4.1. *The PlantCoopLab Project, Plant Labor and Food Agentivity*

The PlantCoopLab project aims to challenge the lack of concern for plants in an agricul-
tural context where plant–human qualitative relationships are usually ignored. Its working
hypothesis is that raising concern for the standing of plants can be a catalyst of change to-
wards more sustainable food production and consumption. Its approach is framed by the
perspective of environmental humanities and is based on three methodological axes. First,
interdisciplinary cooperation in the field of the humanities (anthropology, ethnography, philos-
ophy, semiotics, sociology) with invited contributions from other disciplines (e.g., agronomy,
ecology, ecophysiology, history, medicine, zootechnics). Second, transdisciplinary interactions
with plant practitioners (e.g., agrarian farmers, seed craftsmen, herbalists, artists) during semi-
nars and workshops. Third, an emphasis on real-life experience encountered in professional
practice, in the context of both research and productive activities.

The project addresses the issue of plant–human cooperation “in the field of labor” [30]. This issue is especially relevant in the context of food production where the purpose is use and sale of plants, whereas it does not apply in a recreational context. Production is the very issue, so there is no point in opposing a relational agriculture to a production agriculture [31]. The emphasis is put on the notion of “plant labor”—whatever this means—in order to cast new light on both plant activities or “agentivity” and the different plant-centered occupations of practitioners. The use of an agentive, performative lens reverberates on the whole process of food production which can also be described in terms of agentivity, food being agentive in its own way [32]. Examples of questions that have been discussed so far are: Are plants something or “someone”? Do they “collaborate”? Are they fully domesticated or do they retain some degree of “wildness”? The objective is not to conduct an opinion survey but rather to set a participative process and seek interactions on a research action basis. The quotations in the following sections are taken from the records of a two-day workshop that was organized in a farm in Sologne in 2022 with about 30 participants. The place was chosen for its extensive expertise in several areas: agroecology and professional education in agrarian farming, seed collection and reproduction of old and native crop varieties and the more recent creation of an agrarian university.

Most practitioners who have participated in the project so far already had specialized
in agroecologically oriented practices, including a wide diversity of approaches: organic
farming, biodynamic farming, eco-systemic agriculture, regenerative agriculture, conserva-
tion agriculture and permaculture. Most of those who attended the workshop in Sologne
had also been involved for many years in professional farming education, so they were
quite prepared to discuss their specific orientation in round-table conversation. On the
whole, they tended to be critical of the scientific framing of the questions because these
seemed artificial and too intellectual to them. Some of the attendees even thought that the
notion of labor does not apply because their work is tightly intertwined with their private
life. Work was not seen as a job or a business: “working, the notion of work, for me it’s
life”. To the extreme, one argued that his whole life should be viewed as labor or else his
labor would amount to life: “I start working on Monday mornings when I wake up. And I
stop on Sunday night when I fall asleep. You can’t be a peasant if you’re not a peasant all
the time”. An important distinction was between “dead labor” and “living labor” which
also pointed to an opposition between industrial agriculture and agrarian farming. The
qualification of living labor helped to draw a parallel between plant labor and human
work, even though this was by using metaphors. Thus spoke one of the practitioners: “My
relationship with plants is a question that does not arise since I bathe in them, I live with
them and my work, it is theirs and vice versa”. He later added: “You can’t dream, as
energy doesn’t come from oil, it has to come from the man. . . 4000 h of work is something I
can manage!”. He recognized that he had been lucky for when started he had no money
and encountered health problems; thus, he had to turn to another way of growing crops.
Another one pointed to the volunteer aspect of his work: “I do a service to society. I’m
sorry, it’s not to say...but I don’t make a living. But I do it to evolve our food systems”.
Overall, the notion of labor triggered an emphasis on individual striving toward a way of life more attuned to ecological values. For a number of the attendees, this meant less money and more work in addition to a lower social standing. Some had left their previous occupations, e.g., a singer in a popular music band or an employee in a well-paid computer engineering company. One practitioner described his professional occupation as a landless peasant, another one had chosen to work and live on site where he had built a positive energy hut and another works in a 0.6 Planet estate that aims to reduce the human footprint from three planets to only 0.6 planets. For all practitioners, agroecology was implicitly linked to the pursuit of *eudaimonia* through caring for agrarian nature: “I work rather to flourish, to create, to exist, to forge my identity”. The striving for the good life was interpreted as having others in view, i.e., fellow (wo)men who need food, non-human living beings and more generally everything that surrounds: “[my work with plants] is a commitment, I think about the commitment I feel to the seeds I care for or am in charge of”. Flourishing was more or less explicitly linked to a responsibility: “For me it is the expression of our freedom to respect or not to respect the living”. This meant developing a sense of belonging through “complete connection” and gaining a more sensitive perception of plants and their surroundings; integrating respect, gratefulness, wonder and love in training and education and sharing an ecological awareness through participative projects and community building—e.g., with students, children, persons in social reintegration. Overall, the conversation on the issue of plant labor and cooperation allows virtue-oriented principles to surface and emphasizes the importance of VE in order to understand the diverse approaches of the notion of agroecology.

## 4.2. *Agroecosophy, a Philosophical Turn*

Agroecology is not one but many and it encompasses more or less subtle approaches and different farming visions. Giraldo and Rosset see it as a “territory in dispute” between two trends, one that “conforms” and one that “transforms” [33]. Conformation agroecology aims to make industrial agriculture less unsustainable by adding technical options to its toolbox. Transformation agroecology consists of changing the underlying agricultural pattern by promoting a sustainable human-nature relationship. The dichotomy exposed by Giraldo and Rosset shows that institutional science tends to perpetuate a dominant pattern, whilst actual change in this pattern can only emerge from social movements. This dichotomy can also be understood as a polarity between two driving forces that need to be balanced. Thus, the issue of scalability will eventually raise the need for some degree of institutionality—e.g., to obtain scientific recognition, public subsidies, product or process qualification and trade standards. Reciprocally, ongoing social and ecological problems will keep challenging the institutional mainstream and call for more radical changes and breakthrough innovations.

Beyond the dichotomy that opposes conformation and transformation, in other words scientific ecology and social ecology, VE introduces a third component that may have been overlooked so far. This leads to propose that agroecology is three-fold rather than two-fold, in line with Guattari’s concept of ecosophy (see Introduction). In integrating both concepts of ecosophy and agroecology, the notion of “agroecosophy” elaborates on a threefold understanding of agroecology. The forgotten, third component of agroecology emphasizes the position of the *Anthropos* within her agricultural matrix and her actual striving to mitigate the territorial dispute between conformation and transformation, institutionality and social movement, form and life, two opposites in a polarity. Agroecosophy is conceived as a virtue-oriented agroecology that aims to establish the golden mean between conformation and transformation. Because of its threefold understanding, it can expand in a proper philosophy of agroecology and not merely “about” agroecology. Accordingly, plant cultivation should also be given an ecosophic account.

The standing of plants has become an important issue since the notion of dignity of living beings was introduced in the Swiss federal Constitution [29,34]. This prompted the emergence of a field devoted to plant ethics, as reported in the recently published volume by
Angela Kallhoff’s group in Vienna [35]. In particular, Kallhoff proposes to use the Aristotelian notion of flourishing to assess the good life of plants [36,37]. Other authors envision plant ethics in light of animism [38]. Ethical attention to plants supports a relational account of the virtues of gardening and of “growing one’s own” in a garden [39,40]. Yet, some authors seem skeptical about the application of VE beyond wild and ornamental plants, considering that it will necessarily be limited in the case of agriculture, e.g., [41]. It can be argued that, in the context of food production, the good life of plants does not mean that they should be left out but rather that they need to be eaten by humans, animals or micro-organisms. Being eaten does not imply being degraded, provided that plant flourishing is an important issue for the food system. Because productive occupations cannot be uncoupled from an instrumental purpose, the role of EVE appears even more crucial in this case than for other interactions with plants. Examples such as organic farming in Europe and peasant movements in South America show that it is essential to distinguish between global driving forces at work in society as a whole and agent-centered motivations of individuals. Virtue is not a social output but an individual input. The history of organic agriculture is not built on institutional grounds nor on social movements but on the conversion and commitment of individuals [42]. There is no science of virtue but only a natural history of virtue. Virtue needs to be first uncovered and then recreated again through a continuous flow of individual transformation. Virtue can never conform, otherwise it would become merely an automatic response, a habit or implicit compliance to external norms. Likewise, a philosophy of organic transformation cannot be institutionalized, otherwise it would become a philosophy of organic conformation, hence an aporia. A philosophy of organic transformation needs to be experienced ever and again. Only then can it stream in social movements and eventually settle in institutional norms. But these norms can only be useful insofar as a right balance is found between conformation and transformation. To some extent, external rules may help find a provisional balance. However, in line with Aristotle’s virtue ethics, the balance will be right only if the golden mean is recurrently assessed by moral agents. In practice, EVE will always be needed to adjust decisions to concrete situations.

One may argue that the number of farmers is decreasing in developed countries, especially small farmers. This was clearly pointed out by a practitioner: "I have watched the destruction of agriculture for decades. In fact, today the aim is to achieve an agriculture without farmers. That is why we are now only 2% while we were still 37% in the 1970s! [...] Before insects and animals and plants and biodiversity had disappeared, farmers themselves had to disappear". Here, the issue is not to propose a romantic vision of agrarian life and to claim that it is inherently conducive to virtue. Most of those who have left the land during the last two centuries were expecting to find better conditions of living in the cities and will probably not go back to farming occupations. Thus, the importance of agroecosophic virtues in agriculture may appear to be only marginal in addressing major ecologic challenges. This is undisputable. However, norms and rules are usually not the fact of the majority. Most of the time, they occur as a generalization of marginal cases which have been praised for their virtue. If we want to secure the future of agriculture and food production, this marginal, empirical contribution needs to be encouraged so as to continuously recreate and embody a human sense of place and centeredness on Earth. Furthermore, it is crucial to also enable urban dwellers to embark on this agroecosophic turn. In the case of organic agriculture, not only have individual farmers had to undergo a conversion. Individual consumers living in urban estates have also had to convert to this agroecological orientation and bring their support. The PlantCoopLab conversation with practitioners led to distinguish three types of agroecosophic virtues:

* Agrarian virtues acquired by those who actually work and interact with plants and need to attune their way of life to plant in-betweenness.

* Food-centered virtues developed by those who actually recall what their life owes to plant growth and farming.

* Plant-centered virtues exerted by those who actually undergo a non-Euclidian conversion in their perception of nature and of their own human condition.
This distinction will be further examined in the next sections.

**5. Agroecosophic Virtue Ethics and the Golden Mean**

**5.1. Farming-Centered Virtue Ethics**

In addition to the virtues that practitioners in the PlantCoopLab enquiry have linked to an agrarian good life (see above), the virtue of honesty, truthfulness or being true to oneself and to others appeared to describe quite explicitly the pursuit of the golden mean. As mentioned by one practitioner: "we are faced with a cheating agriculture. How does it cheat? It cheats with all the tricks of petrochemicals and heavy industry, which poison us and destroy the environment. [...] To get back to an agriculture that does not cheat, we have to get back to a sufficient number of farmers who maintain the environment". Trickery means that any attempt to reach the golden mean is doomed to fail and that a faked balance will be used instead: "[The farmer]'s gonna put a little bit of "perlinpimpin" powder here and there. That approach has led us to huge dead ends. I make an environment that I produce and then I explain that nature works in that way. And here, it's all fake!" In contrast to this vicious trend, the virtue of being true to oneself implies to have the capacity to discriminate the right *metis*, i.e., the kind of skill that acknowledges in-betweenness, from mere trickery that ignores and obscures the sense of place. Trickery seeks a "transformation of life into a machine" whereas a truthful *metis* requires an ongoing process of attunement: "We are always in tensions, which are never resolved, so it is not comfortable [...] it's a bit like walking on water, so how to inhabit the "milieu", in both senses of the word?". Attunement implies that one needs to work with polarities. This was compared to the dynamic relationship in a couple of dancers. One cannot fake dancing and instead use ready-made fixes. The latter may hide a problem for a while but will eventually lead to larger problems.

It is only through enacted partnership in real life that truthfulness will be revealed as a virtue. The virtue of truthfulness does not require a specific degree of knowledge or professional experience. From the most unexperienced people to the most expert practitioners, truthfulness can be trained so as to encompass the sense of place, even in the case of urban dwellers and people who live away from agrarian surroundings. Each individual situation has its own specific requirement depending on the skills and experience of a person: "we must not say that it is right for everyone at every moment, no, in that moment, where is the rightness of action?" In the case of practitioners, there is "plenty of time to contemplate animals and plants. To wait. To listen". There is time to gain an embodied knowledge: "our daily empiricism gives us the feeling that these things produce certain effects. Even if this cannot be scientifically demonstrated or even will be contested, the fact remains that on a daily basis it leads us into action". Yet, in order to know what "the right actions" are, one also needs to make use of one's individual compass. This led the landless peasant to ask "What is our potential to have an opinion, to judge the thing we're talking about, which for me is more of the sacred order?" Here, the issue is not only to gain more knowledge or more information. It is also to develop a sense of rightfulness, this being tightly linked to the virtue of truthfulness.

**5.2. Food-Centered Agroecosophic Virtues**

Most city dwellers have left their former peasant conditions over the last two centuries and have undergone a gradual conversion to land and food agnosticism. Today, most farmers do not know who they feed: "I realized that when I plant potatoes or cabbages, or when I produce seeds, I don't even know who's going to eat that one day, I don't know. So somehow it's an altruistic act". Reciprocally, urban people often do not know how food is produced: "it is not fair that we have a few mercenaries with big machines, robots, genetics, digital technology etc. who produce food for crowds who don't even know what they eat and who no longer make any contribution, not only in the production of their food, but also in the upkeep and care of the environment in which they live". It is a fact that most of us would rather ignore how "stones be made bread"²¹ and that their most pressing need is
food. We want to live not only by bread, and most of us nurture the dream of a pristine
nature emancipated from labor while having the possibility to simply click and collect
our food. This common pattern of food disburdenment is built on ignorance of one's own
absolute vulnerability and of what agriculture is about. Of course, some urban dwellers are
willing to raise their awareness of agricultural issues, to gain information about what they
eat and change their food habits. But this striving alone cannot amount to virtue because
most of the time the aim is to conform to a representation of what it is to be a good person
rather than to actually have a practice of reburdenment and share the pursuit of a sense of
place and of the golden mean.

One example is the adoption of a vegan diet which is often focused only on animal suffering while the radical difference between husbandry and industrial agriculture is obscured [43,44]. Although ethical concerns about suffering and ending an animal's life are well founded, erasing the whole history of animal domestication and companionship does not seem to be a better option. Thus, in a strictly vegan society, farm animals might appear unnecessary and eventually become extinct: "if we think of food without animals, it doesn't make sense. There are no plants without animals. I can't imagine doing without animals for food, because that would mean doing without them for life". Furthermore, this would further undermine the carbon to nitrogen balance that has already been drastically disturbed by the uncoupling between plant and animal productions, hence accelerating soil degradation and the artificialization of agriculture, and this would also ignore the environmental footprint of the replacement of animal products by plant products (e.g., chemical inputs, building and energy costs and food processing). Although most vegans do not think about animals as material but as sentient living beings, they implicitly accept the notion that plant food and animal food are equivalent according to their substance and can be interchanged. In the PlantCoopLab conversation, it was argued that we cannot be animal moralists on the one hand and plant predators on the other hand: "what's also quite central for me is the relationship to life and the relationship to death [...] in the end, what's at stake is taking life, be it animal or vegetable. It's part of life". But taking life cannot be uncoupled from the issue of labor: "is working with domestic plants at the service of life or at the service of multinationals?".

