# Is Environmental Virtue Ethics a 'Virtuous' Anthropocentrism?

Sylvie Pouteau, Gérald Hess

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philosophies

Special Issue Reprint

# Is Environmental Virtue Ethics a “Virtuous” Anthropocentrism?

Edited by
Sylvie Pouteau and Gérald Hess

mdpi.com/journal/philosophies
Is Environmental Virtue Ethics
a “Virtuous” Anthropocentrism?
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# Is Environmental Virtue Ethics a “Virtuous” Anthropocentrism?

Guest Editors

Sylvie Pouteau

Gérald Hess
## Guest Editors

Sylvie Pouteau
UMR SADAPT, INRAE

(Institut National de
Recherche pour l'Agriculture,
l'Alimentation et
l'Environnement)

Campus Agro Paris Saclay

Palaiseau

France

Gérald Hess

Faculty of Geosciences
and Environment

University of Lausanne

Lausanne

Switzerland

## Editorial Office

MDPI AG

Grosspeteranlage 5

4052 Basel, Switzerland

This is a reprint of the Special Issue, published open access by the journal *Philosophies* (ISSN 2409-9287), freely accessible at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/philosophies/special_issues/VFBOF9122W.

For citation purposes, cite each article independently as indicated on the article page online and as indicated below:

Lastname, A.A.; Lastname, B.B. Article Title. *Journal Name Year, Volume Number, Page Range*.

ISBN 978-3-7258-3923-0 (Hbk)

ISBN 978-3-7258-3924-7 (PDF)

https://doi.org/10.3390/books978-3-7258-3924-7

Cover image courtesy of Sylvie Pouteau

© 2025 by the authors. Articles in this book are Open Access and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. The book as a whole is distributed by MDPI under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
# Contents

<table><tr><td>About the Editors</td><td>vii</td></tr><tr><td>Preface</td><td>ix</td></tr><tr><td>Sylvie Pouteau and Gérald Hess</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Introduction: Is Environmental Virtue Ethics a 'Virtuous' Anthropocentrism?</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Reprinted from: Philosophies 2024, 9, 172, https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9060172</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Nin Kirkham</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>A Virtue Ethics Interpretation of the 'Argument from Nature' for Both Humans and the Environment</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Reprinted from: Philosophies 2024, 9, 19, https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9010019</td><td>8</td></tr><tr><td>Jean-Philippe Pierron</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Temperance, Humility and Hospitality: Three Virtues for the Anthropocene Moment?</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Reprinted from: Philosophies 2024, 9, 5, https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9010005</td><td>20</td></tr><tr><td>Sylvie Pouteau</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Plant-Centered Virtue Ethics: A Cross-Talk between Agroecology and Ecosophy</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Reprinted from: Philosophies 2023, 8, 97, https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies8050097</td><td>35</td></tr><tr><td>Marcello Di Paola</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Virtue, Environmental Ethics, Nonhuman Values, and Anthropocentrism</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Reprinted from: Philosophies 2024, 9, 15, https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9010015</td><td>53</td></tr><tr><td>Cristian Moyano-Fernández</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Rethinking the Environmental Virtue of Ecological Justice from the Interdependencies of Non-Human Capabilities and Synergetic Flourishing</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Reprinted from: Philosophies 2023, 8, 103, https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies8060103</td><td>72</td></tr><tr><td>Rémi Beau</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>The Ecological Community: The Blind Spot of Environmental Virtue Ethics</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Reprinted from: Philosophies 2023, 8, 112, https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies8060112</td><td>87</td></tr><tr><td>Esteban Arcos</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Mutual Flourishing: A Dialogical Approach to Environmental Virtue Ethics</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Reprinted from: Philosophies 2024, 9, 6, https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9010006</td><td>97</td></tr><tr><td>Gérald Hess</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Virtue Ethics and the Ecological Self: From Environmental to Ecological Virtues</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Reprinted from: Philosophies 2024, 9, 23, https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9010023</td><td>107</td></tr><tr><td>Damien Delorme, Noemi Calidori and Giovanni Frigo</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Ecological Virtuous Selves: Towards a Non-Anthropocentric Environmental Virtue Ethic?</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Reprinted from: Philosophies 2024, 9, 11, https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9010011</td><td>121</td></tr></table>
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# About the Editors

## Sylvie Pouteau

Sylvie Pouteau is a senior research scientist in philosophy at the French National Institute of Research in Agriculture, Food and Environment—INRAE. After leading a career in plant developmental biology, she has specialized in plant philosophy and agricultural ethics with a special emphasis on inter- and transdisciplinary research actions with stakeholders. She has contributed to establishing the growing field of plant ethics and more recently to introducing virtue ethics in the context of agriculture and food production. Besides her publications in plant sciences, the scope of her articles in philosophy covers agricultural and food ethics, plant ethics with regard to genetic engineering and farming, art-science-philosophical frameworks, and agroecological virtue ethics.

## Gérald Hess

Gérald Hess is a senior lecturer and researcher in environmental ethics and philosophy at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. He holds a PhD in Philosophy and a master's degree in Law. His research on ecological issues is based on the intersection of phenomenology, ethics, epistemology, and political philosophy. Gérald Hess is the author of numerous articles on philosophy, particularly in the field of environmental ethics, and is the author and editor of several books in French, including *Éthiques de la nature* (PUF, 2013); (with D. Bourg) *Science, conscience et environnement* (PUF, 2016); and (with C. Pelluchon and J.-P. Pierron) *Humains, animaux, nature. Quelle éthique des vertus pour le monde qui vient?* (Hermann, 2020). His latest book is an essay on the ecological self, entitled *Conscience cosmique. Pour une écologique en première personne* (Dehors, 2023).
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# Preface

The present global environmental crisis is simultaneously an unprecedented anthropological crisis. The privileged position of human beings in nature has proven to be a curse, thus raising the issue of a sustainable future for both humankind and the Earth. The anthropocentric position is now commonly equated to environmental blindness and egoism. The argument goes so far as to posit that human flourishing is intrinsically opposed to environmental welfare. The emergence of environmental virtue ethics (EVE) is an attempt to address this dichotomy on the basis of virtue ethics (VE). However, trying to bridge the gap between an agent-centered approach and an environmental focus may expose theoretical and practical difficulties and conflicts. The following Special Issue of *Philosophies* endeavors to expand on the anthropological shift underpinned by the interface between EVE and anthropocentrism. The emphasis is placed on the possibility of overcoming moral anthropocentrism: converting vicious anthropocentrism into virtuous anthropocentrism or considering non-anthropocentric virtue ethics. In line with the scope of *Philosophies*, contributions to this Special Issue cross the borders between different scientific and philosophical disciplines—including virtue ethics, environmental ethics, environmental humanities, and epistemology—and combine theoretical and applied issues in major areas—including bioethics, agriculture, climate change, community building, and politics.

This Special Issue is the first comprehensive contribution to the field in the context of European philosophical perspectives and includes articles by authors from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland, in addition to one author from Australia. The involved authors endeavor to disentangle a number of paradoxes, ambiguities, and contradictions related to the following areas:

* The scope of anthropocentrism vs. anthropo-centeredness and non-anthropocentrism;

* The differentiation of the environment (human nature, agriculture, natural ecosystems, living organisms, and climate);

* The various causes of environmental blindness (ontological, ethical, and epistemic);

* The scope of human flourishing in terms of the good life and the ecological self;

* Underlying ethical assumptions (deontological, consequential, and virtue-oriented);

* Human virtues that are relevant for an attitudinal shift in the environmental crisis and climate change.

To harness the breadth of the subject, this Special Issue has been coordinated by two Guest Editors with complementary academic backgrounds:

* Sylvie Pouteau (French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment—INRAE, University Paris Saclay, France), who specializes in plant biology, plant ethics, and inter- and transdisciplinary research.

