of some benefit to humans. Augustine shared |
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The Environment |
this line of thought; referring to stories in the New Testament |
in which Jesus destroyed a fig tree and caused a herd of pigs |
to drown, Augustine explained these puzzling incidents as intended |
to teach us that 'to refrain from the killing of animals |
and the destroying of plants is the height of superstition'. |
When Christianity prevailed in the Roman Empire, it also |
absorbed elements of the ancient Greek attitude to the natural |
world. The Greek influence was entrenched in Christian philosophy |
by the greatest of the medieval scholastics, Thomas |
Aquinas, whose life work was the melding of Christian theology |
with the thought of Aristotle. Aristotle regarded nature as a |
hierarchy in which those with less reasoning ability exist for |
the sake of those with more: |
Plants exist for the sake of animals, and brute beasts for the sake |
of man - domestic animals for his use and food, wild ones (or |
at any rate most of them) for food and other accessories of life, |
such as clothing and various tools. |
Since nature makes nothing purposeless or in vain, it is undeniably |
true that she has made all animals for the sake of man. |
In his own major work, the Summa Theologica, Aquinas followed |
this passage from Aristotle almost word for word, adding |
that the position accords with God's command, as given in |
Genesis. In his classification of sins, Aquinas has room only for |
sins against God, ourselves, or our neighbours. There is no possibility |
of sinning against non-human animals, or against the |
natural world. |
This was the thinking of mainstream Christianity for at least |
its first eighteen centuries. There we!e gentler spirits, certainly, |
like Basil, John Chrysostom, and Francis of Assisi, but for most |
of Christian history they have had no significant impact on the |
dominant tradition. It is therefore worth emphasising the major |
features of this dominant Western tradition, because these features |
can serve as a point of comparison when we discuss different |
views of the natural environment. |
According to the dominant Western tradition, the natural |
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Practical Ethics |
world exists for the benefit of human beings. God gave human |
beings dominion over the natural world, and God does not care |
how we treat it. Human beings are the only morally important |
members of this world. Nature itself is of no intrinsic value, and |
the destruction of plants and animals cannot be sinful. unless |
by this destruction we harm human beings. |
Harsh as this tradition is, it does not rule out concern for the |
preservation of nature, as long as that concern can be related |
to human well-being. Often, of course, it can be. One could, |
entirely within the limits of the dominant Western tradition, |
oppose nuclear power on the grounds that nuclear fuel. whether |
in bombs or power stations, is so hazardous to human life that |
the uranium is better left in the ground. Similarly, many arguments |
against pollution, the use of gases harmful to the ozone |
layer, the burning of fossil fuels, and the destruction of forests, |
could be couched in terms of the harm to human health and |
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