Two food-oriented virtues surfaced in the discussions, humility and gratefulness. First, we need to approach food in the perspective of living and dying. We need to take life, “to slit a lettuce”, in order to keep alive: “it’s something that disappears, it’s something that we’ve seen evolve, we would like it to remain because it’s a great moment of affect, emotion and connection”. We have looked after it, cared for it and eventually we will go and pull it out. We have to do so because our human condition is mortal, and hunger is our primal experience of this condition [45]. To recall this fact ever and again amounts to the virtue of humility versus the hubris of the strong man who behaves as if he could turn any piece of stone into bread: “our Western attitude is to deny our vulnerability and be in hyper control. So not to be hyper-vulnerable instead, but to admit that this is our condition”. Humility in this case also calls forth the virtue of hope since we need to trust that life will actually keep going and rebuild what has been torn away to make our food.

Second, we need to raise our awareness that life keeps going because farmers and
plants cooperate to make that food. We should be grateful because thanks to this cooper-
ation we have something to eat: "When I harvest the lettuce, I put myself in the place of
the lettuce I've been growing for so long, [...] If then I land on a plate and someone eats
me gratefully, I've fulfilled my goal". The virtue of gratefulness is needed to mitigate the
predatory drives of the *Andros*. It is needed to recall ever and again that plant-based food is
not more environmentally virtuous than animal-based food if it is considered to be mere
stuff that comes from the ground. For both plant and animal food, one should be grateful
for the life given [46]. Any urban dweller who wants to undergo a genuine agroecosophic
turn could start with the virtues of humility and gratefulness. This could help make sense of
something more conspicuous like veganism and other possible commitments and actions.
### 5.3. Plant-Centered Agroecosophic Virtues

Most city dwellers probably have a very faint notion of what it means to grow food. They possibly also have little knowledge of what it is to be a plant, although they see plants around in their daily life. Even in a very concrete area, one can encounter trees, bushes or weeds. Yet, there is a long way to go from a weed in the city to a crop in the field and the understanding of what plant-centered virtues might imply. The otherness of plants is paradoxically fascinating and difficult to address in ethical terms [47,48]. In the PlantCoopLab conversation, this otherness was often described by the notions of “cosmos” and “life”, which underlie the undisrupted continuity of plants with the wholeness of the world depicted as a spatial globality and an evolutionary process. The plant was seen as a “revelation” in this global integration: “Does the plant have a will, or is it merely subject to laws? I’d like to say that the plant is a revelation of cosmic laws that manifest themselves”. Cosmic laws appear in seasonal rhythms by which life and death alternate through growth, blooming, dormancy, etc.: “life, it lies between expansion and contraction”. This expressive specificity was linked to its verticality: the plant is anchored in the earth, in a place and in a geographic location, and it is “sucked up” and suspended in the larger space where it unfolds. This integration in the wholeness of the world was described as a “total connection”, a symbiosis in a “being-together”, or an “ecosystem”. This feeling could be intensified in exceptional moments: “At one point, late in June, I saw a tiny green dot appear on the neck of the verbena plant. There I was, on my knees, lying down, my eye on that bud, the blue sky already warm and the earth still fresh, and I no longer existed. I was part of the earth, part of the sky, part of the plant”.

The otherness of plants contrasted with our atomized androcentric condition: “In the end, the only being no longer connected is us. Everything else is connected”. We human beings in our modern technological societies are “disconnected”, we have lost something. We keep striving to extract “something else” through our work because our experience is that of scarcity and need. We need relation, interaction and exchange to reach beyond the limits of our human individuation and isolation and to gain an experience of unity with the living, earthly, cosmic basis in which we are founded and which indigenous cultures still nurture. Finally: “Are plants something or someone? Actually, neither. It’s a commitment, I’m thinking to the commitment I feel towards the seeds I care for or look after. It’s not someone either, because a plant is very diffuse. Visually it has an outline, but when you understand the plant, when you see it develop, you understand how it relates to its environment, its contours become very, very diffuse”.

Altogether, the otherness of plants invites us to think again the place of the human being on earth. We gain “a growing curiosity about soil, what is below, water, flows, temperature, I don’t know… I imagine this opens up to the essence, to knowledge, but above all to this relationship with oneself, to what place one gives oneself in this living world”. While the animal arises as a partner and companion of life, the wholeness of the plant invites us to perceive everything that surrounds in a cosmological topology: “We’ve talked a lot about space. What are the limits… this interaction [with plants] it can be limited to an individual, but then immediately we moved on to the collective, and to the cosmos. It’s as if the plant draws us back to everything, to life”. The plant cosmological topology challenges the common Euclidian pattern linked to our androcentric condition. Perception needs to be refined: “If you come right out and do it, it doesn’t work because you don’t have the right glasses. In the West today, we need to deconstruct the way we see plants”. Some practitioners go as far as to design their plots according to geometric proportions found in nature or used in sacred architecture: “In my garden—I’m also inspired by notions such as sacred geography—I’ve made connections with the golden proportion between the cultivation beds and the size of the gardens. I’ve put up standing stones… I say to myself, I make cultivation beds but not just to be functional. I also add elements”.

Besides inviting us to think again about the place of the human being on earth, the otherness of plants also raises the issue as to what kind of knowledge, or rather which way of knowing is needed. Plant-centered virtues do not depend only on information,
although this can be useful in any case [49]. To gain an adequate insight into plant otherness, one needs to raise attention to one's own perceptive activity, which can be physical (e.g., sense of touch), vital (vibration, energy) or more contemplative, aesthetic or even artistic and to one's intuition and introspective vision as a means of relating to the cosmological dimension of plants. This does not preclude the need for objectification and knowledge. But reductionist science is not sufficient because it approaches plants only as machines [29,50]. To reach beyond this science "from below", one also needs to introduce a science "from above". The latter "is that which is in the macrocosm, in the qualitative compared to the quantitative. Observing the synthesis of the global, what surrounds... surrounds the life forces around the earth". At least for some attendees, these "subtle agroecologies" [51] seemed to imply more than an embodied knowledge and revealed an intentional pursuit of a wise connection to the whole cosmos. Practical wisdom appears unsurprisingly a core agroecosophic virtue. In the attempt to address the wholeness of plants, this virtue can be further specified as the ability to grasp something all-embracing, a way of presencing the cosmological wholeness of plants. This ability is not a direct result of farming or gardening although the position of the gardener or farmer is obviously quite advantageous. One can start with awakening and nurturing an awareness of the wholeness of plants. This awakening can be trained even in the city; thus, agroecosophic wisdom is not limited to rural contexts.

With an agroecosophic perspective, what it is to be a plant can be grasped even in the middle of nowhere. Especially when what surrounds does not stimulate our perceptive activity, the presencing of plantness will represent a most needed virtue. Wherever there is a tree, one can raise attention to the cosmological wholeness of plants and reach beyond Euclidian bounds. Furthermore, wherever there is a seed, one can develop a subtle perception of plant potentiality. We all know that seed potentiality can expand in the cosmos although we cannot see it with our eyes until it actually happens: "we'll not be able to keep seeds in a conservatory, or in this hyper-technical environment [...] because we'll have to sow it again. If we do not do so within a certain timeframe, potentiality will eventually fade away". Human creation needs always to be attuned to spontaneous, wild expression of potentiality [52]. This leads to the question "to get rid of the guilt we almost all feel when we talk about plant domestication, do we really degrade plants by doing this to them, or do we raise them?" To this question another one was added: "or do we not rise ourselves along with them?" What is raised is not an ingredient coming from the ground but something imperceptible at first, a plant potentiality which has the capacity to flourish and expand into space. Thus, the sense of space is changed because the plant does not fit a Euclidian pattern like a concrete building but elaborates its own non-Euclidian pattern, its own golden proportions. To perceive this subtle way of weaving forms into space can change radically our appraisal of what surrounds, i.e., the "environment". From home plants to the co-creation process of breeding, agroecosophic virtues may reverberate through the whole of the agricultural matrix by changing our perception of space, our aesthetic matrix and turning the *Andros* into an *Anthrokos*.

## 6. Conclusions—The Non-Euclidian Pattern, Recasting the Epistemic Grounds of EVE

Under a naturalist, scientific premise, science and ethics should be kept separate. In line with this assumption, one may ban ethical anthropocentrism while adopting an epistemological anthropocentrism [8]. However, insofar as the naturalist episteme incorporates an anthropocentric bias, the distinction between ethical and epistemological anthropocentrism appears artificial. Under an agroecosophic premise, science and ethics should not be kept separate because agriculture is not a percentage of land areas but an all-embracing matrix. This leads to shifting the emphasis put on anthropocentrism seen as a curse to anthropo-centeredness, an "ecosophic anthropocentrism" that reveals the wholeness of the agricultural matrix. An ecosophic anthropocentrism also means that the notion of *Anthropos* and her virtues need to be thought on new grounds. A strong ecosophic requirement is to undertake a deep ecological transformation of one's subjectivity. The golden mean is
not to be found in statistics or in social norms; it arises as a singularity and needs to be experienced at once by a moral agent. As long as VE is bound to a naturalist, scientific premise, its environmental contribution will remain intrinsically limited. Recasting the epistemic grounds of VE with a new “aesthetic paradigm” [3,53] may have wide-reaching consequences and encourage further agroecosophic research and initiatives. To develop agroecosophic VE, one needs to approach the otherness of plants especially in a highly domesticated context. The attention to the wholeness of plants will only be raised by shifting from a Euclidian animal-based pattern to a non-Euclidian plant-based pattern. “Thinking in aesthetic terms therefore requires us to totally reformulate our relationship to the world, as Naess and Guattari unambiguously propose” [53] (p. 321).

**Funding:** The PlantCoopLab research project was funded by the Fondation Daniel et Nina Carasso (2021-2024) via the Fondation de France, grant number 00110655.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the PlantCoopLab conversation.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Acknowledgments:** I thank the members of the PlantCoopLab project (https://plantcooplab.hypotheses.org/) for their collaboration in organizing the transdisciplinary conversation with practitioners and scientists. I am also grateful to Christine Roberts for personal comments on the manuscript.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

## Notes

<footnote n="1">¹ The definition of the term environment was drawn from the the Oxford English Dictionary and a summary provided by the WordReference dictionary: “(i) the aggregate of surrounding things, conditions or influences; milieu; (ii) the air, water, minerals, organisms and all other external factors surrounding and affecting a given organism at any time; (iii) the social and cultural forces that shape the life of a person or a population”, available online at: https://www.wordreference.com/definition/environment. (accessed on 26 September 2023).</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² PR: Press Release by UN-CBD on 19 December 2022, https://www.cbd.int/article/cop15-cbd-press-release-final-19dec2022 (accessed on 9 October 2023), p. 3.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ PR, Goal A.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ PR, target 19.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">5 PR, target 11.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶ PR, target 16.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷ PR, Goal C, targets 11 and 21.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸ PR, target 5.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹ NC: Draft on Nature and culture, https://www.cbd.int/conferences/2021-2022/cop-15/documents (accessed on 9 October 2023), decision 1.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ NC, Annex Goal.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹ BA: Draft on Biodiversity and agriculture, https://www.cbd.int/conferences/2021-2022/cop-15/documents (accessed on 9 October 2023), 3.8.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹² PR, target 4.</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³ PR, target 11.</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴ PR, target 19.</footnote>

<footnote n="15">¹⁵ BA, 4.7.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">¹⁶ BA, 3.10.</footnote>

<footnote n="17">¹⁷ BA, Element 4.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">¹⁸ BA, 4.12.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">¹⁹ With the ultimate ratio of 50% of the planet under protection, the ecological footprint would amount to six “smaller planets”.</footnote>

<footnote n="20">²⁰ The PlantCoopLab research project is an interdisciplinary collaboration between eight academic scholars who are located in three research institutional departments in different areas of France. The research action started in 2020 and has been awarded a grant</footnote>
for four years. It does not involve cultivation and care of actual plants but organizes transdisciplinary workshops with plant practitioners and has collaborations with civil society organizations that promote agroecology.

21 This verse is taken to illustrate the paradox of wanting to ignore how food is made. It refers to the episode commonly known as the three temptations of Christ by Satan. In the case of this temptation, the trial is rather cunning since the answer cannot bypass the fact that human beings need food. Although "man shall not live by bread alone", he will obviously live also by bread. The complete wording of this verse is to be found in the Gospel of Matthew 4:3: "And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread" and in the Gospel of Luke 4:3: "And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread" (Saint James version of the Bible).

## References

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## Article

# Virtue, Environmental Ethics, Nonhuman Values, and Anthropocentrism

Marcello Di Paola

Department of Humanities, University of Palermo, 90133 Palermo, Italy; marcello.dipaola01@unipa.it

**Abstract:** This article discusses the encounter between virtue ethics and environmental ethics and the ways in which environmental virtue ethics confronts nonhuman axiology and the controversial theme of moral anthropocentrism. It provides a reasoned review of the relevant literature and a historical–conceptual rendition of how environmental and virtue ethics came to converge as well as the ways in which they diverge. It explains that contrary to important worries voiced by some non-anthropocentric environmental ethicists, environmental virtue ethics enables and requires a rich and nuanced engagement with nonhuman values of all sorts—intrinsic as well as extrinsic, moral as well as nonmoral, anthropocentric as well as non-anthropocentric—and neither presupposes nor implies moral anthropocentrism in its normativity. Finally, the article considers the fortunes of, and some challenges for, environmental virtue ethics in its application to the ethics of climate change, an increasingly central topic in environmental ethics. This article proceeds as follows: the first section introduces virtue ethics; the second section looks at axiological and normative themes in environmental ethics; the third section discusses environmental virtue ethics; and the fourth section considers its application to climate change. The fifth section draws some conclusions.

**Keywords:** virtue ethics; environmental ethics; anthropocentrism; climate change

## 1. Virtue Ethics

The study of virtue investigates what sort of person one should be to live a good life. Since ancient times, in the East and West, the practice of virtue has typically been thought to not only enable but also to constitute (at least partly) a good life. Correspondingly, the practice of vice has typically been thought to not only enable but also to constitute (at least partly) a bad life. This is the core of virtue ethics (VE)¹.

Virtues and vices are traditionally understood to be tendencies in thought and action that are sufficiently habitual to an agent as to count, though somewhat loosely, as characteristic modes of their being. These modes are typically identified as “character traits”². Influential versions of VE have it that a character trait (being benevolent/malevolent, humble/arrogant, courageous/cowardly, etc.) qualifies as a virtue if, because, and to the extent that its development and exercise contribute to the agent living a good life. Correspondingly, a character trait qualifies as a vice if, because, and to the extent that its development and exercise contribute to the agent living a bad life.

The criteria for what counts as a good life typically include welfarist, perfectionist, aesthetic, and moral entries, with different theories privileging or emphasizing one or more of these entries over the others. Importantly, while these criteria for goodness may be (and typically are) impersonally defined, the goodness of satisfying them—including other-regarding criteria like moral criteria—is, according to VE, to be measured from the perspective of the agent. In other words, the goodness of a virtuous life (whatever its ingredients and their proportions) is/must be good for, and from the perspective of, the agent who lives it: it is/must be a prudentially good life³.