* Gérald Hess (Institute of Geography and Sustainability, University of Lausanne, Switzerland), who specializes in environmental philosophy and ethics.

Sylvie Pouteau and Gérald Hess

Guest Editors
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Editorial

# Introduction: Is Environmental Virtue Ethics a ‘Virtuous’ Anthropocentrism?

Sylvie Pouteau <fnref n="1" />,* and Gérald Hess <fnref n="2" />,*,

The field of environmental ethics has been built as a response to environmental blindness. For about half a century, it has continuously worked through the internal contradictions embedded in different ethical traditions throughout history. These include utilitarian or consequentialist ethics, deontological or principalist ethics, and virtue or aretaic ethics. Because of its historical dominance and its close connection to the legal domain, deontology has played a prominent role in shaping the global issues related to the protection of biodiversity and natural ecosystems. For instance, the notion of intrinsic value has now become quite popular beyond the community of ethicists and lawyers and has reached a wider audience. Virtue ethics (VE) has been less influential, which may seem paradoxical. When considering its historical position at the root of all later ethical developments, environmental virtue ethics (EVE) may appear to simply surface an implicit component of environmental ethics that was initially left out. This special issue of *Philosophies* endeavors to clarify whether EVE contradicts the foundational goal of environmental ethics by asking: “Is environmental virtue ethics a ‘virtuous’ anthropocentrism?” This provocative question underlies two main issues: the relation between EVE and anthropocentrism (Section 1); the political implications of EVE (Section 2).

The criticism of “anthropocentrism” lies at the foundation of environmental ethics and is pivotal for EVE as well. However, according to some analyses, EVE could be doomed with an anthropocentric bias, or worse, it could be a Trojan horse for a dangerous kind of anthropocentrism threatening to undermine the whole endeavor of environmental ethics. For instance, Holmes Rolston [1] (p. 61) considers that EVE is “half the truth but dangerous as a whole”. The fact that anthropocentrism, here equated to human egoism and environmental blindness, has had a pervasive influence in every corner of ethical reflection over the last centuries is quite clear. Yet, why should virtue ethics be more affected by this bias than deontology? The reflection on EVE seems to be much concerned with overcoming this bias and possibly even more aware of its hidden fall-traps. In response to the criticism of anthropocentrism, proponents of EVE have argued that it is “non-anthropocentric” [2–4]. Yet, adding the qualification non-anthropocentric to environmental ethics as a whole would certainly be considered by many researchers in environmental ethics to be a pleonasm or even a tautology. So, why should terminological redundancy be necessary in the case of EVE?

The debate on the anthropocentric content of EVE seems to reach beyond environmental issues and stems from deeper theoretical disagreements between virtue ethics and deontology. Interestingly, the global scale of the ecological threats, in particular climate change, makes it difficult to isolate one single issue to be addressed without scrutinizing its systemic or even paradigmatic content. It is necessary not only to conceive norms but also to address the many inequalities that global changes accelerate. In this regard, the distinctive theoretical implications of EVE and deontology also have wider consequences regarding political decision making. Because virtue ethics is grounded in a political understanding of human identity and action, one might expect that EVE would bring the anthropocentric

**Citation:** Pouteau, S.; Hess, G. *Introduction: Is Environmental Virtue Ethics a 'Virtuous' Anthropocentrism? Philosophies* **2024**, *9*, 172. https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9060172

Received: 13 October 2024
Accepted: 25 October 2024
Published: 10 November 2024

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**Copyright:** © 2024 by the authors. 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/).

<footnote n="1">1 INRAE UMR SADAPT, Campus Agro Paris Saclay, 22 Place de L'agronomie, CS 80022, 91120 Palaiseau, France</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2 Institute of Geography and Sustainability, University of Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland</footnote>

<footnote>* Correspondence: sylvie.pouteau@inrae.fr (S.P.); gerald.hess@unil.ch (G.H.)</footnote>
bias to a transformative threshold apt to meet the challenges of the Anthropocene and to ground environmental virtue politics. So, how do we fill the gap between the singularity of individual biographies and the large or even global scale of environmental challenges?

# 1. Relations Between Anthropocentrism and EVE

The provocative question behind this special issue of *Philosophies*, “Is environmental virtue ethics a ‘virtuous’ anthropocentrism?”, is related to the presumed anthropocentric trend underlying all forms of VE. Not only does virtue refer to a specifically human character trait, but its moral dimension is also closely tied to the supreme good targeted by VE, namely human flourishing, in other words a good human life. Therefore, one may ask whether EVE is doomed to be morally anthropocentric or whether it can be ‘non-anthropocentric’, and if so, in what sense. In their diversity, all the articles in this Special Issue address this question—implicitly or explicitly. We suggest that each of them can map onto a specific position within the landscape of EVE, as presented below.

To clarify the diversity of moral anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric positions permitted by EVE, it is useful to first distinguish moral anthropocentrism from other forms of anthropocentrism. Ecological thinking has repeatedly pointed to the paradigm of modernity associated with the rise of the natural sciences from the 17th century onwards. This paradigm has led to what is known in anthropology as the “great divide”. On the one hand, nature in all its manifold manifestations (animals, living beings as a whole) is conceived as inert and valueless matter. On the other hand, the human world and culture is seen as a totally different reality, the source and purpose of all values. This ontological separation between two substances—or, at least, between entities (the human and the non-human) with very different properties—one physical (nature), the other mental or psychic (human)¹ defines a type of anthropocentrism that can be described as “ontological”.

On the other hand, there is a type of anthropocentrism associated with our representation of the world, which seems difficult to avoid. It is undeniable that the concepts, values, and norms about the human and non-human world that we develop through knowledge and ethics are a product of our psycho-physical make-up. We apprehend the world in a certain way that depends on our bodily constitution (our sensory organs and brain) and our mind. Although there can also be a reality for putative extraterrestrials, these would, without doubt, conceive of reality differently from us. This type of anthropocentrism can be called “epistemic” anthropocentrism.

Finally, “moral anthropocentrism” differs from both ontological anthropocentrism and epistemic anthropocentrism. It expresses the moral position that only humanity or even only part of humanity possesses intrinsic or moral value, i.e., a value that is not merely a means to an end other than itself. In this respect, VE seems to be indisputably moral anthropocentrism, because the excellence that virtues seek is supposed to contribute to and form part of the supreme good, namely human flourishing. In this case, the natural environment would be at most a condition for the realization of this good. However, the good life and intrinsic value are not interchangeable notions. For instance, clean air, nonpolluted water, fertile soil are conditions for the flourishing of all living beings, whether human or non-human. Even if they are considered to have no intrinsic or moral value, it seems difficult to disentangle their flourishing from that of human beings. Thus, the bare argument of moral anthropocentrism does apply to EVE only under a misunderstood concept of flourishing equated with intrinsic value. On the contrary, a sound understanding of flourishing leads to emphasizing its inherently unsaturable and mutualist or synergetic quality (see below).

Four contributions in the collection defend a more or less anthropocentric approach to EVE, with different shades of virtuously relevant arguments. In particular, an important nuance needs to be introduced depending on whether or not EVE relies on an ontological anthropocentrism, as described above. There is a “centric” version of EVE that is based on ontological anthropocentrism. In this Special Issue, Nin Kirkham seems to be defending such a conception of EVE. With reference to Aristotle, a virtuous relationship to the
environment must be based, in her view, on a correct conception of human nature, i.e., on certain essential characteristics that define our identity and our vision of what sort of lives we live and what sort of ends we seek. Interestingly, this apparently centric version of EVE seems to reverse the extension of ethics to include nature and to work the other way around by extending the scope of EVE in order to defend a VE approach of bioethics.

This leads to identifying a “centered” form of moral anthropocentrism that EVE can adopt. Sylvie Pouteau and Jean-Philippe Pierron seem to endorse such a stance, which does not separate humans from their environment by assuming a specific essence for the former that would differentiate them ontologically from their environment and epistemologically as an object in itself. Pouteau explicitly claims an anthropocentered (but not anthropocentric) stance by re-assessing the notion of anthropos and giving pride of place to agriculture and the relationship with plants in the conception of EVE. As for Pierron, his anthropocentered vision of EVE emphasizes the centrality of a biography that, in the Anthropocene era, shapes a lifestyle that cuts across both the private and public spheres and brings to the fore such virtues as humility, temperance, and hospitality.

Marcello Di Paola’s paper provides a wide-ranging examination of environmental ethics (which is mostly deontological, as already pointed out) and VE, showing that there are in fact many ways in which these two fields can overlap. These overlaps highlight the fact that EVE can mobilize the intrinsic value of nature as well as existence and instrumental values². It is not necessarily a matter of moral anthropocentrism. However, taking the unprecedented case of climate change, Di Paola observes that EVE does not seem to abandon the idea that the supreme good does indeed lie in human flourishing, with the exception of the possibilities offered by approaches inspired by Spinoza’s ontology. In so doing, Di Paola is halfway between anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric EVE.

The five other contributions in the collection defend more openly a non-anthropocentric approach to EVE. By focusing on the capabilities of ecosystems, Cristian Moyano-Fernandez draws on both an in-depth knowledge of ecosystem ecology and a “synergetic” conception of flourishing. By promoting the virtue of ecological justice, the author combines—through the interdependence between one and the other—the human good with the non-human good and thinks that he can thereby resolve potential conflicts between human autonomy and ecosystem autonomy. Moyano-Fernandez’s position on EVE illustrates a moral non-anthropocentrism of the “naturalist” type. While rejecting a human/non-human ontological dualism (ontological anthropocentrism) in favor of a relational ontology, it nevertheless presupposes the inevitable subject/object epistemological dualism on which the objectification of scientific knowledge is based. Yet, it is precisely this knowledge that justifies defending the virtue of ecological justice by adding non-human flourishing (that of ecosystems) to human fulfilment.

Another contribution to a naturalist moral non-anthropocentrism of EVE comes from Rémi Beau. His thinking focuses not on ecosystems as such but on ecological human communities. While this approach is also based on ecological knowledge, it also emphasizes the collective and communitarian nature of certain virtues such as solidarity and conviviality. The ecological communities in which such virtues can be developed and nurtured are those that take account of the human and non-human interests of their members.

The paper by Esteban Arcos occupies an intermediate position by supporting a non-anthropocentric EVE that is halfway between a naturalist version and, so to speak, an “anti-naturalist” version. On the one hand, he recognizes the flourishing and autonomy of the non-human world as an ethical end in addition to the end of human flourishing. This is why the purpose of EVE is redefined here as “mutual flourishing” between humans and non-humans. On the other hand, the use of narrative ethics and the predominant place given to the virtue of love steer Arcos’s EVE towards an anti-naturalistic form of moral non-anthropocentrism. Here, it seems there is a desire not to rely (or no longer to rely only) on the objective knowledge of science (and ecology in particular) but on a more subjective ecological perspective, which claims lived experience in the first person as a source of knowledge and action.
Finally, the last two contributions venture to explore non-anthropocentric and anti-naturalist forms of EVE. Gérald Hess reflects on human agency and endeavors to identify an anthropocentric bias that leads him to distinguish environmental virtues from ecological virtues. While the latter aim at the flourishing of a properly ecological self, based on the agent's experience of a radical decentering of self and of participation in nature, the former assume the differentiation imposed by human/non-human relations in the meaning of the concept of flourishing. The article by Damien Delorme, Noemi Calidori, and Giovanni Frigo is also based on a conception of the ecological self, inspired in this case by the cosmopsychism of ecofeminist Frey Mathews. This holistic understanding of the ecological self leads the authors to extend the notion of virtue to the non-humans. In their view, there are "functional ecological virtues" of non-human agency. These are not moral virtues practiced by human agents, but they can have a positive practical effect on them.

As we see, the range of moral postures in the field of EVE is vast and opens new avenues to the ongoing criticism of anthropocentrism. It ranges from morally anthropocentric to morally non-anthropocentric variants and from "centric" to "centered" and "anti-naturalist" versions of moral anthropocentrism and of non-anthropocentrism.

## 2. Political Implications of EVE

What could then be the political implications of EVE with respect to environmental issues? This question underpins the recurrent criticisms of VE that claim that, because it is agent-centered, it is bound to linger in the private sphere and cannot satisfy the requirements at the social and political levels. This criticism is in fact misunderstanding VE, since from the outset Aristotle argued that ethics and politics are tightly linked and should not be thought as external to each other. The virtuous agent should thus be considered to be also a political agent, exerting agency within and for the City. Accordingly, "EVE is also environmental virtue politics" [6] (p. 13). The issue is thus: "How good are virtues that concern individuals and not institutions, local authorities or States?" [7] (p. 11). Two questions can be addressed: (i) are there virtues that have a wider political reach than others?; (ii) how can the scalability of virtues be enforced in society?

To answer the first question, the emphasis can be placed on social virtues, which rely inherently on interdependency and collective action and relate to the functioning of society as a whole. As pointed out by Cristian Moyano-Fernández, the virtue of justice is pivotal for political issues. By encompassing other than human living beings and ecosystems, ecological justice expands the limited scope of anthropocentric justice beyond human beings and provides the grounds to establish EVE as a leading framework to address major environmental issues. Ecological justice is about how to achieve synergetic or mutual flourishing; thus, it is what needs to be assessed by the virtuous political agent. Other virtues have an inherent social and mutualistic scope, in particular, solidarity and hospitality. Rémi Beau reminds us that the structure of society in ancient Greece was very different from that of our time; thus, the intertwinement between virtue and politics needs to be re-examined. Following Val Plumwood and Chaone Mallory's analysis, he reckons that collective virtues such as solidarity can contribute to new forms of politization, where members of an ecological community care for the flourishing of the diversity of living beings within it. Jean-Philippe Pierron also reminds us that we all start our life as foreigners who need to be hosted on the Earth by human and other-than-human communities. Thus, hospitality appears as a foundational, even ontological, social virtue, implying from the beginning a form of mutualism, which later in life is reversed as we turn to be hosts for others, in particular, climate and political migrants. Ecological justice again is underpinned by the social mutualistic virtue of hospitality since we all share a common dwelling.

Apart from social virtues that from the outset rely on mutualistic premises and concerns for others, whether human or other-than-human entities, most virtues eventually have a social reach and do not remain solitary, since their excellence will be demonstrated in practical situations fleshed out with concrete encounters. To emphasize this specificity of VE, one may insist on the fact that there is no theory of virtue, only a practice of virtue.
Marcello Di Paola reminds us that even the strongest deontological framework based on intrinsic value will eventually need to be attended by VE in the encounter with a specific unique context. The meta-virtue of practical wisdom will be indispensable to identify the adequate course of action. The other meta-virtue of fortitude or strength of character will also be needed as a bastion against the akrasia that threatens to undermine any possibility of action. Furthermore, the hierarchy of values will prove to be reversed from the highest to the lowest. Thus, instrumental value will not rank at the bottom anymore, for it is only when agency takes place that the good can be demonstrated. Sylvie Pouteau gives an example of this necessary complementarity between deontology and VE by analyzing the decisions taken at the COP15 in December 2022. The target to protect 30% of the land and sea and water borders tends to demonstrate that deontology cannot reach beyond a no-interaction standpoint. However, for the remaining 70% of the land and waters that will not be under protection, only VE can provide the basis for adapting agency to every single specific situation where human activities happen to be developed.