Many versions of VE accept that a prudentially good life is a life of *eudaimonia*, a term used by Plato and Aristotle to indicate something like a “good spirit” and typically

**Citation:** Di Paola, M. Virtue, Environmental Ethics, Nonhuman Values, and Anthropocentrism.
*Philosophies* 2024, 9, 15. https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9010015

Academic Editors: Sylvie Pouteau and Gérald Hess

Received: 18 September 2023

Revised: 12 November 2023

Accepted: 26 December 2023

Published: 15 January 2024

<figure><img src="image_13.png" /></figure>

**Copyright:** © 2024 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
translated as "happiness" or "flourishing". A good life is thus a happy or flourishing life, and the practice of virtue not only enables but also constitutes (at least partly) such a life. This is the eudaimonistic view of VE, which is very influential among virtue ethicists though not without alternatives [9–16]. This article does not dismiss but will not discuss these alternatives; its subject is eudaimonistic VE⁴.

Widely different accounts of *eudaimonia* have been given through the centuries (for a conceptual overview, see [19]). Differences in such accounts tend mainly to stem from the ways in which different theorists define, ordain, and relate to one another (including by reduction and subsumption) the criteria—including the welfarist, perfectionist, aesthetic, and moral—for the goodness of a life. Generally, these different configurations in turn depend on the ideas about human nature and/or the human condition that different authors entertain which, in turn, inform their ideas about what matters most to a good human life.

Whatever may matter most in different theories, all theories agree that a virtuous agent will be able to appreciate that certain things do matter most, or more than others, to a virtuous life, and steadfastly, or as steadfastly as possible, comport themselves accordingly. In the eudaimonistic picture, both such orderings of importance (whose practical functions are those of blueprints, allowing for the planning and pursuit of a good life, as well as yardsticks to measure the extent of one's success in living such a life) and their steadfast pursuit are typically thought to be guided by reason, often understood as a blend of rational understanding, practical rationality, and socio-circumstantial reasonableness whose proportions vary in different theories.

Indeed, the exercise of virtue is traditionally thought to require a special, reasoned appreciation of what matters most in particular circumstances considering what matters most in general. Such appreciation is known from ancient thought as *phronesis*, which is typically translated as "practical wisdom" and often conceived of as something of a meta-virtue, activating and guiding the exercise of the other virtues [20,21]. The practically wise virtuous agent knows what matters to a good life and what does not (or less), and they are thus able to read some features of given situations as more salient than others and conduct themselves accordingly (see, among others, [22]). Another meta-virtue, also counselled and buttressed by reason, is fortitude, typically conceived of as strength of character. Fortitude is a bastion against practical irrationality (or *akrasia*)—the lack of self-control that leads one to act against one's better judgment—and, as such, is also often seen as a precondition for the development and exercise of the other virtues⁵.

Few theories will expect a virtuous agent to be guided always and only by reason. Most VE is rather concerned with the good lives of those not-fully-rational, non-idealized, desiring, biased, limited agents that most humans are. Yet it is still as reflective agents that humans explore the question of how to best live their lives, so most versions of VE will appeal to reason when evaluating living in certain ways rather than others (both at the macro level, where those general blueprints for life are built, and at the micro everyday level where the agent acts).

VE persisted as the dominant normative theory in Western philosophy from the times of Plato and Aristotle to the 18th century, when it was superseded by Deontology and Utilitarianism. These theories focused less on the agent's self-regarding search for happiness or flourishing and more on their other-regarding obligations—or, in other words, less on the prudentially and more on the morally good life—and provided rules, formulas, and tests for the goodness and rightness of actions based on universalist and universalizable principles rather than focusing on these less-regimented, less clearly action-guiding, and inevitably more situated refinements of character.

In the late 20th century, Deontology and Utilitarianism came under sustained attack, particularly at the hands of Cambridge philosopher B. Williams. Williams [25] argued that in most cases, agents do the right (or wrong) thing not because they apply (or dis-apply) the universalist and universalizable rules, formulas, or tests that these theories provide but rather because they recognize certain actions, preferences, practices, etc.,
to correctly valorize themselves, other people, relations, traditions, projects, and other things that they see as important and care about. These recognitions feed on emotions, attachments, and commitments that are vital to the agent but, Williams argued, are sidelined by both Deontology and Utilitarianism as these theories work toward their universalist and universalizable systematizations. From this perspective, “the Morality System” (as Williams called it) is mostly an invasive external factor which tends to obscure what really matters to us as individuals with lives of our own to live, conflating living well with obeying the right rules or formulas and mostly ignoring that which really moves us: affections, allegiances, emotions like shame, pride, fear, love, and disgust (most of which are socially configured and reinforced), and personal and collective aspirations.

None of this is to say that morality does not matter, of course. Williams' point was rather that there are various ways in which morality can matter, and the correct one—morality at its best, as Williams saw it—is from within and in the light of our projects and attempts to live a good life. From this perspective, however important morality may be, it remains the other-regarding, obligation-speaking department of ethics more generally understood—the “do-onto-others” focus group in the larger “living well” office of practical reason(s). Williams thought that too much of what matters is lost, in philosophy as well as in practical life and its evaluation, if morality cannibalizes ethics; and although he was not engaged in a thematic defense of VE, his objections and arguments were moves toward the re-instatement of a picture (which 18th- and 19th-century deontologists and utilitarians had managed to upset) that had long seen the prudentially good life as including rather than being guided by the pursuit of a morally good life, and that picture entailed a larger and renewed role for VE⁶.

Williams' concerns about “the Morality System” were shared by many philosophers, including A. McIntyre, S. Cavell, I. Murdoch, J. McDowell, and S. Blackburn. His and their works have led other theorists to re-embrace VE as a central framework for ethical reflection, recommendation, and evaluation, while others yet have revamped their favorite versions of Deontology or Utilitarianism by complementing them with morally justified virtue theories (e.g., [27,28], among utilitarians; and [29], among deontologists).

Overall, the work carried out to bring VE back has been quite significant⁷. It has sharpened both VE itself and the moral systems that previously obscured it, greatly enriching our contemporary ethical vocabulary and conceptual toolbox. So equipped, we met the ecological crisis.

## 2. Environmental Ethics

The philosophical discipline that first engaged this crisis is Environmental Ethics (EE), the origins of which as an independent field of academic study are customarily spa-tiotemporally located in early-1970s North America and synchronized with the peak of US environmentalism as a political movement [50–52]. EE’s guiding idea has always been that thinking differently—basically, non-anthropocentrically or at least less anthropocentrically—about nonhuman entities will also lead to acting differently (less exploitatively) toward and regarding them. In particular, a more thorough consideration of the value(s) of nonhu-man entities would lead to the recognition of their moral standing and the articulation of human responsibilities (of beneficence, respect, care, justice, and solidarity) toward and regarding them.

The founding philosophical move of EE is a critical denunciation of a cornerstone of Western thought, namely anthropocentrism—an understanding of the human station within the wider workings of things as, in various ways, exceptional, justifying “humans first” or even “humans only” axiologies and normativities. These anthropocentric axiologies and normativities have roots in antiquity, gained strength through Christianity [53] and were then consecrated by modernity with the metaphysical schism practiced by Descartes in the early 17th century—the division of being into *res cogitans* and *res extensa*. Descartes’ allocation of mentality exclusively to humans among all bodily beings implied human
exceptionalism (see, among others, [54], for a discussion). The latter, in turn, can justify forms of anthropocentrism.

*Ontological anthropocentrism* baptizes human beings as the end or reason for which everything exists and works in the way that it does. It is often accompanied, but does not entail nor is entailed by, *moral anthropocentrism*, which holds that human beings are morally superior to everything else in the natural order. This can justify axiological anthropocentric instrumentalism—the thesis that the nonhuman has value only and insofar as it is useful to the realization of the value of the human. Such instrumentalism, in turn, can justify an anthropocentric normativity that selects actions, practices, or policies exclusively on grounds of what good they do for humans and regardless of the ills they may bring to nonhumans. Finally, *conceptual anthropocentrism*, which is neither implied nor implies its ontological and moral counterparts, holds that human beings can only encounter and comprehend the world from a characteristically human vantage point. Different theories may present that vantage point as either privileged or just one among many and as either empowering or limiting⁸.

These distinctions were not always kept clear in the early days of EE, but what envi-
ronmental ethicists really took issue with was, and still is, moral anthropocentrism. That
was, and still is, widely believed to be the ideational root of all ecological travails, degra-
dation, and destruction that humans, especially affluent Western humans, have brought
about, particularly in the last five centuries, with colonialism first and industrialization
later⁹. Therefore, many thinkers past and present have seen moral non-anthropocentrism
as something of a pre-condition for any plausible, stable, and incisive EE¹⁰.

A central research domain in which this question has been explored is that of non-
human axiology, with a focus on the notion of intrinsic moral value and the question of
whether and which nonhuman entities possess it and on what grounds. Environmen-
tal ethicists have traditionally thought that the normative demands of obligatory non-
anthropocentrism (or the limits of justifiable anthropocentrism) could be made to follow
from the results of such axiological exploration.

2.1. *Values*

By intrinsic value, environmental ethicists will at least mean non-instrumental value. Based on this interpretation, nonhuman entities that have intrinsic value are valuable for their own sake: they have what, in value theory, is sometimes called final value [60–62]. With a stronger interpretation, intrinsic value means non-relational (or non-extrinsic) value—that is, value that nonhuman entities may possess simply based on grounds of their own features alone, quite apart from whatever relations they may happen to entertain with anything else (including, but not limited to, relations with humans). On this stronger interpretation, what has intrinsic value matters not just for its own sake but also in its own right and has what may be called freestanding value¹¹.

Historically, there has been something of a hierarchy—at times made explicit, more often left implicit—in the sorts of values that environmental ethicists have thought nonhuman entities to have, and this hierarchy has mostly tracked the anthropocentric vs. non-anthropocentric divide. Basically, the more anthropocentric a value, the lower its ranking; the less anthropocentric a value, the higher its ranking. So, in the scale of values, instrumental value is typically thought to rank lower than intrinsic value, and non-instrumental intrinsic (final) value is often thought to rank lower than non-relational intrinsic (freestanding) value. The beings thought to bear such different values are typically ranked accordingly: entities of freestanding value are thought to have higher axiological status than entities of final value, and both are thought to have higher axiological status than those that are valuable merely instrumentally. In EE, entities of freestanding (intrinsic non-relational) value have been thought to have direct moral standing, entities of final (intrinsic relational) value have been thought to have derivative moral standing, and entities of instrumental value have been thought to have no moral standing whatsoever.
EE's primary focus has mostly been on establishing, wherever possible, the freestanding moral value of nonhuman entities. This has widely been thought to be the most solid axiological basis for non-anthropocentric normativity. Sentientists argued that individual nonhuman animals have such value because they are sentient [65]. Biocentrists argued that all individual organisms have such value because they are alive [66]. Ecocentrists argued that all ecosystems, understood as ontological units, have such value on grounds of their internal complexity, diversity, integration, evolvability, and other features deemed to be morally relevant [67–69]¹².

Immediately below in the ranking of values is relational final value, which comes in two versions and thus involves a sub-ranking. In one version, ranking higher, the relations grounding the final value of nonhuman entities are not anthropocentric. For example, ecocentrists who argued that ecosystems, understood as ontological units, have freestanding value also typically argued that all ecosystem members, from humans to rivers and on equal footing, have relational final value as parts of an ecosystem that is valuable, and each to the extent that it is a valuable part to such ecosystem (contributing, for example, to its complexity, integration, diversity, and evolvability). Non-anthropocentric relational final value can still support a fully non-anthropocentric normativity.

Not so the other version of relational final value. Here, the relations grounding the final values of nonhuman entities do involve humans, with their perspectives, systems of meaning, and larger axiological and normative constructions. These are aesthetic, scientific, historical, cultural, and sacred/religious relations, which make nonhuman entities important to humans in ways that are more than merely instrumental. All those thinkers who have insisted on the manifold meanings that nonhuman entities have for humans have been concerned with relational final value [70,71]. Yet these thinkers—at least during the first decades of EE's development as a discipline—have been relatively few compared to those who engaged in the search for non-relational freestanding value. This is somewhat surprising, considering that many nonhuman entities have vast amounts of anthropocentric relational final value(s)—of many varieties and disseminated across space, time, and cultures.

One reason may simply be that such value, as noted, is anthropocentric, and that is not what many environmental ethicists were looking for because it seemed to not provide a solid grounding for non-anthropocentric normativity, which was the normativity they wanted. Another reason may be that much of the anthropocentric relational final value of nonhuman entities is non-moral value, which is also not what many environmental ethicists were looking for because what they wanted their axiology to deliver were moral obligations toward nonhuman entities, not (or at least not primarily) aesthetic, scientific, historical, cultural, and sacred/religious reasons for acting one way or another toward or regarding them. A third reason for the relative neglect of anthropocentric relational final value in/by EE may be that such value can be incorrectly construed, or conflated, with instrumental value, and instrumental value occupies the two lowest ranks in the hierarchy of values that nonhuman entities have been thought to have.

Next to last sits non-anthropocentric instrumental value. This is very rarely discussed in EE, although innumerable nonhuman entities use and are used by one another in myriad ways. Humans themselves have non-anthropocentric instrumental value for many nonhumans in various circumstances (for example, when they steward them in gardens or restoration projects, when they feed and nurture them as pets in their homes, when they host bacteria or provide breeding grounds for viruses in their guts, etc.). Emphasis on non-anthropocentric instrumental value effectively brings the human down to the level of an instrumental node in a wider multi-species, multi-realm network of interconnected use, on a par with all other entities. It thus highlights a basic, factual condition of axiological equality.

Leveling down the human in this way, however, does not pair well with the moralization of the nonhuman, which rather wants to bring the nonhuman up to the (allegedly higher) axiological level of humans¹³. Such moralization is the task that many environmental ethicists, in their different ways and domains, have traditionally set for themselves. The
study of non-anthropocentric instrumental value has accordingly not enticed them much, as it seems to deliver no normative directives for humans toward nonhumans because the intrinsic nonhuman values that are typically thought to ground these directives are absent. The value is certainly non-anthropocentric, but only because it is a-centric generally. This seems to be no fertile axiological ground for other-regarding obligations of any kind among any beings.

Finally, the lowest of the low in the eyes of many environmental ethicists is anthro-
pocentric instrumental value. Such is the value that nonhuman entities have merely as a
means to human benefit. Nonhuman entities can have exorbitant amounts of anthropocen-
tric instrumental value, but if that is all the value that they (can be shown to) have, then they
have no moral standing of their own. The normative upshot is that it is entirely permissible
for humans to use nonhumans in view of human benefit alone. Nonhumans may be used
wantonly and exploitatively or cautiously and gently, but even that will be decided only
according to obviously and exclusively instrumental anthropocentric considerations. For
many environmental ethicists, this is literally not a good enough basis for normativity.

This overview oversimplifies very complex and subtle debates. Even so, one element should emerge quite clearly: the nonhuman values that EE has mostly focused on, and upon which it has built its main theoretical postures and normative constructions, have been mostly limited to two sorts, both of which are non-anthropocentric—namely freestanding intrinsic value (for sentientists, biocentrists, and ecocentrists looking at ecosystems whole) and non-anthropocentric relational final value (for ecocentrists looking at ecosystem members). In addition, in its search for nonhuman moral standing, EE has typically focused just on the moral or morally relevant variants of these values.

These may well have been the most important values to focus on, and doing so might
have been the most theoretically innovative and practically urgent action that EE could
take. Nonetheless, non-anthropocentric moral values simply do not exhaust nonhuman
axiology, which is rather richer and far more nuanced. Although anthropocentric non-moral
and yet still final values, non-anthropocentric instrumental values, and anthropocentric
instrumental values have obviously not been absent from EE's radar entirely, they have
not managed to shape its theoretical configurations and preoccupations with the same
intensity and systematicity as non-anthropocentric moral ones have. Yet all these values
can provide humans with reasons, including extremely strong and strongly felt reasons, to
respect, protect, and steward nonhuman entities. These reasons are somewhat sidelined
once moral ones take center stage.