Along another line of thought, Jean-Philippe Pierron reminds us of the importance of temperance, another cardinal virtue that amounts to having one's whole mind about oneself. This self-knowledge, knowing who one is, can also translate into knowing one's place on Earth—the initial meaning of the word anthropos, as recalled by Sylvie Pouteau. Temperance can only be exerted through the encounter with others, be they human or other-than-human entities. Eventually ecological temperance may be considered to conflate with ecological justice in the quest of mutual flourishing. Finally, the source of virtue itself needs to be social or mutualistic from the outset. Thus, Gérald Hess argues that the kind of self that underlies VE needs to be thought of not as an atomistic egotic self but as an ecological self. With the premise of an ecological self, every virtue eventually translates into mutualistic tenets apt to contribute to a virtue-based politics. One may also recall that in the *Magna Moralia*, Aristotle [8] (1212b, Book II.14) contended that the virtuous agent cannot be said to be selfish: “He is therefore a lover of good, not a lover of self. For, if he does love himself, it is only because he is good. But the bad man is a lover of self”.

Even if ecology was not a subject of concern in Aristotle's time, this argument finally rules out any further attempt to equate EVE and, more generally, VE to a vicious kind of environmental ethics, which would be paradoxical of course. This vicious curse is more certainly the one that may affect the unilateral use of deontology. The reason is that the latter may lead to a moral disburdenment of agents simply requested to conform to rules that they have not had an opportunity to adopt by themselves. EVE or ecological virtue ethics is what is currently needed to overcome the growing indifference towards nature. To this end, it is necessary to first overcome the belief that global problems require global solutions, hence coercive regulations. Ecological virtue ethics means a shift in the appraisal of the political decisions that may apply. This does not mean that we do not need norms but rather that we need to balance them with an ecological virtue policy.

To answer the second question concerning the political scalability of EVE, three di-
rections can be inferred from the contributions of this volume: (i) developing empirical
education; (ii) deriving alternative models of moral exemplarity; and (iii) mediating collec-
tive action initiatives. The empirical education implied by EVE is concerned with learning,
not only how to practice in what is presumed to be the "right" way but, more specifically,
how to develop a delicate kind of empiricism, apt to support recognizing attitudes. As a first
requirement, empiricism implies that concrete encounters with nature are involved, which
is the case in the field of agriculture, for instance, or gardening and ecological art practice.
Furthermore, Esteban Arcos draws our attention to the syntactic component involved in
recognizing other-than-human entities based on attestation and/or ascription. The way we
literally ascribe subjectivity or agency to nature should be given more emphasis, since this
already conveys awareness and attention to what matters, not merely as commodities but
also as genuine others. Attestation moves one step further by actualizing the recognizing
attitude in the way we act in practice. Gérald Hess also emphasizes the pivotal need for a
phenomenological training that goes beyond behavioral training in superficial eco-gestures
and that may raise the recognizing attitude in order to reach beyond our current scientific objectifying knowledge.

The human standard of good action implied by EVE is neither an absolute model to be imitated, i.e., a practical norm, nor a mere particular case to be considered, only one among many others. It is based on a consistent conception of moral exemplarity in which the wise person is the “measure” (*metron*) of moral conduct [9]. This means that virtuous models are to be found not in discursive theories but in fleshed out recognizing attitudes based on individual, yet universal, golden means. According to this conception of moral exemplarity, the virtuous person will not remain isolated neither be merely imitated, s-he will stand as a catalyst of change for others, so that they also become the measure of their own moral conduct. This moral conception also provides a rule of thumb regarding the emergence of social movements, such as degrowth movements or initial organic and agroecological movements.

Finally, the political scope of EVE may be further appreciated through its unique “metrology” of the good action, reflected in the propensity to self-organization demonstrated by various eco-social movements. This new understanding of collective action may lead to support spontaneous initiatives from the ground, not only top-down public policies that involve heavy multi-scalar institutional tools. Since virtuous and normative strategies may conflate at times but also enter into conflict, e.g., hospitality with regard to migration policies, mediation of collective action will be needed. Regarding the major issue of global climate change, Marcello Di Paola considers that EVE might be a few steps ahead compared to normative environmental ethics as it provides ground for climate-wise environmentally virtuous experiments in living. These may include networked food-producing urban gardening or the creation of non-institutional potential institutions such as a river parliament or folk assembly, social initiatives that are currently being explored in different countries [10].

Interestingly, none of the contributions to the volume has ventured to defend a strong position regarding the initial question as to whether a virtuous anthropocentrism can make sense. Most of the contributions bear potential arguments to defend this position, but their focus is elsewhere, surfacing still unexplored avenues of EVE. This conclusion can be mitigated by two exceptions, which both expand on major domains of applied ethics, domains in which anthropic effects on the environment cannot be bypassed because they concern our most immediate vital needs: (i) agriculture; (ii) bioethics, hence medicine.

In the 70% of the planet that will not be under ecological protection in 2030, including farmlands and production forests, different visions will have to cooperate, so that conformation by institutional norms does not preclude transformation by social movements, which have been the pioneers of agroecology in different parts of the world. Thus, Sylvie Pouteau proposes that EVE could expand into agroecological virtue ethics by developing a “metrology” of the good action in the field of agriculture, thus implying a shift towards “anthropo-centeredness”, a more sophisticated kind of anthropocentrism based on plant-centered topology. Along another line of thought, Nin Kirkham argues that the “argument from nature” could provide the basis for a “virtuously anthropocentric” EVE, meaning that the reach of EVE could also cover bioethical issues, e.g., extended human longevity, which links environmental and human issues—and more generally, euthanasia, abortion, and transhumanism. Drawing on this argument, one may also speculate that EVE could be applied to our internal ecosystems, by considering the billions of microorganisms that constitute our human microbiota—these being continuously connected to the wider environmental microbiota, including those coming from food production systems.

Finally, the notion of “virtuous anthropocentrism” might appear too provocative, and yet, it may be apt to trigger a renewal in the field of environmental ethics at large, including EVE as one of its most promising strains. Further to the initial question at the origin of this volume, one may ask whether EVE could be better defined as a political virtue framework in which the human egotistic self is turned into an ecological self. This would imply that the anthropos is no longer seen as an atomized entity but also encompasses its
surroundings, leading to a re-appraisal of what is meant by the notions of anthropocentrism and anthropo-centeredness and, by the same token, the meaning of non-anthropocentrism. No doubt further refinements will need to be added to this contribution to the field.

**Author Contributions:** Writing—original draft preparation, review and editing by S.P. and G.H. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

**Notes**

¹ Today, there is little disagreement about the fact that animals too possess a psychic condition. According to a number of scientists, even plants are thought to have a mental condition. Nevertheless, if we follow Étienne Bimbenet [5], we can speak of an ontological continuity between humans and non-humans defined in terms of biology, theory of evolution, ecology, etc., and of an anthropological difference between them through the self-understanding that humans have of themselves as cultural beings. In some respects, this difference is also, we might say, *in fine* ontological, but it arises not from a scientific perspective but from a subjective first-person approach. It defines a weak form of ontological anthropocentrism, which in ethical terms implies a “centered” rather than a “centric” version of moral anthropocentrism.

² Instrumental values are those attributed to nature (or certain aspects of it) when it is understood as a means to human ends, for example, when a forest is seen as a resource for firewood. Existence values are those that value nature as existing, for example, an endangered species or a culturally significant landscape. Existence values can lead to decisions aimed at preserving the endangered species or the culturally significant landscape. Intrinsic or moral value is that which attributes a moral status to nature on the basis of some of its properties (for example, the capacity to experience pain or pleasure or the property of being alive, etc.). In principle, intrinsic or moral value implies a certain attitude (responsibility, virtues) or even duties towards nature.

**References**

1. Rolston, H., III. *Environmental Virtue Ethics*: Half the Truth but Dangerous as a Whole. In *Environmental Virtue Ethics*; Sandler, R., Cafaro, P., Eds.; Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham, MA, USA, 2005; pp. 61–78.

2. Sandler, R. *Character and Environment. A Virtue-Oriented Approach to Environmental Ethics*; Columbia University Press: New York, NY, USA, 2007.

3. Sandler, R.D.; Cafaro, P. (Eds.) *Environmental Virtue Ethics*; Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham, MD, USA, 2004.

4. Dzwonkovska, D. *Is environmental virtue ethics anthropocentric?* *J Agric. Environ. Ethics* **2018**, *31*, 723–738. [CrossRef]

5. Bimbenet, E. *Le Complexe des Trois Singes. Essai sur L’animalité Humaine*; Seuil: Paris, France, 2017.

6. Di Paola, M. *Virtue, Environmental Ethics, Nonhuman Values, and Anthropocentrism*. *Philosophies* **2024**, *9*, 15. [CrossRef]

7. Pierron, J.-P. *Temperance, Humility and Hospitality: Three Virtues for the Anthropocene Moment?* *Philosophies* **2024**, *9*, 5. [CrossRef]

8. Aristotle. Magnia Moralia. In *The Works of Aristotle*; Ross, W.D., Ed.; St. Stock, G.W.J., Translator; Oxford Clarendon Press: Oxford, UK, 1915; pp. 1–97. Available online: https://archive.org/details/p2workstranslat09aris/page/n3/mode/2up?view=theater (accessed on 21 August 2024).

9. Morel, P.M. *La mesure et l'exemple: L'exemplarité morale dans l'éthique d'Aristote*. *Riv. Stor. Della Filos. 2023*, *78*, 11–24. [CrossRef]

10. Gosselin, S.; Bartoli, D.G. *La condition Terrestre. Habiter la Terre en Communs*; Seuil: Paris, France, 2022.

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## Article

# A Virtue Ethics Interpretation of the ‘Argument from Nature’ for Both Humans and the Environment

Nin Kirkham

School of Humanities, University of Western Australia, Crawley 6009, Australia; nin.kirkham@uwa.edu.au

**Abstract:** Appeals to the moral value of nature and naturalness are commonly used in debates about technology and the environment and to inform our approach to the ethics of technology and the environment more generally. In this paper, I will argue, firstly, that arguments from nature, as they are used in debates about new technologies and about the environment, are misinterpreted when they are understood as attempting to put forward categorical objections to certain human activities and, consequently, their real significance is often overlooked. Secondly, arguments from nature, particularly as they are used in the context of debates over the use of new technologies, can be understood as appealing to human nature as a way to determine human limitations. Thirdly, arguments from nature can inform our discussion of what it is to be a human being or a person, and this kind of discussion can, in turn, inform our ethical deliberations in such areas of bioethics as euthanasia, abortion, etc. Finally, I conclude that a proper understanding of these arguments can help in establishing which virtues and which vices relate to our relationship with the non-human world—that is, which character dispositions are relevant to an environmental virtue ethics, with human nature as its foundation. A proper understanding of the argument from nature provides the basis for a ‘virtuously anthropocentric’ environmental ethics.

**Keywords:** argument from nature; environmental virtue ethics; human nature; ethics of technology; naturalness

## 1. Introduction

Popular expressions of environmental concern often appeal to nature or naturalness as a kind of ethical guide or arbiter for human activity. Likewise, new advances in technology often elicit popular ethical responses that involve some appeal to the moral value of nature or naturalness But, unlike the pressing global environmental issues and the burgeoning technological advancement that characterise the 21st century, this kind of ethical appeal to nature is not a recent development. Technological advances and environmental concerns have, for centuries, provoked questions concerning naturalness, and proposals to limit human manipulation of the natural world [1] (pp. 70–80). Claims about the connection between appropriate human behaviour and naturalness can be seen to have their roots in Aristotle’s virtue ethics, where he claims that ‘... for every being that is best and pleasantest which is naturally proper to it’ [2] (p. 341). And appeals to nature remain a significant intuitive response to considerations about our relationship with the environment and with technology, particularly in popular conceptions of ethical issues surrounding the use of various technologies. But arguments from nature are as much maligned as they are popular. It is a commonplace to point out that appeals to nature, or to naturalness, do not straightforwardly give us defensible categorical arguments for or against various technological activities—naturalness uninterpreted, it seems, is no ethical guide. The appeal to nature, when understood from within a virtue ethics context, does not provide straightforward grounds to specify some set of actions in preference to all others, just as virtue ethics, more generally, does not attempt to prescribe right, or proscribe wrong, actions in advance. This is at least partly because

**Citation:** Kirkham, N. A Virtue Ethics Interpretation of the ‘Argument from Nature’ for Both Humans and the Environment.
*Philosophies* 2024, 9, 19.
https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9010019

Academic Editors: Sylvie Pouteau, Gérald Hess and Soraj Hongladarom

Received: 10 September 2023

Revised: 15 January 2024

Accepted: 18 January 2024

Published: 22 January 2024

<figure><img src="image_9.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/).
such a prescription is not seen as being immediately derivable from the appeal to nature
in isolation from other ethical commitments.

But if we accept that arguments from nature are neither coherent nor defensible, the
question remains as to why they are still so common as a response to various technologies,
and as a foundation for environmental caution. Is the role of the appeal to nature limited to
being the first untutored attempt at argument by the Luddite or dogmatic environmentalist,
or is there a way to understand the ongoing appeal of arguments from nature that grants
them some coherence and defensibility? Here, I argue that if the appeal to nature is
understood from within the context of Aristotelian virtue ethics (the tradition from whence
it springs) it can be given a far more serious and interesting interpretation.

In this paper, I will take a departure from the standard definition of Environmental Virtue Ethics (EVE), which relies on the notion that nature provides an ethical guide for action. My argument is, in some sense, conceptually prior to the development of EVE and aims to understand how a kind of tacit version of EVE already operates in the way that many people intuitively think about the relationship between humans and the natural world and technological interventions. Because the argument from nature relates to human nature and not only ‘environmental’ nature, I propose that EVE should be based on an understanding of what it is to be a human being; thus, it can only be human-centered. In this sense, the scope of EVE could be extended to areas of bioethics such as euthanasia, abortion, and transhumanism.