## 2.2. *Normativity*

As already noted at various junctures, many environmental ethicists, particularly
early in the development of the discipline, saw it as their task to establish intrinsic non-
anthropocentric moral value and, with that, the independent moral standing of nonhuman
entities, in view of a non-anthropocentric form of normativity that could establish precise
moral obligations of humans toward nonhumans. Most attention was devoted to, and
most controversy occurred about, the first step of this sequence, devoted to value/standing.
Fewer thinkers questioned the next step—from standing to non-anthropocentric moral
obligations. Yet including an element within a moral community does not necessarily imply
a requirement for human agents to respect it, preserve it, promote it, etc. For example,
mosquitos may have moral standing, but there might nonetheless be excellent and in some
cases overwhelming anthropocentric reasons to exterminate them, for instance, when they
act as disease vectors¹⁴. Some virulently invasive plants may have moral standing, but
there might nonetheless be excellent and in some cases overwhelming non-anthropocentric
reasons to exterminate them, for instance, when they cannibalize the spaces and resources
of native and typically more diverse and ecosystemically integrated plants.

The reasons for which morally considerable nonhuman entities may be protected
or killed, left alone or appropriated, and revered or exploited may be anthropocentric or
non-anthropocentric but, either way, they will be reasons for us humans. Something must
intervene at the juncture between axiology and normativity to turn the former into the latter, and however non-anthropocentric the axiology and the normativity, what turns the former into the latter are humans and facts about us and our modes of being. Even nonhuman values that have nothing to do with us (freestanding value but also non-anthropocentric final value) need to become or be made ours in some way or another before they can normatively direct us in some way or another. These values need to concern us, make sense to us, and perhaps even make sense of us before we can begin to see the ways in which we should be concerned about them and create within our individual and collective lives the conditions to adequately express these modes of concern [74–76] (p. 113). This is not to deny that the intrinsic non-anthropocentric values of nonhuman entities can or even should guide our behaviors but to underscore what it takes for them to do so.

Unsurprisingly, B. Williams, in his only brief incursion into EE, was eager to make just this point: axiological and normative questions about nonhuman values must be asked and answered as questions about values and norms “that human beings can make part of their lives and understand themselves as pursuing and respecting” [25] (p. 234). Otherwise—one may hear him continue—EE will either simply fail to become relevant or become yet another set of external constraints (however solidly grounded and justified), plotted against an agent’s lived experience, in this case their experience of and with nonhuman entities. The nuances, complexities, and contradictions of such an experience may thus fail to be fully represented, and the experience itself will be regulated but not necessarily enriched, better understood, or made more meaningful thereby.

So, it is not just whether given nonhuman entities should be addressees of human obligations—a question that the establishment of their intrinsic moral value was thought to resolve—but also what these obligations are and how they should be fulfilled. Asking these questions is to ask how these obligations fit, or can be made to fit, into our individual and collective lives given the lives that these are, and answering them will inescapably require taking into account the particular combinations of, as well as trade-offs between, values (intrinsic and extrinsic, moral and nonmoral, and anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric) that will be at stake in specific circumstances given all the value-bearers involved (human and nonhuman animals, all other living organisms, species, ecosystems, landscapes, etc.).

The general point is that whichever entities are ultimately shown to have intrinsic value, normativity will not just simply follow. Normative directives will still need to be built on the ground, balancing in each particular case a plurality of values (intrinsic as well as extrinsic) and reasons, and possibly a variety of obligations (some of which might also be conflicting), and then selecting this or that particular course of action as the most adequate (feasible, useful, sustainable, legitimate, and fair) in the circumstances. Given such a plurality of values, reasons, possibly conflicting obligations, and adequacy standards, it is implausible to expect that the contents of the most adequate response will always be identifiable simply by spotting intrinsically valuable entities and then applying a restricted set of universalist rules and principles to determine courses of action for or regarding them. At least in many cases, the practical wisdom that is part of virtue will be indispensable to identifying the contents of the most adequate course of action¹⁵.

And then, once such a course has been identified—even if clearly obligatory, and whatever its contents and nonhuman addressees—it will also need to be effectively pursued in real life every day. Alas, it is perfectly possible to know the best and still do the worst—that is, to act akratically. *Akrasia* already infests our moral comportments toward humans, and it seems it should find even easier terrains when one's obligations are toward nonhuman entities which, unlike humans, usually have little to no power to plead, protest, or retaliate if these obligations go unfulfilled. To know the best and also do it in such circumstances will take fortitude as well. The latter is the virtuous agent's bastion against *akrasia*.

So, two central elements of VE, practical wisdom and fortitude, will need to power even obligation-based versions of EE that recognize intrinsic value to nonhuman entities. Even an agent who acknowledges their obligations toward intrinsically valuable nonhumans will often need to exercise practical wisdom to place and understand these obligations
within the larger context of their life and to determine what actions to take to fulfil them in specific circumstances; and they will also need fortitude to follow up on that determination in action despite powerful incentives not to do so.

This suggests that, at least in EE, the meta-virtues of practical wisdom and fortitude will be of instrumental importance also to utilitarians and deontologists. The former will define them as character traits that yield utility, and the latter as character traits that propel the reliable fulfilment of duties. But environmental virtue ethicists will want more. They will want virtue to be foundational rather than just an aid to differently grounded systems.

### 3. Environmental Virtue Ethics

An (eudaimonistic) environmental virtue ethics (EVE) will include an account of the role of nonhuman entities, and virtuous relations therewith, in and for a prudentially good human life; in other words, it will explain how developing and exercising environmental virtues will benefit the agent by opening them up to experiences, goods, sources of meaning, knowledge, etc., that would instead be unavailable to the non-virtuous. EVE's evaluative focal point will be character traits, and its normative standards will be environmental virtues, that is, prudentially valuable character traits whose development and exercise involve responsiveness toward nonhuman entities and their values. It will provide a catalogue of such virtues and indications regarding which practices will enable and require the agent to develop and exercise them¹⁶.

Environmental virtue ethicists have argued that EVE, though anthropocentric, is an adequate reference framework for EE. In what follows, I size up this claim against the themes that have been given prominence in this article so far—nonhuman values and the issue of anthropocentrism (with no implication that no other themes exist that may also be relevant to an assessment of EVE's overall adequacy as a reference framework for EE)¹⁷.

#### 3.1. *EVE and Nonhuman Moral Values*

EVE simply bypasses the whole intrinsic-value-to-non-anthropocentric-moral-obligations format that has been so popular in EE. EVE is concerned with prudential reasons rather than moral obligations, and that is enough to eliminate the theoretical need for nonhuman intrinsic (freestanding) moral values. To do so is not to deny the existence and importance of such values, but it emancipates EVE from having to prove their existence and importance prior to launch. In the previous section, I noted that, by themselves, these values are often not sufficient bases for normativity even for obligations-based EE; EVE has it that they are not necessary either.

EVE takes all nonhuman entities, regardless of whether they have freestanding or other varieties of value, as ethically considerable—that is, as all involved in, and relevant to (though each in its own ways, roles, and contexts), the goodness of a human life. Different virtues are responsive to different entities and their different intrinsic as well as extrinsic properties in different ways (via different actions, reactions, inactions, and practices). Different virtues are also responsive in different ways to the different sorts of values that these nonhuman entities may have (from freestanding to anthropocentric instrumental value), and it is the job of practical wisdom to adjudicate which virtues should be more centrally or urgently operative in response to which values in particular situations [76] (pp. 40–42).

So, EVE can be theoretically lean, axiologically flexible, contextually alert, and practically inclusive. These are all good things. Nonetheless, in this framework, emphasis is lifted from nonhuman intrinsic moral values and the establishment of non-anthropocentric obligations, and is instead placed on the agent's search for a good life and their prudential reasons for pursuing it by acting in certain ways and not others. The worry is that EVE might be an anthropocentric quicksand. Under its lens, for example, the freestanding values of nonhuman entities no longer seem freestanding but are rather derived from the value of a good human life. And what makes a character trait a virtue is its contribution to
a human life being prudentially good for and from the perspective of the agent who lives it—not its contribution to that life being morally good toward nonhuman entities¹⁸.

Regarding the first concern, EVE does not claim that nonhuman entities derive all their values from their contribution to the goodness of human lives. EVE rather claims that the goodness of a human life is enabled and constituted (at least partly) by the agent's developing and exercising character traits that adequately respond to the values of non-human entities, including freestanding values as much as any other sort of values these entities may (be shown to) have. It is the character traits that one develops and exercises as a response to the intrinsically valuable sentience of animals, the aliveness of plants, and the complexity of diverse ecosystems, whose ethical value (their status as virtues or vices) derives from their contribution to the goodness of the agent's life, not the freestanding moral value of the animals, plants, and ecosystems to which these character traits respond. To count as a prudentially good environmental virtue, a character trait might well have to also respond to non-anthropocentric moral demands posed by intrinsically valuable nonhuman entities.

Regarding the second concern, although the theoretical justification for developing and exercising an environmentally virtuous character trait is anthropocentric and prudential, considerations about what makes a character trait a virtue do not guide a virtuous agent's actions and practices; instead, the virtues themselves do [93] (p. 439). In various circumstances, some of these virtues may well countenance reasons for actions and practices that respond to non-anthropocentric moral demands. Whatever the anthropocentric, prudential benefits of engaging nonhuman entities virtuously, in many cases, for these benefits to accrue, the engagement must be with these entities as ends in themselves—much as is the case among humans when relating to friends [94,95].

As noted, EVE need not deny the existence or importance of nonhuman freestanding moral values. What EVE is concerned about is the ways in which humans should appreciate and respond to nonhuman values as they attempt to live a good human life. That includes freestanding moral values but it is also not limited to them, simply because even if/when nonhuman entities (can be shown to) have such values, they hardly ever have these values only. Most nonhuman entities are also extremely likely to have final non-anthropocentric value (as elements of valuable ecosystems) and non-anthropocentric instrumental value (as means for other nonhumans—for example, as food, pollinators, mates, and habitats) Many nonhuman entities are also likely to have anthropocentric non-moral final values (aesthetic, cultural, etc.), as well as anthropocentric instrumental values. EVE sees none of these many sorts of nonhuman values as constitutively pre-eminent, at least not in the sense that responding virtuously to that sort of value should automatically dispense the agent from responding virtuously to the others. Each and all sorts of nonhuman values provide the virtuous agent with some reasons to act in certain ways and not others. It will be practical wisdom that indicates which values and reasons matter most in particular cases and how virtuous responses should be accordingly modulated.

Freestanding moral values will provide a virtuous agent with reasons for valuing their bearers intrinsically and responding accordingly [96]. Other sorts of values that these bearers might have will provide reasons for valuing and responding to them differently; and of course, other contextually relevant bearers might have various values of their own. Even if intrinsic values may be stable, some of these other values will shift as they will be triggered, reinforced, weakened, changed, or annulled by circumstances. An environmentally virtuous agent will have rich and nuanced capacities to appreciate all the values involved in given circumstances and their contextually shifting combinations and thus to appreciate the varieties of reasons dynamically soliciting the exercise of different virtues in different cases. But again, while EVE is indeed open to the many and diverse sorts of values that nonhuman entities can have and is thus alert to a wide variety of reasons for exercising virtue—including anthropocentric instrumentalist reasons, such as those typically enshrined in sustainability policy documents—EVE presumes not that any specific sorts of values and reasons should take systematic precedence over the others,
taken either singularly or in concert. Hence, it also presumes not that anthropocentric instrumental values and reasons should take systematic precedence over all other varieties of values and reasons, taken either singularly or in concert.

It could be objected that EVE indulges a different, deeper form of anthropocentric instrumentalism: whatever actions a virtuous agent takes they take to live a good life that is good for them in their own eyes [92]. Verily, the virtuous agent is using the nonhuman entities that they treat virtuously to achieve a good life for themselves. Environmental virtues are thus means, and the nonhuman entities toward or regarding which these virtues are developed and exercised are, as it were, the means of means.

This might be an objection to the virtuous agent's motives, or to the structure of EVE as a theory (or both). Regarding the motives, as noted just above, it is widely recognized among environmental virtue ethicists that for the prudential benefits of exercising virtues toward and regarding nonhumans to accrue to the agent, these entities must often be engaged with as ends in themselves: engaging them as means to an end invalidates the very possibility of reaching that end. So, if the objection charges the agent with intentionally instrumentalist motives, whereby the agent does what they do because they believe that doing so will help them to achieve *eudaimonia*, then the charge is not only that the agent is objectionably anthropocentric but also that they are practically unwise. Yet a practically unwise virtuous agent is a wild theoretical (and practical) anomaly. So, the agent that the objection targets, with their objectionably anthropocentric/instrumentalist motives, is likely not to be an environmentally virtuous agent.

If the objection is to the structure of EVE as a theory, for it to bite it must be presupposed that the exercise of virtue is an efficient cause of a good life, with such a life understood as something other than the exercise of virtue—as an effect produced by and external to it. But it is a constant leitmotiv of VE, and EVE, that the exercise of virtue is rather (at least partly) constitutive of the good life, or an immanent cause of it, with a good life inhering (at least partly) in the very exercise of virtue. Rather than an efficient means to the good life, then, the development and exercise of virtues are better described as immanent modes of it. And if the good life also inheres in the exercise of environmental virtues, and the exercise of environmental virtues enables and requires the agent to adequately respond to the values of nonhuman entities, including freestanding as much as any other sort of values—then the exercise of environmental virtue is anthropocentrically instrumentalist only in substantively unthreatening senses of both “anthropocentric” and “instrumentalist”. This should go some significant way in deflating the objection.

## 3.2. EVE and Nonhuman Nonmoral Values

Because EVE, like VE more generally, is not in the business of articulating moral obligations, it does not restrict its attention to specifically moral values, nor to specifically moral virtues. So, among the reasons for the development and exercise of virtues, there may be, in addition to intrinsic moral values, the relational anthropocentric nonmoral final values (aesthetic, scientific, historical, cultural, and sacred/religious) of nonhuman entities and their anthropocentric as well as non-anthropocentric instrumental values. And among the virtues, there will be intellectual virtues (virtuous ways of thinking about human-nonhuman relations, for example, openness and ecological sensitivity)¹⁹, aesthetic virtues (virtuous ways of experiencing and appreciating nonhuman aesthetic qualities, for example, wonder and attentiveness)²⁰, and socio-political virtues (virtuous ways of relating among humans when nonhumans are also involved, for example, cooperativeness and justice, and/or virtuous ways of relating to nonhumans, for example care and respect)²¹.

According to EVE, a good life is one in which an agent's capacities to appreciate and adequately respond to nonhuman values enable and/or constitute (at least partly) the agent's enjoyment of those very values. Now, much of the prudential goodness that EVE promises to the virtuous agent lies in their enjoyment of the anthropocentric relational non-moral final values of nonhuman entities. It is often through the protection and promotion of these values that the agent can valorize those emotions, attachments, commitments, and
other realities of their individual life that involve, refer to, or depend on the manifold mean-
ing(s) that nonhuman entities can have. As noted in Section 2, theoretical consideration
for what nonhuman entities mean for humans has traditionally not been a signature of EE.
EVE is more interested in and hospitable to it²².