## 2. The Argument from Nature as a Foundation for Important Ethical Debate

### 2.1. *Arguments from Nature and Their Problems*

Issues concerning the value of naturalness regularly arise in debates on the ethics of both biotechnology and the environment. Claims that certain technological processes or their products are 'unnatural' feature strongly in the social responses to, and philosophical debates over, IVF (in vitro fertilisation), stem cell research, genetic modification and many other biotechnologies. Such responses to new technologies are so common that they have been dubbed the 'argument from nature' [3] (p. 223) or 'the argument from what is or isn't natural' [4] (p. 19). In these debates, the objections to various technologies based on appeals to the value of naturalness tend to take the general form of 'if x is unnatural therefore x is wrong, or bad, or unadvisable'. Such reasoning has been characterised by de Sousa, in his article entitled 'Arguments from Nature', as the *negative argument from nature* [5] (p. 169). A version of the *negative argument from nature* has also arisen in religious responses to such things as homosexuality, and abortion.¹ On the other hand, in debates concerning the protection of the environment, reasons used to support the preservation of the wilderness often appeal to the notion that it is best to allow natural creation to proceed unhindered. De Sousa characterises the general form of this kind of argument, the *positive argument from nature*, as the following: 'if x is natural therefore x is right, or good, or advisable' [5] (p.169).² And something akin to this argument is found in the aforementioned quote from Aristotle's ethics: '... for every being that is best and pleasantest which is naturally proper to it' [2] (p. 341). We must, however, be careful not to assume that these latter two arguments are exactly equivalent and thus that criticisms of one immediately apply to the other. While de Sousa runs these two arguments together, there appear to be good reasons to think that the 'positive naturalist argument', as he calls and characterises it, is not coherent or defensible, while not thinking that the Aristotelian argument falls prey to the same criticisms so straightforwardly. To some extent, the recent development of EVE may seem to tackle the issue by reintroducing Aristotelian virtue ethics. However, the notion of environment is mostly addressed under a positive naturalist argument (see, e.g., Pouteau, in this issue) [6]. While EVE may provide an adequate basis to make sense of the argument from nature, a first requirement is to unravel the intricate threads of the appeal to 'nature', considering that nature is not summed up by the term environment.
A variety of versions of the negative argument from nature regularly arise in debates over the ethics of new technologies, and such arguments are often dismissed on the grounds that ‘nature’, on its own, does not provide us with any set of objective moral standards that we can use to decide between legitimate and illegitimate uses of technology. The argument from nature, when viewed as a method to deduce from objective premises uncontroversial conclusions about what we should or should not do, or what is or is not good, is clearly invalid. It is on these grounds that the argument from nature is almost universally rejected in bioethics. Concealed in this rejection of the argument from nature as a reasonable and meaningful response to ethical issues concerning technology, is the assumption that the argument from nature is *always* invoked in order to generate categorical and definitive ethical boundaries and, therefore, invoked in attempts to bring ethical discussion to a close. However, I would argue that the use of the argument from nature in these contexts is intended to have—and, furthermore, should have—the opposite effect, that is, to invite and encourage the discussion of fundamental issues beyond merely rights and consequences, in particular issues that might, arguably, be best addressed from within the framework of virtue ethics.

To use the argument from nature (or even the 'playing God' objection to technology [7]), as if it were a categorical objection, or to interpret objections of this kind in this way, can have a further negative consequence. Apart from closing down the debate, an argument from nature when interpreted as making a categorical objection to a certain course of action based on some concept of a nature apart from human, not only expresses a deep and troubling conceptual (and perhaps material) alienation from the environment but, most importantly, expresses a failure of ethical understanding. That is, a failure to understand ourselves as the kinds of beings that we are, and a failure to consider that a proper understanding of ourselves is pivotal to our ethical deliberations. To understand the argument from nature in its virtue ethics context is to re-engage with our most fundamental ethical concerns in the terms that capture a true understanding of ourselves, our place in the world, and the essential elements of our nature. The most fundamental ethical imperative is fundamentally anthropocentric—ultimately, we must decide what to do.³ Humans must decide what to do with an open acknowledgment and clear understanding of our own nature: as limited and capable; as, at the same time, one species among many and different from other species; as autochthonous and technological; as rational and ethical; and as mortal. The proper role of the argument from nature, then, is not to settle or end ethical debate over the environment and new technology by appealing to a categorical limit to human action imposed by nature, but rather to encourage the consideration of deeper ethical issues concerning how we understand ourselves, how we understand technology, and how we conceive of our relationship with the environment.

## 2.2. Reasons for the Marginalisation of Ethical Consideration of the Relationship between Humans and the Natural World

In response to the suggestion above, one might ask, firstly, why consideration of these ‘deeper ethical issues’ that arise within a virtue ethics approach to technology and the environment is so important and, secondly, why, if these issues are so important, they have been marginalised in contemporary ethical debate? Answering the second question may give us some insight into how to respond to the first.

One reason that discussion of how we make sense of the role of human technology and of our relationship with the environment has been marginalised is that contemporary debate has focussed on the discourses of rights and utility, to the almost complete exclusion of all other ethical discourse. The rise of contemporary virtue ethics can be understood partly as a response to the fact that, while the theories of deontology and utilitarianism dominated the field of ethics, they did not seem able or willing to account for certain important moral issues. As virtue ethics illuminated certain of these important marginalised moral issues, deontologists and utilitarians sought to address them in the terms of their own theories. However, for certain of these issues, their natural home is undeniably virtue ethics. This is
particularly the case with issues about how we, as *human beings*, orient ourselves towards nature, and how we understand and make sense of our place in the world, and our use of technology—these issues, which are so central to our ethical self-understanding, are a crucial aspect of a proper virtue theory, but of only marginal importance in deontology or utilitarianism, if of any importance at all.

An objection might be made to the above claim that, rather than being unable to address the question of what we consider to be fundamental to the nature of human beings, deontology and utilitarianism intentionally set this question aside, because attempts to answer it are notoriously contentious and may act as a barrier to ethical agreement at a higher level. Without question, deeper ethical issues concerning the specification of human nature are difficult, controversial, and permit a measure of disagreement. In light of this, one of the great virtues of deontology and utilitarianism is that their specification of right action does not rely on a specification of human nature and, thus, they are libertarian on the topic of how humans (as humans) should live. However, the pervasive use of 'arguments from nature' in response to ethical issues concerning the environment and technology indicates that there is a widespread desire (and, by extension, a need) to engage in discussion of issues about how we, as human beings, orient ourselves towards nature, and how we understand and make sense of our place in the world and of our use of technology. Even if it is unlikely that a complete consensus can be reached on these questions, debating them is an important aspect of our ethical understanding in general, and of our ethical understanding of our relationship to the environment and technology, more specifically. Accepting virtue ethics does not mean we have to deny the significance and usefulness of deontology and utilitarianism. It means that, in addition to these ethical frameworks, we can affirm the importance of foundational discourse regarding the relationship between what we judge to be essential to human nature—by which I mean the most fundamental and universal experiences shared by all human beings—and the general specification of what constitutes a good human life. It is important to note here, firstly, that, while there may be some disagreement and difference across cultures and historical periods, it is undeniable that there is significant continuity at the level of the most fundamental human experiences, and it is from these that our specification of human nature is to be drawn and, secondly, that in virtue theory the specification of human nature is only intended to determine a way of life peculiar to humans at the most general level, and to act as a foundation for our attempts to determine the dispositions that we should cultivate in order to live a good human life.

A second reason that contemporary debate has marginalised these deeper ethical issues about how we collectively conceive of ourselves, and conceive of our relationship to the environment and to technology, might be found in the ascendancy of the claims of cultural and ethical relativism. One might argue that debate over human place and purpose within the non-human world has been marginalised as a result of the post-modern tendency to privatise value and to claim that all, or at least most, values are relative in some sense. This ethical climate has made it very difficult to engage in open debate about what is good for humans as a whole, or even for specific human cultures as a whole. When philosophers, anthropologists and sociologists claim that what is 'good for me' might not be 'good for you', any discussion of what is good for us as members of a species, culture or society, or what is good for society as whole, becomes problematic. The tendency to privatise values in this way has impoverished the debate over human ends and purposes and human flourishing, but this debate is essential for any proper assessment and understanding of human technology and of the place and purpose of humans in relation to the non-human world. It may be that there is no definitive or 'objective' answer to the question of what human purpose or flourishing might be. It might be that these things are to be decided on rather than discovered. It is, however, certain that the discussion of rights and consequences in any ethics relating to technology, whether environmental ethics or bioethics, would make much better sense against a background of serious discussion of the proper orientation humans should have towards technology and towards the non-human world.
One might claim that there is an inconsistency between the above claim for the negative effect of ethical or cultural relativism and the notion that the role of the appeal to human nature in virtue ethics proceeds from a concept of human nature that is not external or objective, but rather internal (or relative) to human culture, and they are easily shown to be consistent. In the case of the latter claim, one might interpret this as a kind of cultural relativism itself, or at least compatible with the claims of the cultural relativist. Certainly, as Nussbaum has argued in her article 'Non-relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach', the use of the appeal to human nature to support a theory of human virtues founded upon the most fundamental and universal experiences of human life can incorporate the claim of the cultural relativist that even these most fundamental human experiences may be constructed differently, at least to some extent, in different cultures [8]. However, such an insight, she argues, only takes us so far. It is undeniable that there are significant parallels and similarities between different cultures, and across diverse historical periods, at the level of the most fundamental human experiences [9].⁴ There is always something fundamentally and universally human that we can relate to in the accounts of the experiences of even the most seemingly 'alien' cultures—what Aristotle called a 'sense of recognition and affiliation that links every human being to every other' [10] (p. 121). The appeal to human nature is not an appeal to an external, scientifically objective and determinate notion, but neither is it a vindication of an extreme version of ethical or cultural relativism. The appeal to human nature enters our ethical deliberation as a concept derived from the human experience of the context and content of human lives; it may evolve over time, but remains relatively constant across cultures and historical periods [10] (p. 121). The importance of the appeal to human nature as a foundation for ethical deliberation is that, while it can incorporate whatever is true in cultural relativism, it does not, by doing this, abandon the task of determining generally applicable human characteristics and values. Consequently, it does not collapse into an extreme privatisation of values where ethical decision-making becomes a private and discrete activity disconnected from a broader and democratically conceived conception of social ends and human flourishing.