Meaning emerges from the mental ability to “connect things” [103]. Any anthropocen-
tric relational final value that nonhuman entities can have depends on humans connecting
them to other “things” (beliefs, values, objects, persons, narratives, etc.)—typically on
aesthetical, scientific, historical, sacred/religious, and generally cultural grounds. This
makes human sense of nonhuman entities, often as a part of larger attempts to bring
a structured coherence to the human experiences of such entities and to position these
experiences within some version of a “bigger picture”. In this way, nonhuman entities
acquire forms of significance for humans, and in many cases, come to matter personally
to individuals as well as collectively to peoples, becoming in various ways entwined with
human self-conceptions and cultural identities.

Such entwinement explains why exercising virtues toward or regarding nonhuman
entities can be a source of meaning in and for one's own life, when that life is seen as
connected in valuable ways to these entities and the exercise of virtues toward or regarding
them is seen to correctly valorize such connections. One's life acquires meaning through
the exercise of environmental virtues when that exercise makes that life cohere with larger
structures of value, belief systems, and traditions, and when it connects one's present
actions with the future persistence and furthering of such structures, systems, and tra-
ditions, thus providing a sense that one's life also matters to "the bigger picture". This
sense of meaning is a powerful component of prudential goodness [104], and the search
for it provides strong reasons for individuals and collectives to exercise virtues toward
and regarding nonhuman entities, including virtues of stewardship such as loyalty and
diligence [105].

Finally, EVE has no disdain for the instrumental values, both anthropocentric and non-
anthropocentric, of nonhuman entities. Indeed, the material component of the prudential
goodness that EVE promises to the virtuous agent lies in the (virtuous) enjoyment of the
anthropocentrically instrumental values of nonhuman entities. These values are, of course,
very notable, as nonhuman entities—now understood as goods, capital, services providers,
and the like—can be necessary to human life, agency, and the very exercise of virtue [82];
to the initiation and continuation of valuable human projects [94]; and to the maintenance
of social and political stability. This all provides strong reasons to exercise virtues of
sustainability (including temperance and farsightedness) and virtues of environmental
activism (including cooperativeness, perseverance, and creativity)²³. These virtues focus
on how best to structure and manage our uses of nonhuman entities to the advantage of all
humans and ensure their availability for all humans to use into the future. Yet the very same
virtues can also respond to non-anthropocentric values and be focused on creating and
maintaining the conditions for, for example, retaining a climate congenial to the survival of
nonhuman species, sustaining a resource base sufficient to the replenishment of ecosystems,
ensuring that enough pollinators remain active in given areas, containing the spreading of
invasive organisms, and other non-anthropocentric actions, practices, and policies²⁴.

4. EVE and Global Climate Change

In the early 1990s, global anthropogenic climate change (CC) was officially added to
the list of planetary environmental challenges, which already included resource depletion,
pollution, and biodiversity loss [108]. The consensus was that a changing climate could
be anticipated to have pervasive, transformative effects at all scales, from the planetary
to the cellular, many of which would be uncongenial to *sapiens* and other species. Over
the next thirty years, climate science solidified—yet climate diplomacy squabbled, climate
governance stalled, average global temperatures continued to rise, and the effects of CC
became increasingly significant and apparent the world over [109].
CC shot EE to new heights. It posed unprecedented theoretical challenges; connected the discipline to many other research programs across the sciences; and, in a (perhaps dark) sense, valorized it in the eyes of a wider public, simply because it raised the stakes of so-called “environmental problems” so vertiginously. The lives and well-being of billions of present as well as future people are now known to be on the line, along with the preservation of large chunks of the Earth’s and *sapiens*’ natural and cultural heritage, the stability of ecosystems, and the persistence of uncounted species. In addition, CC challenged social, economic, and political institutions at all scales—whose rationality, efficiency, sustainability, legitimacy, and justice were (are) all called into question by its planetary, multifarious ills and risks (for a wide-ranging treatment of the philosophy of CC, see the essays in [110]).

CC is a planetary, intra- and inter-generational collective action problem that feeds on the accumulation of individually innocuous everyday actions and behaviors, such as driving cars and consuming imported foods; it enmeshes causal responsibilities in complex ways, and it harms and burdens humans and nonhumans dispersed across space and time. Given these (and other) features, CC seems to overwhelm individual moral agency: no one causes nor can ever fix it in isolation; no one intends to bring about the badness and injustices that it mobilizes; and indeed, no one brings about any specific instances of such badness and injustices by contributing to CC with their everyday fossil-fueled actions and behaviors. For these (and more) reasons, some philosophers have argued that our moral theories are mostly incapable of generating individual moral obligations not to engage in those everyday actions and behaviors (see, among others, [111]; for an overview of the complex debate on individual responsibility for climate change, see [112]).

M. Midgley has called this insufficiency of our moral systems in articulating the connections between the individual and the planetary a “conceptual emergency [113] (p. 40). S. Gardiner [114] (p. 41) has denounced it as “theoretical ineptitude” that fuels moral corruption. Some have also argued that such insufficiency or ineptitude is part of a much larger difficulty. D. Jamieson [109] has diffusedly explained the many ways in which our psychology, cognitive schemes, value systems, normative criteria, and institutions—evolved as they have in low-density, low-tech societies—are mostly at a loss when confronted with CC, and B. Latour [115] has examined the incongruences between this challenge and the interpretive, emotional, symbolic, and ideational tools made available by our (Western) cultural repertoire and inherited understanding of the human station within the wider workings of things. Ultimately, these and other thinkers have suggested, whether explicitly or implicitly, that what is at stake with CC is the very tenability of our (Western) conception(s) of the good life and our ability to still find meaning in such life as we remake the planet.

The recalcitrance of CC to our individual-obligation-generating moral systems; the depth of its cultural, philosophical, and existential premises and implications; and the power with which it threatens our very idea of what a good, meaningful human life is, has led many environmental ethicists to EVE [116]. In this connection, EVE can be used both as an upper, as it were, and as a downer.

As an upper, EVE functions as a reflective framework for processing the premises and implications of CC and revising conceptions of the good life accordingly, as well as a norma- tive framework in which individuals can experiment these new, climate-wiser conceptions through different practices with different effects on both humans and nonhumans [88]. In this scenario, the development and exercise of virtue enables and requires individual empowerment, both intellectual and practical, considering this planetary challenge and in view of structuring more savvy and effective forms of its societal management. This empowerment, which can be seen as a form of ethical adaptation to CC, is to be pursued through “experiments in living”, in J. S. Mill’s apt words: new conceptual, practical, cul- tural, technological, and institutional (re-)arrangements that finely disregard the status quo and try alternatives. Ideally, such experiments should be capable of prompting systemic reform if adequately scaled up, and interpersonal coordination upon them should be as easy as possible to achieve [90]. Individuating and even inventing these experiments in
living, personally engaging in them, and promoting and sustaining coordination upon
them is one way to retrieve one's agency in the face of CC and possibly also find new
sources of meaning in one's life amidst planetary changes (for more on CC and meaning in
life, see [117]).

I have argued elsewhere that networked, food-producing urban gardening is one such climate-wise environmentally virtuous experiment in living [90]. Of course, there may be many others: while one individual grows their own food, another may be changing their teaching topics and practices; another may be searching for ways to calculate and price carbon emissions more precisely; another will organize weekly strikes, or campaign for the rights of nature; and another will push for the establishment of green courts, science courts, nonhuman institutional representation schemes, a global constitution, or other institutions for the future.

From this perspective, EVE is also environmental virtue politics (EVP). Given the nature of CC, EVE/EVP must be multi-scalar, ranging from global/multi-generational to local/individual. This means that EVE/EVP requires accounts that connect and explain the connection between planetary goodness (which, not to forget, must also be multi-species in most versions of EVE) and the goodness of local, situated, individual virtuous lives. Given such demands for multi-scalarity, using EVE/EVEP as an upper in the face of today's ecological challenges is itself very challenging in both theory and practice.

It is also tempting to use EVE as a downer, for however empowered by and through experiments of living, and however interpersonally well-coordinated these experiments may be, a virtuous agent confronting CC will still have extremely little power. CC remains a transformative phenomenon of planetary proportions involving, in a wide variety of different ways, billions of humans and nonhumans across time and space and mobilizing human and nonhuman forces of monumental complexity that are still only partially understood. However virtuous an agent is, Earth's climatic future is mostly out of their hands, and even well-coordinated experiments that can prompt systemic reform are neither guaranteed to achieve nor to secure that reform. Still, an agent is virtuous not because they achieve some final success but rather because they steadfastly strive for it by exercising effort, skills, wisdom, and fortitude even in the face of probable failure, and even as a way of facing that failure [109,118].

In such circumstances, exercising virtues will reward the agent with prudentially precious self-acquiescence. This is an ancient theme in VE—going back to Epictetus at least—that is easily repackaged for contemporary times: none of us can control the climatically incongruous behaviours of other people, states, companies, and global institutions, nor the nonhuman forces that these behaviours unleash, but each of us can try to refine our evaluations of, and responses toward, these uncontrollable human and nonhuman factors so as to control at least our own ways of living with them. Then, says VE, forms of pacification will follow.

Perhaps this notion of virtue as hard-won self-acquiescence in the face of the over-
whelming was best articulated by B. Spinoza in his *Ethics*:

Human power is very limited and infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes. So we do not have an absolute power to adapt things outside us to our use. Nevertheless, we shall bear calmly those things which happen to us contrary to what the principle of our advantage demands, if we are conscious that we have done what we had to do, that the power we have could not have extended itself to the point where we could have avoided those things, and that we are a part of the whole of nature, whose order we follow. If we understand this clearly and distinctly, that part of us which is defined by understanding, i.e., the better part of us, will be entirely satisfied, and will strive to persevere in that satisfaction²⁵.

Obviously, the worry with using EVE as a downer is that it might foster squeamish forms of quietism, or even resignation, just when action is needed most. But the worry is misplaced, and in the last line of the quote above, Spinoza explains why. To “persevere in that satisfaction” of self-acquiescence is to “strive”; self-acquiescence is never final and
there is no acquired entitlement to it, and thus, there is no relenting and no resignation in it. As the climate changes and the planet is remade, we will need to persevere in thinking and acting virtuously and do so knowing that what Spinoza calls “the whole of nature”—humans included—surpasses us infinitely in power. So, engaging in experiments of living in the face of CC will also enable and require the development and exercise of a peculiar, self-acquiescing form of clear-mindedness that still counsels further engagement, whereby the sobering acknowledgement of one’s vertiginous insufficiency accompanies without contradiction a constant, unending striving toward self-empowerment [109,118].

This tells us that when it comes to CC, to use EVE as a downer is also always to use it as an upper and vice versa. And as Spinoza would also tell us, there is only extremely limited self-empowerment without the empowerment of others and thus no ethics without politics [119]. In the face of overwhelming ecological changes and challenges, even self-acquiescence requires experimenting, and even self-concern requires coordination with others. EVE is both an upper and a downer, and all EVE is also EVP.

What about obligation-based, non-anthropocentric EE in all this? No illuminating indications have come from that direction with respect to CC yet. It is mostly unclear how CC should be thought of from the perspective of value positions such as sentientism, biocentrism or ecocentrism, and how these positions look at certain forms of climate adaptation or geoengineering. No solid position has been reached on whether CC provides justification for strongly interventionist environmental policies and on whether there are obligations to preserve intrinsically valuable nonhuman entities facing climate-induced extinction or transformation. It is also controversial that the idea of “climate justice” can meaningfully be extended to nonhumans. Perhaps most importantly, obligation-based non-anthropocentric EE has not yet provided a clear assessment of the extents of convergence or divergence between anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric theoretical and practical approaches to CC, nor clear pronouncements on the moral acceptability of possible divergences.

EVE might be a few steps ahead compared to non-anthropocentric EE regarding CC, but it has its own matters to attend to. From what has been said in this and previous sections, at least two stand out. First, as noted just above, with CC, there is a need for both a theory and a practice of these continuous transitions from agent to planetary scales and back, and from individual self-concern to societal and indeed species-level arrangements, including cultural and institutional arrangements—in other words, the systematic remodulation of EVE into EVE/EVP. This is no small feat considering that, being prudentially focused, VE is originally a self-centered form of ethics [120–123].

Here, EVE can move in at least three different but compatible directions. First, it can explore the theoretical configuration, practical development, and exercise of specifically political virtues of sustainability, stewardship, and activism—such as justice, loyalty, and cooperativeness [101]. Second, it can configure a form of virtue politics which, in Western democratic contexts, typically means loosening liberalism in favor of perfectionism and typically goes by the name of civic republicanism [124]. And third, it can move in Spinoza’s own, characteristically radical direction to rethink the self—the very self on which VE is centered, from atomistic to intrinsically relational and indeed ecological: one with “the whole of nature”, human and nonhuman [125].

This leads to the second matter that EVE needs to attend to—the very topic of this article: its relations with nonhuman intrinsic values and its anthropocentrism. Even if, as I have argued, EVE enables and requires a rich and nuanced engagement with nonhuman values of all sorts and neither presupposes nor implies moral anthropocentrism, the fact remains that most of the thinking about virtue that has been carried out throughout Western history has indeed been morally anthropocentric, even with those rare thinkers, like Spinoza, who did deny ontological anthropocentrism²⁶. Most of what we think virtue is has been built upon morally anthropocentric foundations. In questioning such foundations, EVE might be well equipped but is nonetheless venturing into largely unchartered waters, which it enters in a particularly stormy time of planetary ecological changes and challenges,
as well. In addition, precisely because EVE enables and requires a rich and nuanced
engagement with nonhuman values of all sorts and neither presupposes nor implies moral
anthropocentrism, the EVP that EVE must somehow always also become in the face of
these ecological changes and challenges needs to be multispecies, and we—and our current
political theories and institutions—have virtually no experience with that [126].

**5. Concluding Remarks**

In this article, I suggested that EVE enables and requires a rich and nuanced engage-
ment with nonhuman values of all sorts. While promising prudential goodness to the agent,
EVE neither presupposes nor implies moral anthropocentrism. EVE denies the theoretical
primacy but not the existence and importance of non-anthropocentric intrinsic nonhuman
values. It accepts that these values can and possibly should guide human behavior in
the context of our individual and collective projects of living well, and, indeed, it might
affirm that all the more strongly in times of CC. It does not suggest that nonhuman value
is derivative from human value, including the prudential value that EVE promises to the
agent. It does not assign moral standing to humans only, and it accepts that there might
be circumstances in which the interests of nonhumans may obligatorily override those of
humans. It does not claim any privileged ontological role of humans. It only claims that
a good human life is one that includes a rich and nuanced engagement with nonhuman
values of all sorts, and that the exercise of environmental virtues not only enables but also
constitutes (at least partly) such a life.

Still, however well-equipped EVE may be, its tasks are daunting. Virtue is human virtue, and in discussing human virtue, Western philosophy has traditionally assumed moral anthropocentrism. In addition, the goodness that virtue promises is prudential, and in discussing prudential goodness, Western philosophy has not always been clear if it was one with or the very other of moral goodness and political justice. In the face of planetary ecological challenges such as CC, which mobilizes spatiotemporally unbound badness and injustices for both humans and nonhumans, EVE is catapulted to the task of not just articulating but of also becoming a multispecies EVP—shot across scales and levels of social and genetic organization in search of a theory and practice of the good life that links individuals to collectives, the species to the planet, and human with nonhuman values.