## 2.3. *The Importance of Virtue Ethics to Foundational Ethical Debate*

When looked at together, the dominance of deontology and utilitarianism in both bioethics and environmental ethics and the post-modern tendency towards ethical relativism can suggest why consideration of these 'deeper ethical issues' that arise within a virtue ethics approach is important. Together, these two problems have the practical consequence of making it appear as if each type and each instance of transformative technological and environmental practice that we engage in can be assessed in isolation from other instances of the same, and from other social, political, and ethical commitments. But our experience of environmental catastrophes such as global warming must show us, if nothing else, that our transformative practices inevitably have future consequences beyond those that we are both able and willing to foresee. More importantly, the global environmental problems characteristic of the Anthropocene should remind us that the world is one we all share and, thus, that all our decisions affect the environment and other people, now and in the future. Failure to engage in this foundational ethical discourse results in our interactions with the environment, and our development and use of technology, being nothing more than the unplanned outcome of a series of individual decisions made on the basis of individual desires. The ethical assessment of technology and the environment must be embedded in collective deliberations over what kind of lives we want to live and what kind of ends we are seeking, and must be clearly connected to our judgments regarding the proper orientation humans should have towards the environment and technology. Questions about whether the sorts of practices we engage in are the sorts of practices we want to engage in, or whether they are the sorts of practices that we should engage in, are rarely asked and, if they are, they are usually disregarded, or not subjected to open and democratic debate. Likewise, questions about what sort of world we want to live in, and what sort of environment we want to create, are rarely asked, answered or even
discussed. But these questions are central to any serious engagement with environmental
and technological ethical issues.

The argument from nature, as it is characteristically employed in debates over the use of technologies, is best seen as a starting point for ethical deliberation, rather than as an ethical conclusion—invoking a version of the argument from nature invites debate rather than settles it. Arguments from nature can provide a background or foundation for debates over what we should and should not do—a background against which questions that we have traditionally addressed using deontological or utilitarian modes of ethical thinking can be answered. Deliberations about what we can and cannot do, or should and should not do, make better sense when answered against a background of serious consideration of the questions of how we should, as human beings, orient ourselves towards nature and how we should understand and make sense of our place in the world, and of our use of technology.

3. The Argument from Nature as an Appeal to Human Nature

3.1. *Human Nature as the Limiting Factor*

The second way that the appeal to nature (and, more generally, the virtue ethics context
in which I have argued it makes proper sense) can be useful in debates about the ethics of
technology is to provide a cogent interpretation of the objections to technology that attempt
to place limits upon the kinds of ends we should seek, by appealing to human nature as the
limiting factor. Arguments of this particular kind have been used for centuries in debates
over new technologies and over modifications to the natural environment. These arguments
are best understood from within the virtue ethics tradition and, in particular, in relation
to the Aristotelian function argument. In what follows, I use Nussbaum's interpretation
of the general approach taken by Aristotle towards deriving limitations on our ethical
aspirations by appealing to human nature, in her article 'Aristotle on Human Nature and
the Foundations of Ethics', to suggest how such an argument might be fruitfully employed
to inform our evaluations of new technologies [10].

As Nussbaum explains, Aristotle provides us with important insights about how we
divide ourselves from the beasts and from the immortal, divine and self-sufficient beings
(not necessarily real; they can be merely conceptual beings), and the way we use concepts
of personal identity and kind membership to guide our normative evaluations and develop
boundaries for our ethical aspirations.⁵ Aristotle's discussion of friendship (*philia*), in a
series of passages of the *Nicomachean Ethics* Book VIII, gives us a picture of his general
approach to such issues. Friends, Aristotle notes, generally wish for each other great
goods; however, he observes, friends tend to confine their well-wishing to certain ways.
One would not, for instance, wish one's friends to be transformed into gods, because the
achievement of this wish would render them so different from what they are, that they
could no longer be one's friends. The condition, then, of well-wishing for one's friends,
Aristotle claims, is that 'that person will have to remain the type of being he is' [10] (p. 90).
It is, thus, 'to him as a human being [or: on condition of his remaining a human being]' that
one may wish their friend the greatest goods [10] (p. 90). Here, Nussbaum explains, we see
Aristotle asserting a connection between kind membership and notional limitations upon
ethical well-wishing. In a passage that occurs shortly afterwards, concerning well-wishing
for oneself, rather than for one's friends, Aristotle asserts a similar connection:

> Everyone wishes his own good—nobody would choose to have all good things
> in the world at the price of becoming somebody else (for as it is the gods possess
> the good), but *only while remaining himself*, whatever he *is* [11]. [my emphasis]

In this instance, the restrictions upon ethical aspirations relate not only to kind mem-
bership but also, more specifically, to continued personal identity.

Nussbaum demonstrates that we can derive an understanding of the general strategy
Aristotle is using to affirm a connection between ethical well-wishing (the aspiration for the
achievement of eudaimonia for oneself or one's friends) and the conditions of one's (or of
one's friends' continued existence [10] (pp. 90–92). Aristotle is inviting us to reflect on the
question of whether this supposedly valuable life that we are wishing for ourselves, and for
our friends, is a life that could belong to beings such as we are; beings, that is, who possess
all those characteristics and dispositions that we believe constitute our identities. When we
give this question due consideration, it might be that the life that we envisage for ourselves
(or for our friends) would be so distant and different from the life we (or they) have, that
we could not honestly envision achieving that life and at the same time remaining who we
were before. Aristotle's central claim here is that there are changes that make someone a
better person, or give them a better life, which are compatible with that person's continuing
to be who they are (as an individual and as a human being) and there are some changes
that, while they might appear to be very desirable, would bring into existence a new being
that we would not consider to be the same as the original person to whom the changes
occurred. It is from this kind of reflection—reflection upon the connection between what
we deem to be our essential characteristics and what possible changes we could undergo
whilst continuing to be ourselves—that we can derive limits upon what we should wish
for and what kind of 'technological' changes to the human being our ethical theories can
recommend, and which they can censure, or discourage.

A criticism that can be made against this kind of argument is to ask why we should accept the claim that we should not try to change ourselves into something that we are not. Why, the sceptic asks, should we not try to transcend our limitations as human beings? Why do we have to accept these allegedly essential characteristics of ourselves, rather than rail against them or rise above them? An example of this is human mortality, both because it is a clear candidate for being deemed an essential characteristic of human beings and because it is something that some people (perhaps without due thought) consider to be an undesirable characteristic of human life.