What seems most exciting about this task is that for EVE to engage with it successfully,
it will require EE's help. With its characteristic focus on nonhuman intrinsic values and
non-anthropocentric obligations, EE has investigated nonhuman axiology and normativity
for decades now, thoroughly mapping the fundamental options as well as challenges for
extending our moral consideration to nonhumans (from animals to plants; from rivers to
forests and planets). As it did so, EE also interrogated the boundaries between morals
and politics and always informed, or aimed to also inform, political theory and action. As
EVE attempts to become a multispecies EVP, and non-anthropocentric EE continues its
evolution to confront CC and other planetary ecological changes and challenges, perhaps
the best we can hope for is reciprocal guidance across uncharted waters.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** This research required no ethical approval.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** No new data were created or analyzed in this study. Data sharing is not applicable to this article.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

**Notes**

<footnote n="1">1 On the difficulties of defining VE effectively and concisely, see [1].</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² The notion of character traits has been powerfully problematized in the past two decades. Findings in experimental psychology have shown that individuals are very significantly influenced in their choices and actions by situational factors, casting doubts on</footnote>
the idea that character traits are standing dispositions whose operations extend consistently across contexts and situations, which, as some have argued, would in turn cast doubts on the existence and nature of virtues [2,3]. Virtue ethicists have sometimes downplayed [4], often responded to [5], and, in some cases, absorbed these findings and critiques, possibly by reconceiving character traits as habituated skills rather than standing dispositions [6,7].

<footnote n="3">3 On the distinction between criteria for goodness and the goodness of satisfying them see [8].</footnote>

<footnote n="4">4 Among these alternatives are broadly sentimentalist ones (most notably Slote's), and among the most important contemporary expressions of the sentimentalist tradition is care ethics, which stresses the normative significance of relations and dependencies and the deliberative and evaluative significance of motivations, emotions, and the body. Care ethics is hospitable to and interested in the theory and practice of virtues; VE very often sees care as a virtue and/or recognizes that there are distinctive virtues of care. Care ethics has also been thought to have strong affiliations with feminist thinking, and the contact points between VE, care ethics, and feminism are many and important; nonetheless, there are good theoretical reasons to keep VE, particularly in its eudaimonistic variant, distinct from both care ethics and feminism [17,18].</footnote>

<footnote n="5">5 On fortitude as a meta-virtue, see [23], which discusses Spinoza's notion of *fortitudo*. It is generally the case that fortitude, understood as a meta-virtue, is a notion more at home with Stoic versions of VE. Other versions, influenced by certain readings of Aristotle, conceive of fortitude rather as continence and then actually contrast it with virtue on the grounds that a truly virtuous person is precisely one who is not even exposed to acratic temptations and thus needs not exercise continence. On these matters see, among others, [24].</footnote>

<footnote n="6">6 On what makes an ethical position a genuine specimen of VE, see [26].</footnote>

<footnote n="7">7 See, among others, [16,30,31]; essays in [1,10–13,32,33]; essays in [34]; essays in [14,35]; essays in [36]; essays in [37]; essays in [6,38,39]; essays in [40,41]; essays in [42,43]; essays in [44]; essays in [7,45–48]; essays in [49].</footnote>

<footnote n="8">8 This classification of anthropocentrism(s) is in [55].</footnote>

<footnote n="9">9 See [53], for a classic statement of this thesis. See [56], for a discussion of its many and only partially coherent variations. On colonialism and industrialization as key historical premises of the contemporary ecological crisis see, among others, essays in [57].</footnote>

<footnote n="10">10 Anthropocentrism is often “equated with forms of valuation which easily, or even necessarily, lead to nature’s destruction” [58] (p. 9), and thus, “We are told by some theorists that we must assume that an adequate and workable environmental ethics must embrace a restricted set of properties: non-anthropocentrism, holism, moral monism, and, perhaps, a commitment to some form of intrinsic value” [59] (p. 273).</footnote>

<footnote n="11">11 According to an even stronger reading, which mobilizes very complex issues in metaethics, intrinsic value means objective (i.e., non-subjective) value, that is, a value that nonhuman entities possess even in the absence of any human valuer. Value objectivism has always been tempting to EE, and some of its defences within the discipline have been strong and highly influential (see, for example, [63]). Nonetheless, it remains a very impervious position to hold, and insistence on it within the discipline has waned with time (see [64], for a discussion). This article does not dismiss but will not discuss nonhuman intrinsic value in this controversial objective sense.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">12 It should be noted that none of these claims are uncontroversial, and none of these views have been spared extensive criticism. In fact, some of those who have turned to environmental virtue ethics may have done so because they were ultimately unpersuaded by the arguments for the intrinsic value of nonhuman entities, at least as provided by these theories. In what follows, I will not insist on this aspect and will rather direct my critical remarks in different directions.</footnote>

<footnote n="13">13 One would be hard-pressed to find an environmental ethicist who has questioned the idea that humans have intrinsic (freestanding) value. For relevant reflections, see [72].</footnote>

<footnote n="14">14 On the strange environmental ethics of mosquito eradication, see [73].</footnote>

<footnote n="15">15 On the role of practical wisdom in normativity-configuring deliberation, see [77,78].</footnote>

<footnote n="16">16 See, among others, [37,76,79–91].</footnote>

<footnote n="17">17 Aside from anthropocentrism, other contentious terrains include whether EVE is objectionably self-centred, whether and how it can be action-guiding, whether it can produce an adequate account of right action, whether it is able to respect but not succumb to cultural relativism, and whether it be self-effacing. Most of these worries are simply inherited by EVE from VE, and none of them appear to be fatal. For a literature-savvy comprehensive treatment, see [76].</footnote>

<footnote n="18">18 A classic statement of these worries is in [92].</footnote>

<footnote n="19">19 On epistemic virtues see, among others, [31]; essays in [34,97].</footnote>

<footnote n="20">20 On aesthetic virtues see, among others, [98].</footnote>

<footnote n="21">21 On socio-political virtues see, among others, [50,90,99–101].</footnote>

<footnote n="22">22 On the relation between virtue and meaning generally, see [102].</footnote>

<footnote n="23">23 See [26,76,106].</footnote>

<footnote n="24">24 The EVE discussed in this and in the previous subsection evokes B. Norton’s “weak anthropocentrism” but corrects it at one central juncture. In Norton’s words [107] (p. 133), weak anthropocentrism “distinguishes between the actual felt preferences (which may be irrational) and the considered felt preferences (rationally justifiable preferences)” of humans, and is guided</footnote>
by the latter preferences only. Norton argued that "While the pursuit of selfish, short-term, consumptive desires may lead to the destruction of nature, a far-sighted individual with scientific knowledge, rationally defensible moral ideals, and a set of preferences consistent with such a world view would protect nature for human reasons" [107] (p. 133). The juncture at which EVE corrects Norton's position is where it substitutes his "rationally justifiable preferences" or "rationally held world views" with "environmentally virtuous character". There is no element in Norton's view securing that rationally justifiable preferences or rationally held world views will favour nonhuman entities and, clearly, there are rationally defensible preferences (for efficiency and convenience, for example) and rationally held worldviews (liberalism, for example) that could, at least on occasion, also work to the disadvantage of nonhuman entities [107]. An "environmentally virtuous character", on the other hand, both secures that, and explains why, its possessor entertains the specifically environmental-friendly rationally justifiable preferences and worldviews that Norton wants.

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Article

# Rethinking the Environmental Virtue of Ecological Justice from the Interdependencies of Non-Human Capabilities and Synergetic Flourishing

Cristian Moyano-Fernández

Department of Philosophy, Autonomous University of Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain;
cristian.moyfe@gmail.com

**Abstract:** The capabilities approach has largely addressed individual capabilities via a liberal framework common in its literature. However, a growing number of scholars concerned with sustainable human development are analyzing theories and methodologies that are both suitable for human flourishing and display a respect for nature. This paper explores several forms of considering the value of non-animal and non-individual natural entities, such as ecosystems. I first expose some instrumental reasons why we may care about the flourishing of ecosystems and then other reasons based on the assumption that they have integrity and their own capabilities and, therefore, deserve moral consideration. I argue that despite the possible moral conflicts that may emerge between human and ecosystemic autonomy, they could be avoided by adopting an ecological justice virtue. I present this ecological justice characterized by some contributions of decolonial thought and environmental virtue ethics. I propose that if the capabilities approach was not anchored only in an individualistic ontology, it could better assume a multi-level axiology from which the inherent and instrumental value of ecosystems would be interconnected. And, to this end, I find the concept of synergetic flourishing helpful to accept an interdependent and non-human-centered recognition of the capabilities.

**Keywords:** ecological justice; ecosystem capabilities; integrity; synergetic flourishing; interdependence; environmental virtue ethics; capabilities approach; decolonial thought; non-humans

## 1. Introduction

We currently live in an emerging context marked by ecosystem decline, biodiversity loss, accelerated climate change, and resource depletion [1–3]. Neoliberal philosophy and market capitalism have caused huge social inequalities and led to a definition of “wellbeing” that bears little connection with caring for non-human nature [4]. Satisfying basic human needs has been hegemonically propped up by unfair conditions and an anthropocentric bias that prioritizes human over non-human development [5]. Here, I pose the question of whether the capabilities approach advocated by some authors might not be following a similar bias.

This is relevant here because the capabilities literature has largely attempted to guarantee an equal wellbeing for everyone. However, who is “everyone” and to what extent should the non-human world be a concern for justice? Such a question calls for justice not only in terms of distribution but also in terms of recognition and may be helpful in articulating new approaches to environmental virtue ethics.

Although Sen and Nussbaum’s particular theories aspire to be liberal, because individualism, freedom, and capability to choose are considered substantial goods, it is possible to construct capability theories that are less so [6] (p. 196). According to Robeyns, the concept of human capabilities has long been acknowledged as an approach, rather than a theory, that addresses a broad philosophical framework; this lends it the qualities of being open to different outcomes and not being overly specific [6] (pp. 29–30). However, arguments

**Citation:** Moyano-Fernández, C. Rethinking the Environmental Virtue of Ecological Justice from the Interdependencies of Non-Human Capabilities and Synergetic Flourishing. *Philosophies* **2023**, *8*, 103. https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies8060103

Academic Editors: Sylvie Pouteau and Gérald Hess

Received: 1 September 2023

Revised: 30 October 2023

Accepted: 30 October 2023

Published: 2 November 2023

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**Copyright:** © 2023 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
justifying an instrumental use of non-human nature to enhance human development have become habitual in the capabilities literature driven by Sen and Nussbaum [7–10], considering that the world of nature forms an important capability for human flourishing. From this view, the natural environment would only matter insofar as it ensures a threshold of human capabilities and ecosystem management is mainly guided by human interests. However, some other scholars call for a shift in our valuations of non-human nature [11].

Hence, this paper examines the relationship between human and non-human capabilities, focusing on the urgent need to link the two because it is a matter of environmental virtue ethics [12]. I think that including an approach that considers non-human capabilities in a non-anthropocentric and non-instrumentalist way may contribute to a “flourishing planet”, a guiding concept that helps on a theoretical level to respect the self-realization of living beings and the natural entities that make up the Earth [13].

I argue for including the non-sensocentric and non-individualistic contributions of ecological justice in the environmental virtue ethics framework. To this end, I will consider how the notion of flourishing can apply to non-human nature. By flourishing we may understand the meaning provided by Sen's and Nussbaum's framework: it is the end of all political, social, and economic activity, and it arises when the capabilities (that are, the opportunities for individuals to live the life they choose and have reason to value given their personal and social circumstances) are granted [14,15]. Aristotle coined the term and defined it as the way we are supposed to be as human beings. For him, the cultivation of virtue and good character would lead to flourishing.

Ecological justice views non-sentient nature as capable of flourishing in its own way [16–18]. This acceptance might be justified by identifying that an ecosystem as a whole has integrity, to which it tends naturally if it does not encounter obstacles [19]. Despite integrity being recognized by some scholars as an elastic concept with no clear definitions [20] and even inconsistent meanings [21], many others concur that integrity is defined by three elements: naturalness, wholeness, and continuity through time [19,21].

These issues will be revisited in the following pages which are structured as follows. In the next Section 2, I outline and discuss the way human development and capabilities theories can include the non-human world in their moral frameworks and political procedures: instrumentally or virtuously?

Section 3 attempts to understand some causes of conflicts between capabilities, those of sentient beings (such as humans and nonhuman animals) or those of non-sentient living beings (such as plants and fungi), or those of individual beings or those of collective entities (such as ecosystems). To this end, it explores the biases of domination that might exist in the interaction with non-human nature, offering some of the contributions of decolonial thought and environmental virtue ethics. The trade-offs of advocating for a sort of ecocentrism instead of only anthropocentrism is not a new debate within the capabilitarian rhetoric [22]. Within a capabilitarian framework, the premises would be to reimagine and deconstruct the minimum thresholds of capability needed for sustainable and environmental human development.

Finally, in Section 4, I propose the term “synergetic flourishing”, as a flourishing concept beyond an individualistic and anthropocentric standpoint. The purpose of suggesting such a concept is to highlight how to overcome anthropocentrism on the one hand and methodological and ontological individualism on the other when providing arguments from capabilitarian ethics. The idea of synergetic flourishing reinforces the assumption of interdependent capabilities among species and beyond a single generational time scale.

Hence, one of the central tenets of this article is to rethink the virtue of ecological justice by considering the non-animal capabilities and integrity of non-sentient entities, and to reason how they might lead to recognizing a synergetic flourishing.
## 2. The Value of Ecosystems from a Green Capabilities Approach

### 2.1. *The Instrumental Value of Non-Human Nature for Enhancing Human Capabilities*

Capabilities are the conditions that make it possible for people to do various things that make up a flourishing human life [23]. They are necessary for flourishing. However, what capabilities are necessary and for whose flourishing?

There are several reasons to justify an ethical commitment to non-human nature from an instrumentalism perspective concerned mainly with human capabilities. Regarding moral respect for non-human animals there are anthropocentric reasons to defend it, in addition to the arguments that Nussbaum and others already provide in defense of their value and the need to include the recognition of their capabilities within the boundaries of justice [23,24]. Interacting with pets or liminal animals can easily enhance the capability of emotions, listed by Nussbaum [25] (pp. 33–34). Whether we establish a symmetrical emotional correspondence with the non-human animal or an asymmetric correspondence where we feel something totally different from the internal state of that animal, the case in both is that we are emotionally involved. There is a connection between the capability of emotions and the capability for affiliation, suggesting a link with other basic capabilities on Nussbaum’s list, such as the capability to play or the capability to experience concern for and in relation to nature (other species). In addition to the psychological and emotional benefits of caring for and not devastating the non-human animals living in our environment, there are clearly demonstrated benefits on a more physical level. Protecting the health of animals with whom we have some (more or less direct) interaction usually reduces the risk of human diseases. The COVID-19 pandemic of zoonotic origin is an excellent example of this interrelationship and of this instrumental interest that we can be respectful of other species [26]. Hence, there are crucial connections between the capabilities threshold safeguard of the non-human animals and the human capability of bodily health.

In short, strong motivations exist to defend anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric management of non-human animals. Beyond the benefits we may self-interestedly extract from our relationship with them, the recognition of their capabilities as sentient beings facilitates the acceptance of their flourishing and value. But, the treatment of non-animal and non-sentient nature, insofar as it lacks sentience, tends to be based more on instrumental moral reasons. If ecosystems or species as a whole are ethically valuable, it is because their care generates advantages for the sentient individuals that make them up.

There is another basic capability that comes into play and gets fostered through our relationship with non-human nature, regardless of whether it is with another animal or with another natural entity, such as a river or a mountain: the capability of the senses, imagination, and thought [25]. Such capability is fostered best when we interact with wild nature, whether discreetly or otherwise. And, if the focus of our appreciation is not only an individual but a whole ecosystem, with all its interdependencies and dynamic processes, then our basic capability is boosted. This is because our “Self”, that is, our personal and atomized identity (due in part to the neoliberal values that Western culture has instilled in us during the last decades), is silenced [27]. Thus, our cognitive inertia of anthropomorphization and instrumentalization is weakened when we respectfully admire an ecosystem environment and learn from it [28].

And, this is not merely a reaction to something. Rather, we enter into a living and changing correspondence. We do not interact with wild nature through verbal dialogue, as we commonly do with other people. We interact through an exchange of smells, sounds, chemical flows, and various sensations [29]. It may be a quieter but, in some senses, more intense relationship, given the differences where our subject is involved. We enter a network in which the evolution and movement of each thread conditions the rest and intertwines new links [30]. When interacting with natural ecosystems, we are truly faced with what is most different from us, because they are full of non-human beings and processes and also have a strong systemic identity forged by numerous symbiotic relationships [31]. Although we are also nature and also made up of tiny systems and networks of nature [30], we have organized and developed our lives outside nature without recognizing ecodependencies
by instrumentalizing non-human nature and prioritizing an atomized autonomy, self-
realization, and personal identity [5,32].

The aesthetic approach to nature [33] does not have to consist only in visually contem-
plating a forest, a watershed, or a swamp; rather, the cognitive journey is deeper and more
interesting when we also pay attention to the multiple sounds and the fusion of different
aromas, breathe the lightness of the air, and touch the different textures. Making use of
our aesthetic senses in environments little exploited by humans and surrounded by beings
other than those we already know could empower our senses and our imagination [34].
In addition to literacy and the core mathematical and scientific education that Nussbaum
comments on in relation to how to (re)create the capability of senses and imagination [25],
ecological literacy is also required. An ecological education can turn us to sharpen our
physical senses and discover new ways of being or functioning of which we were previ-
ously unaware. In fact, the recognition of dynamic life forms and processes we are not
accustomed to opens the door to broadening our (bio)ethical and moral circle, stimulating
the elasticity of our moral sense [35].

Beyond these psychological and emotional benefits, there are further reasons why
the environment should be considered a baseline for all human capabilities. The ecosocial
collapse and climatic chaos we are currently experiencing [2] endangers all basic capabilities,
starting with the capability of life and being bodily healthy. Awareness of the links between
the environment status and human health [3,36] is fundamental because being healthy may
be the basis for ensuring that capability thresholds are protected. Therefore, being healthy
could itself be considered a "meta-capability" [37] (pp. 143-169). The ecosocial collapse
jeopardizes our opportunities to live healthy lives, as well as threatening our ecological
resilience to adverse weather conditions and our social resilience to cultural changes in
our lifestyle [32]. Accelerated climate change and deforestation dramatically affect our
opportunities to be healthy, and this has become particularly visible through the COVID-19
pandemics. Scientific evidence of its emergence is tightly linked to deforestation, industrial
animal farming, wildlife trade, and biodiversity loss [36].

This also holds for our right to be well-nourished, because accelerated climate change and deforestation wear down the crop fields, increase temperatures, capture less CO2, and increase pollution, among other devastating effects. Hence, if the environment is key in protecting the main human capability of being healthy, we may then state that the environment should be also understood instrumentally as a meta-capability [8]. A meta-capability could be defined as "an overarching capability to achieve a cluster of basic capabilities to be and do things that make up a minimally good human life in the contemporary world", according to Venkatapuram's view of health [37], or as "a broader capability that enables all the capabilities worthy of protection as constitutional entitlements", according to Holland's view of environment [8]. In short, meta-capability could be understood as an umbrella from which other capabilities may develop.

It should be pointed out that just because there are instrumental reasons to carefully
manage ecosystems does not mean that these reasons are strictly anthropocentric nor that
they will necessarily cause more harm to nature than a non-anthropocentric choice made
without human-centered interventionism. First, non-human animals also have instrumental
interests in benefiting from healthy ecosystems. Second, if an ecosystem wants to change
from a rainforest to a savannah, the implications for human and non-human animals
probably would be worse, at least from a utilitarian balance, than if an instrumental and
human-centered approach tries to stop that because of its implications for human and
non-human capabilities. In short, managing ecosystems under instrumental criteria to
safeguard the capability thresholds of sentient beings need not be ethically reprehensible.

2.2. *The Integrity and Flourishing of Non-Sentient and Non-Individual Nature*

As noted above, there are several instrumental moral reasons for managing ecosystems
in ways that facilitate animal (including human) flourishing. However, moral hesitation
arises when it is argued that such management mediated by instrumental interests does
not take into consideration the autonomy or free flourishing of the ecosystems themselves. That is, when ecosystems are not recognized for their integrity and value. For this conflict of interests to emerge, between what a sentient being needs for its individual flourishing and what an ecosystem as a whole needs for its own collective flourishing, it must first be recognized that both parties possess capabilities. Thereby, first focus on this assumption.

The capabilities extension to ecosystems has already been discussed within the academic literature [22]. One of the main claims often put forward in defense of ecosystem autonomy is that ecosystems have an integrity towards which they tend to evolve [19,38]. To pursue this propensity of natural oneness, they would manifest systemic capabilities such as homeostasis, autopoiesis, or resilience ¹. The basis of the argument is not that ecosystems have value because they have rational capabilities like ours or sentient capabilities like other animals but that they can also flourish in their own way and, to do so, perform their own capabilities. And, just as it might be unjust to force how a human or non-human animal should flourish, ignoring its agency, the same kind of injustice might be claimed of an ecosystem that is permanently disrupted in a way such that it cannot return to its original functions [41]. For both cases there could be an oppression of capabilities and integrity would be overshadowed. According to a biocentric or ecocentric deontological approach, ecological injustice would occur because the flourishing of some entities is not being recognized [42,43].

On this argumentative point, the discussion remains open as to whether there is such a thing as integrity as a value for conservation biology and with a normative meaning. Authors such as Rohwer and Marris [21] have elaborated a number of critiques of the concept of ecological integrity. As they explain, ecosystems are simply too dynamic in space and time, their complex interconnections, including coevolved relationships, are ultimately ephemeral at the geological scale. Any impression of wholeness would be an artifact of the brevity of human lives and the shallowness of our historical records. However, understanding integrity flexibly and not as an immutable whole is something that other authors have already pointed out [19,20]. Moreover, for non-human beings, the idea of integrity can make sense insofar as most animals and plants feel or flourish as part of a territory, community, or ecosystem. They have a certain multidimensional, not strictly individual, identity.

Nonetheless, even if integrity was accepted as a core condition for ecosystems, the conclusion that this is the basis of moral value and, therefore, we must deontologically respect it remains troublesome. The change from ecosystem A to ecosystem B is usually understood to be a bad thing because we believe that the integrity of ecosystem A has been lost. But, this reasoning seems odd: the integrity of ecosystem A does not necessarily have to be better than that of ecosystem B. If we think of a savannah that, due to the disappearance of large mammals and other processes, is surprisingly transformed into a rainforest, we could assert that there has been a loss of value but that this loss of value may be explained by reference to integrity seems problematic. Integrity might be a rough proxy for complexity, diversity, and preferred historic states [21], which have an implicit value. In terms of complexity and diversity, a rainforest outperforms a savannah. However, arguing that the former has a more valuable integrity than the latter seems as unreasonable as arguing that the latter has more than the former. We could agree that both ecosystems, with or without integrity, are equally valuable. But, we still perceive moral problems when the transition from one ecosystem to another occurs.

The moral concern comes when such a transition is produced by a deliberate domination over ecosystems, by specific attitudes and behaviors, or reduces the value of ecosystems and non-human nature to mere ecosystem services or mechanical functions useful for our flourishing. Rather, we can understand their value in relation to their own dynamic flourishing and not subject only to our interests.

To excuse domination by arguing that this will better protect an ecosystem does not seem entirely acceptable. With instrumental management, it is easy to recognize that non-human processes and beings have different states and qualities, and several
expressions of their development. But, it is again we human beings who select which
of these we want to prioritize over others. We leave no room for non-human nature to
develop in its own way, because no capability to flourish is recognized. In this way, we
stand as her owners, guardians, or tutors, as we usually do with children, those with
severe intellectual disabilities, or even pets [15] (pp. 370–380). This is the moral weakness
of paternalism: omitting the possible autonomy of those we care for or protect. It is not
only important to respect the value of non-human nature because it is a duty, but because
in doing so we do cultivate a kinder ethical attitude towards the non-human realm; we
develop environmental virtues.

Assuming we recognize the integrity and a certain autonomy of systemic entities, then
it remains to be discussed on what moral criteria we would decide when to prioritize the
autonomy of an ecosystem and when that of a human being. In sum, whose capabilities
matter more and why? However, who's or what autonomy to flourish should be prioritized
is a necessary but secondary question with much debate ahead. First, it is relevant to discern
what are the factors that have pushed one ecosystem to shift to another and whether these
were really inevitable to safeguard the capability thresholds of other beings. Otherwise, a
biased moral dilemma may be perpetuated.

3. Addressing the Moral Conflicts between Human and Ecosystem Flourishing from Environmental Decolonial Thoughts and Virtue Ethics

Environmental justice tends to claim a deontological approach where the demands of justice consist of how to distribute non-human nature among humans, while ecological justice is usually a call for a virtuous attitude through which non-human nature is not only instrumentally valued. In Western moral political tradition, philosophers like Aristotle, Hume, and Rawls have agreed that justice may be considered the most important virtue of social relations and political institutions and the greatest of all virtues [44]. Hence, environmental justice can be understood as the major environmental virtue. Environmental justice has been mainly conceived as a framework to fairly allocate environmental resources and impacts among unequal people [18]. However, only human beings are part of the community of justice, while non-human nature is somehow reified. Ecological justice, on the other hand, includes non-humans within the community of justice and recognizes that they do not matter only because of what benefits or harms human beings but that they matter in themselves [18,43]. Changing our attitude towards the non-human realm is not only a deontological but also a virtuous call: it might help us all to flourish better. While some authors have used the concepts of environmental justice and ecological justice interchangeably [45], others have made the effort to see their different nuances [16,46]. Other contemporary authors, like Dobson [47], have followed this claim for justice as the first virtue of “ecological citizenship” and argued that the other virtues of care or compassion are related to individuals instead of social and institutional, and for this reason they are less important than justice.

Some have discussed Dobson's particular prioritization of virtues and try to accurate
his ecological citizenship contribution to environmental virtue ethics, for example, by
suggesting a new virtue which can be called “resourcefulness”, as a countervailing virtue
of the profligate use of resources [48]. Others have advocated for non-distributive demands
of justice and emphasizing changing the private and citizen behaviors, beyond social or
institutional claims, and, thus, have suggested environmental virtues like mindfulness [49]
or cheerfulness [50]. And yet, ecological justice should bear more than new individual
attitudes and should be more than following distributive norms of how to allocate the
environmental resources and also be concerned about who is being recognized as critical to
the decision-making process of understanding justice and virtue is being developed.

It is not possible to completely dissipate the cognitive limits that separate our first-person experience from those of other beings, but we can enable other beings to express themselves and try to listen to them. This should be one of the main goals of ecological justice because it is necessary to trigger reflexivity and global meta-consensus that represent
both human and non-human communities [51]. According to Dryzek and Pickering, ecological reflexivity can be considered an environmental virtue crucial for governance in the Anthropocene [51,52]. This virtue is defined as a democratic virtue that attempts to listen to an active system such as Earth through interdisciplinary means, seeking, receiving, and responding to early warning signs about potential changes in the ecological state [51]. Advocating for a governance committed within non-human realm and ecological justice virtues does not necessarily mean claiming a hermetical ecocentric morality. Following Section 2, we might agree that an ecosystem has autonomy and integrity. This means that ecosystems enter the moral balance on an equal footing with other valuable beings capable of flourishing but not that they are the most valuable entities. What ecological justice does imply is adopting a holistic, rather than just individualistic, ontology when evaluating the trade-offs of a choice. These evaluations would be made by human beings, insofar as I am claiming here for human-cultivated environmental virtues. But, this does not mean that the analysis of the trade-offs of a choice must be anthropocentric. Precisely, it may be a non-anthropocentric analysis, evaluation, and decision-making process because democratic commitment to ecological reflexivity could lead us, on the one hand, to the recognition of the capabilities and flourishing of non-humans and, on the other hand, to the recognition that we are a non-atomized ecological self and interdependent and eco-dependent agents.

For example, from a holistic view, in understanding why a rainforest tends to become a savanna, we may realize that it is partly due to external human pressures and less to “free choice”. Our epistemological limitations [53] (pp. 435–450) inhibit us from knowing all the reasons behind why a forest would become a savanna or why a savanna would become a forest. If we do not rely on scientific knowledge and adopt an environmentally virtuous attitude that allows us to leave space for nature’s expression without constant human pressures, it becomes necessary to understand how ecosystems flourish and maintain their integrity, and to distinguish when they transition healthily or are altered by disturbances. Some scholars are researching ways of appreciating non-human capabilities [54]. Using ancient oriental philosophies [55], they highlight the existence of strategies that could help with this exercise of recognition. And, in the realms of fieldwork-based science, an increasing number of studies are being conducted on the knowledge of ecosystems and non-human beings from an interconnectivity paradigm, where the human and non-human interfaces as well as the individuals and their surrounding environment are considered intertwined [56,57].

Moreover, despite epistemological limitations of what the non-human entities experi-
ences consist of, what we can attempt to discover is how our lifestyles constrain and affect
ecosystemic transitions. Precisely, the limitations of knowing what is most different from
us can be an opportunity to focus more on understanding the scope of our actions. This
also invites us to acquire another environmental virtue: humility, whereby we are open to
change our behaviors in order to award biophysical space for non-human and non-sentient
entities’ self-expression [58,59].

Questioning our lifestyles as well as our capability thresholds, so sustained on an
instrumental use or even exploitation of the environment, is also one of the tasks of
decolonial thought. Similarly, imagining new forms of life and behaving with lower
energivorous metabolisms (which, for example, do not require building a dam in a river to
generate energy) could be one of the tasks of the environmental virtue ethics [60].

While virtue ethics depends on agent-centered development of human excellences,
decolonial thought might be understood as an educational and political program which
could encourage virtue ethics. Thus, although they are not the same because their origins
differ, they could benefit from each other. The global decision requirements to live sustain-
ably with a serious respect for nature might not be achieved by cultivating environmental
virtues and, similarly, cultivating human excellence might not be achieved without politi-
cal programs and adequate educational support. Here, I understand decolonialism as a
political philosophy complementary to environmental virtue ethics.
Focusing on decolonial thought, in particular, the degrowth movement appears as a complement to change the instrumental meaning of justice and human development laid out by some. The agenda and philosophical language used in environmental sustainability often refers to utilitarianism and distributive justice, rather than recognitional forms of justice [16]. The mainstream notions of sustainable development have been criticized for perpetuating present conditions of inequality, growth dependency, neoliberal accumulation, and a utilitarian relationship with living beings [32,61]. However, the degrowth movement could be considered as an alternative to adaptation or mitigation policies based on a sustainable development agenda. Part of the emphasis of degrowth lies in reducing production and consumption in the Global North, hence slowing down energy and raw material flows [62,63]. While it might not seem to differ much from orthodox proposals around the Green New Deal across the globe, degrowth scholarship argues for a radical and qualitative change, affecting our activities, relationships, and values, directed towards liberating human beings and the non-human world from the capital accumulation imperative [62,64].

While many sustainable human development advocates promote technologies and the global economy within the scope of green capitalism, degrowth advocacy takes a different tack ². It focuses on a decolonizing imaginary instead of perpetual economic growth narratives [61–64]. As a movement, it first emerged in Europe heavily criticizing Western capitalist lifestyles and complementing political ecology. The decolonization that degrowth aims at favors the reception of new narratives and worldviews that rightly support to weaken the dominant anthropocentrism, a goal shared by ecological justice. Thus, for instance, the Quechua concept “sumak kawsay” or “buen vivir” in Latin American philosophy is based on a deep change of the cosmovision, where interculturality and plurinationality unite and nature is awarded greater consideration [65]. “Ubuntu” or the “Gandhian Economy of Permanence” are other examples of complementary narratives that move away from a strong moral anthropocentrism [61]. Recognition of these movements and philosophies that bring different understandings of socio-ecological systems and other starting points of interacting with non-human nature becomes an important step towards non-anthropocentric management. In contrast to individualistic and atomized approaches, many indigenous cosmovisions have advocated a non-anthropocentric, relational and holistic way of life, in which humans and non-humans live with their own agency and develop in interconnectedness [9,66].

This is a further advantage of the degrowth movement: it is open to establishing networks with allied philosophies and practices from other cultures that try to topple the common hegemonic imaginary in different ways. In fact, a common criticism of degrowth consists in arguing that it can only be applied to rich economies in the Global North, while developing countries still have to satisfy their basic needs. However, developed countries should adhere to degrowth not so that the Global South follows the same example of ecosystems exploitation and economic growth fetishization but rather to free up a “conceptual” space where other countries can build their own paths towards a fairer and more sustainable conception of life [32]. This would represent a substantial step towards participation and recognition policies that respect the development of the most oppressed beings and the disturbed ecosystems, and where the cost-benefits relationship becomes multidirectional. Degrowth aims to be critical to those domination cultures that inhibit agent-centered virtue because embracing interculturality and non-colonial imaginaries of economic growth leads us to wonder what our environment is and who forms that “our”, instead of being concerned only about deontological and distributive issues.

When analyzing the moral conflicts derived from broadening conceptions of the subject of justice, it is also fundamental to deconstructing the hegemony of liberal political discourse. In Nussbaum’s or Holland’s political liberalism there is an overcoming of anthropocentric prejudice due to the recognition of non-human animal capabilities [23,24]. However, much work remains to be done in order not to be anchored in individualistic ontologies. Some authors have claimed the recognition of a dynamic and relational flourishing instead of an individualistic one [67] and recognize the value of nature’s in-
terconnectivity. The multi-species justice proposed by Celermajer and others [67] goes precisely in this direction of starting from a more relational and dynamic ontology than simple individualism.

Bendik-Keymer's approach of multi-species fields [68] shows similar reasoning to Celermajer's and leads him to criticize Nussbaum's biocentric individualism. His notion of multi-species fields starts from a holistic perspective by considering that the autonomy of living beings is relational with respect to other beings, to collective communities, and to ecosystems. This idea contributes to thinking of a multi-level axiology, where there is not a single biospheric integrity or different individual integrities; instead, the integrity of each being or natural entity is relative because it depends on the relational point of view adopted. Here, the concept of integrity might be expanded by adopting another environmental virtue, which may be called a "wonder": wonder at the evolution and flourishing of what or who we do not perceive as an instrumental materialistic interest; wonder at relational integrity [68,69]. Rachel Carson was one of the pioneers of understanding wonder as a radical state of mind helpful for environmental ethics. In some of her books, she encouraged her readers to consciously cultivate habits of awe, to pay careful attention to the often-overlooked 'beauties and mysterious rhythms of the natural world' [70]. More recently and similarly, other authors have echoed the ethical potential of adopting wonder behavior to facilitate human and non-human flourishing [71].

Aesthetic wonder helps to sustain the multi-level axiology mentioned by Bendik-Keymer, but other more reflective virtues are also needed to rethink the thresholds and ceilings [8] of our capabilities and to reduce anthropocentric conceptions of nature's value. Here, the ecological reflexivity virtue proposed by Dryzek and Pickering [52] and mentioned above may help to incorporate a broad flexibility and resilience when it comes to changing our behaviors and activities if we gain a profound understanding of the value of integrity to non-sentient entities in the near future.

Integrating holistic ideas into a discussion on justice, where some capabilities are supposedly prioritized over others, helps to generate depth in the debate. On the one hand, this is because not only the sum of individual interests enters into the assessment but also the result of diverse synergistic interactions. So, when an ecosystem is transitioning to another one, we should probably focus on the new conditions generated by the convergence of factors. On the other hand, the debate becomes richer and more reflective because the thresholds of (e.g., human) capabilities are no longer understood as atomized needs and come to be understood as relational and, in most cases, eco-dependent historical needs.

## 4. Towards a Synergetic flourishing Based on Ecological Justice

So far, I have stressed the importance of decolonizing our lifestyles and expanding our epistemologies in order to rethink from a holistic point of view the conditions that influence ecosystem changes and disruptions. I have also emphasized the need to review to what extent the "conversion factors" (using Sen's words) that we usually demand to guarantee a minimum threshold of capability are necessary or, on the contrary, there could be other (lower energivorous and materialistic) means to satisfy our human flourishing. The virtue of ecological justice can bring a decolonial and more humble attitude as it questions relations of domination over the non-human beings and non-sentient entities. Thanks to environmental virtues such as this, we can recognize the capabilities and integrity of some natural entities and strive to flourish synergistically and not just blindly to foster individual and atomized development.

"Synergetic flourishing" is an original concept proposed here to define the positive feedback between human flourishing and non-human flourishing as a way of empowering different capabilities without creating tensions between them. Some academics have rethought similar meanings for concepts such as "planetary flourishing", which consists of aligning pathways of both flourishments and adopting an integral identity, in which individuals see themselves in relation to their wider environment [13]. The essential idea may be the same, but the "synergetic" adjective appeals to revalue the hypothetical emerging
benefits derived from multi-level relations between individuals and embodied ecosystemic entities [56,72]. The capabilities approach could contribute to such concepts introducing the distinction between functions and capabilities and proposing that flourishing should be based on protection of the latter [14]. Likewise, accepting the ecosystem capabilities could expand the Sen and Nussbaum frameworks towards new environmental ethics approaches.

Fostering synergetic flourishing through ecological justice virtue entails adopting philosophical thinking with epistemological, moral, and political dimensions, in which the rational understanding that non-human life has its own development is imbued with personal motivation to respect that development. As for the understanding that non-human nature is capable of self-realization, a starting point would consist in shifting the weight on which a large part of the literature on capabilities approach is based upon. For Nussbaum, self-realization is closely associated with the notion of dignity [15,73], which is fundamentally defined by the opportunity to have autonomy and freedom, a particular feature of humanity. However, if that origin (with Aristotelian roots) on which the concept of flourishing rests is extended to include the notion of “integrity” [38,46] (pp. 136–147), then other ways of non-sentient life have a place in human development theories or the capabilities approach.

Why embrace the concept of integrity and not just rely on dignity, as Nussbaum does? We could expand the meaning of dignity and attribute it to non-animal entities as well. On the one hand, the problem in expanding it is that there is the risk of misunderstanding why a non-rational, non-sentient, and non-individual entity has dignity. The theoretical frameworks that have accompanied the capabilitarian discourses in defense of dignity have rightly based their arguments on the premise that beings have dignity because they are rational, sentient, or individually autonomous [74]. Yet, there are exceptions, such as Katy Fulfer, who has offered a relational description of dignity linked to interdependence and neediness, which also includes non-animal entities in the community of justice [75]. But, to what extent dignity can be a concept with a malleable meaning is a question that some authors have already discussed [76].

On the other hand, the concept of integrity makes it easier to start from a multi-level axiology than solely dignity. Recognizing the integrity of ecosystems can help to understand their instrumental value in a way that is neither reified nor highlighted by a dichotomous otherness. The notion of integrity refers to understanding ourselves, human beings, as ecodependent individuals who are at the same time systems for other smaller components. This means proceeding from a notion of identity shaped by limit concepts [77] (pp. 959–961). From this relational point of view, the “Self” and the “Other” are both integral parts of a broader and more complex life reality that encompasses us all (including other individuals). Therefore, it would be inconsistent and a fallacy of fuzzy logic [78] to defend the integrity of an individual but not of a broader being like systems, because indeed each individual is composed of other smaller individuals. From this perspective, our development should be considered internally and externally systemic.

The commitment of the ecological justice virtue to synergetic flourishing would consist in assuming that for humans it is not possible to flourish without integrating non-human life into the equation and recognizing their integrity, as done in many indigenous cosmovisions across the globe [61]. The symbolic identification that human societies have expressed with the non-human world in ways that cannot be reduced to simply instrumentalism has been common in different religions, in the literature, and ultimately in the culture of our species over time. When thinking about the instrumental benefits of ecosystems for humans from a multi-level axiology and from the recognition of an embodied integrity at several scales, it may leave behind the rigid separation between anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric viewpoints. That would also be the contribution of the idea of synergetic flourishing: reframing human and non-human capabilities in a context of dynamic interdependence.

However, there are challenges for the virtue of ecological justice to try to adapt human behaviors to a non-anthropocentric and non-individualistic flourishing. Probably the first moral obstacle for human reason and main objection to synergetic flourishing concerns
the acceptance of ecosystem capabilities. As noted above, even if we do shift our morals
from dignity to integrity, some kind of autonomy or freedom for non-human nature must
still be acknowledged. Otherwise, accepting an environmental meta-capability for human
beings, and only functions rather than capabilities in ecosystems, might suffice. Many
advocates of ecocentrism have been criticized, given that there are examples of various
non-human biotic communities that have neither a conscience nor desires and, therefore,
no moral agency can be attributed to them [79]. It is possible to be ecologically responsible
without the need for deep assumptions such as the capabilities of ecosystems. Human
survival itself depends on preserving the health and integrity of ecosystems [80], so few
“intellectual gymnastics” are actually required. A prompt response could be that the value
of non-human nature may be justified by considering it a moral patient [81] or because
it contains its own potentialities. A deeper counter-argument could be that the notion of
integrity does not comprise moral agency as in the concept of dignity defended by Western
tradition based on Aristotle or Kant. Using concepts such as striving or integrity [38,74],
they appeal to a meaning of agency not based exclusively on pursuing rational or sensible
interests but on flourishing according to one’s systemic identity. An identity that may
be dynamic and diverse but struggles to remain stable in the face of possible disruptions
through capabilities for homeostasis and resilience [40].

A second and related challenge concerns the way we discern the basic capabilities
required for ecosystems to flourish. Would it be possible to understand the whole meaning
of integrity for those biotic communities most different from humans? Any rational explana-
tion of this will be more anthropogenically mediated if theoretical research consists of using
our human senses to define and list non-human capabilities. There is an epistemological
risk of projecting our own values here [82]. Recognizing capabilities in non-human nature
could ultimately involve some human being expressing the voice of nature, which would
be an illusion provoked by anthropocentrism and by epistemological biases, as pointed out
in Sections 2 and 3. Again, the risk of paternalism could come up here. Consequently, this
result might limit the philosophical exercise of assuming the virtue of ecological justice.

To reduce the risk that this utilitarian paternalism of human societies may emerge,
there are political projects, guided by decolonial thinking, that can help. For example,
Schlosberg has proposed a “politics of sight”, based on expressing and making visible what
is invisible in our societies and cultures, such as anthropogenic impacts on non-human
nature [83] (pp. 193–208). Awarding space to non-human nature, to make other living
beings and ecosystem rhythms and processes more perceptible, could also be fostered by
“rewilding” policies. specifically if rewilding embraces a passive management of nature
where there is minimal interventionism [84].

Next, if rewilding policies and politics of sight are put in practice, a third challenge or
concern emerges, this time in relation to ethics and politics: is there any moral hierarchy
among capabilities in a supposed ecocentric egalitarianism? From the individualistic
anthropocentrism standpoint, it is reasonable to defend a healthy environment as being
a meta-capability for human development, but from holistic non-anthropocentrism it is
not so clear. A non-anthropocentric approach may agree with “green” anthropocentrism
or sustainable human development theories in constraining some human capabilities in
common situations (always above a minimum threshold), through mitigation policies
for instance. But, the form of management would definitely change in a tragic scenario
where a choice had to be made between protecting human or ecosystem capabilities (in
the event they are even accepted). Non-human capabilities are not recognized from the
perspective of anthropocentric flourishing, which legitimizes privilege being granted to
human capabilities. Nevertheless, from a synergetic flourishing approach guided by a
virtue of ecological justice, which capabilities would be viewed as a priority in a tragic
scenario and based on what criteria? This is a pragmatic point requiring further research.

The outlined challenges articulate reasonable objections that can, nevertheless, be
addressed if the capabilities of ecosystems are accepted. Although the concept of synergetic
flourishing is not immune to criticism, it may entail another way of communicating the
need to evade moral centrisms, especially atomized ones, and bring to the capabilities
framework based on political liberalism an open dialogue with non-individualistic or
rationalistic axiologies. It allows different indigenous worldviews that recognize the
values inherent in the environment to be easily incorporated [9,61,65] and, therefore,
expands the common sense of human development. The biological integrity of each living
being requires ecological integrity in their habitat, so the loss of ecosystem capabilities
could result in morbidity, altered function or loss of individual capabilities [19]. Hence,
synergetic flourishing guided by ecological justice could also provide a better protection of
the thresholds associated with human capabilities over time. In addition, it encourages our
sensibility and empathy for what is different, on the one hand, and a rational support for
strong mitigation-oriented political decisions and humble ecosystem management, on the
other. It may, therefore, be fruitful to advocate this environmental virtue.

5. Closing Remarks

The main goal of this paper revolves around exploring the non-animal capabilities by
acknowledging the underlaid integrity in ecosystems and some contributions of ecological
justice virtue to the moral conflicts among different axiologies and flourishments. One
first take-away message here is that “centrisms” could be abandoned in favor of a moral
ontology that is not exclusively individualistic or holistic but rather navigates between
the two options. These abstractions make it harder to connect capabilities that are in
fact intergenerational, interspecific, and interdependent. Likewise, anthropocentrism and
ecocentrism should negotiate a common deal wherein both philosophical perspectives give
up a small part of their moral norms. The capabilities approach may benefit from concepts
like synergetic flourishing because it collects ideas provided by decolonial thought and
environmental virtue ethics which help to understand flourishing from a relational and
non-domination viewpoint.

**Funding:** This research was supported by the project "Ética del Rewilding en el Antropoceno: Comprendiendo los Escollos de Regenerar Éticamente lo Salvaje (ERA-CERES)", with reference PZ618328/D043600, funded by Fundación BBVA; and supported by the project "La solidaridad en bioética (SOLBIO)" with reference PID2019-105422GB-100, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN).

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

Notes

<footnote n="1">1 According to Maturana and Varela, autopoiesis or self-production is the capacity of living cells or systems to reproduce and organize themselves, while homeostasis is the capacity of a complex system to constantly maintain its identity while adapting to changes in its internal and external environment [39]. For them, resilience is closely related, because it may be understood as the capacity to safeguard the availability of molecules necessary for self-maintenance, whatever the problem that may threaten self-maintenance. Kortetmäki provides a similar meaning when studying ecosystem capabilities, defining resilience as maintaining characteristic functioning in disruptive circumstances [40].</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2 One might ask how to convince aspirational citizens and ambitious politicians to consider or adopt such a program, insofar as they might prefer to produce and sell as much as possible to keep the machine alive. If people actually valued being virtuous they would not commit so many harmful acts. However, I would answer here that environmental virtue ethics is not a substitute for a normative approach. It is a necessary condition for developing more ethical awareness. The basic issue is not to "change people" and "convince citizens and politicians" but to change oneself rather than to be forced to change by external laws. "Adopting virtues" is sufficient to stop only those who do not want to behave badly.</footnote>
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