Aristotle's argument might proceed along the following lines: to be the kinds of being that we are, we must continue to be mortal and, perhaps, our lives even have to have a certain kind of temporal trajectory; to desire for ourselves, or for our friends, that we are no longer mortal would be to want our friends to be other than they are and we would be wishing them, or ourselves, into non-existence; what we wished for would be some kind of being, but it would no longer be the kind of being that it was; and, therefore, it could no longer be that friend that we wished that good for.

Aristotle's argument is, admittedly, based upon an intuition that some people do not
immediately accept—some people, it seems, do not consider mortality to be an essential
feature of what it is to be a human being. One way to justify or support the moral intuition
about the limitations on the kinds of ends that humans can seek is to appeal to cultural
tradition. History and mythology is replete with cautionary tales about the human vice
of attempting to go beyond, or transcend, our essential nature—not only the undesirable
consequences that can result from this (Icarus, Prometheus, Dr Frankenstein's monster,
etc.), but also the vice, hubris, that gives rise to it. Such stories provoke us to consider
how much of what we truly value as essential to our characteristic way of being in the
world is inseparable from our mortality, our finitude and our transience. An infinite
life, as Nussbaum notes, would not contain opportunities (or would contain far fewer
opportunities) for struggle, risk and sacrifice—features of finite and characteristically
human lives that, in turn, produce love, friendship, accomplishment and virtue. Our limits,
just as much as our capabilities, define who and what we are, and are to be cherished for
the reason that these limits give rise to the practices and values that make our lives truly
human [10] (p. 96).

Granted, for some people the restriction Aristotle places on ethical well-wishing—that
it is directed towards someone only in so far as they remain the same individual and the
same kind of being that they are—is also not intuitively acceptable. Why, one might ask,
should I not wish my friend to become immortal, for instance? If my friend is truly my
friend, then I surely want the very best for them. Is not my wanting my friend to remain
the same individual, and the same kind of being, that they are merely a type of selfishness?
If they became sufficiently different, I might no longer be able to be friends with them, and
that would constitute a loss to me, but would to take that as a sufficient reason not to want
them to change appear to be selfish, if the change would be much better for them? The
answer to this is 'no'. There is, in fact, no person in existence for whom the change would
be better. Aristotle's argument is not against wishing oneself or one's friends to succeed,
advance or change. It is rather against the rationality of wishing for a good for someone
who does not exist. The ethical intuition that is being expressed here is very much like
that captured by what has come to be known in population ethics as 'the slogan', or the
'person-affecting restriction'. The 'person-affecting restriction' in population ethics states
that 'one situation cannot be worse (or better) than another if there is no one for whom it is
worse (or better)'; that is, the claim is that we cannot make assessments about well-being in
the absence of an actual person about whom we are making the assessment [12] (p. 14).⁶
When we wish our friend be transformed into a god or made immortal, the future 'better'
state that we are wishing for is one in which our friend, as an individual and as a human
being, no longer exists and, thus, there is no one for whom this wished-for state is better.

3.2. *Limits on Changes to Human Nature*

It might appear that this argument is more intuitively attractive on the level of the
maintenance of personal identity than on the level of kind membership. Does the argument
also work when we consider whether it is coherent for us to wish that human beings as
a kind be transformed into a different kind of being? Human beings might, for instance,
be better off if we were, even just a little bit, less aggressive or warlike or dogmatic, and
a little more compassionate and generous. Whether these little changes to a universal
human nature are consistent with our remaining human, is open for debate. However,
there is good reason to suppose that, because all the aforementioned characteristics are
existing characteristics of humans, such changes are consistent with our remaining the
kinds of beings that we are. But when we consider an extreme case, such as whether we
should wish for human beings to become immortal, it is far less clear that we, as a kind,
could possess such an attribute while remaining the sort of beings that we are. Mortality
is an integral part of human self-understanding. It may be that the world would be, in
some sense, a better place if there were no humans and, instead, there was in our place a
species of immortal beings, but in what sense could it be better? Here again, 'the slogan' is
instructive—our ethical aspirations are restricted to those that affect persons. A possible
world cannot be a better (or worse) place when it is not a better (or worse) place for anyone
who, or any kind of being which, actually exists.

Aristotle is instructive on the subject of the connection between personal identity,
kind membership, and those characteristics of our lives that we judge to be fundamental
or essential. Nussbaum explains that the way our practical reasoning operates and
the way that we seek a life of *eudaimonia* is, for Aristotle, incomprehensible without
reference to a clear understanding of the particular conditions of human being-in-the-
world, of our specific nature as human beings, of our abilities and of our limitations.
These 'facts' about human beings—our appetites and desires, our pains and pleasures,
our needs, our mortality, our physicality—are, for Aristotle, more than 'external'; they
are, rather, inferred from the internal perspective common to all human beings and they
bear directly upon ethical questions concerning the limitations of our capabilities within
the world [10] (p. 120).

Reflection upon these core aspects of our nature can contribute to debates over possible
limits on certain ends we, as human beings, should seek. For instance, debates over the
ethical aspects of the possible achievement of immortality, or greatly extended longevity,
through human cloning or stem-cell technology. Aristotle would argue that the achievement
of immortality is not a possible goal for us, as humans. Why not? Because in achieving that
goal we would alter our very nature—the aspiration to become immortal is not one that
humans can rationally hold, as, by achieving immortality, we would cease to be identified
as humans. Nussbaum claims that this kind of argument strategy is self-validating at a
deep level; Aristotle’s strategy is to make clear the idea that certain ethical choices do not
fit with our deep beliefs about identity. By reflecting seriously upon the choice of a life in which we are, for instance, no longer mortal, or the choice of a life which has a temporal trajectory so remote from our own as to make us unidentifiable with human beings, Aristotle demonstrates that, in choosing such a life, we would cease to be identifiable as ourselves individually or as members of our kind. Because questions of personal identity were not matters of fact for Aristotle, but rather matters of choice and judgment, the question of whether *I* survive in a life is intimately related to, and not easily distinguishable from, the question of whether *I* consider that life to be one worth living. Our answer to the question of whether a life in which we are no longer mortal or in which our life-span is significantly altered is a life we should seek, depends not only on whether we judge mortality to be so important to human life that its lack would render life no longer choice-worthy, but also on whether we deem that the lack of mortality would cause its possessor to cease to be what they are [10] (pp. 90–95).⁷

It is worth considering further how this kind of argument would apply to signif-
icantly extended human longevity, rather than immortality. The former is a real and
present possibility (in fact, to some extent, it is already occurring) afforded by our ad-
vances in medical biotechnology, whereas the latter continues to remain unlikely. When
we consider the case of extended longevity, as opposed to immortality, the conclusion
of this kind of argument is less easily settled. The claim that mortality is an essential
characteristic of human nature is more easily maintained than a claim that the current
maximum lifespan of human beings is an essential characteristic. However, the extension
of human life might reach a point where a life is of such a length that we judge it to be
no longer consistent with human beings remaining the kinds of beings that they are. In
debating this question, we would have to consider the effects such extended longevity
would have on reproduction, child-rearing, population, and quality of life. Importantly,
in the context of EVE, the myriad possible effects of extended human longevity on
the natural/non-human environment would also require serious consideration. Other
matters, such as whether the temporal trajectory and guiding narrative of a life of greatly
extended length would be consistent with a life we would deem human, would also
come into the debate. In deciding whether longevity, within a specific range, is an
essential characteristic of human nature, we must focus on what we consider to be the
most crucial and fundamental aspects of our lives. Most importantly, the question of
whether there are, or should be, limits to the extension of human life must be open to
debate. This debate should be of guiding significance in our deliberations about the
kinds of ends we should seek for humans through technological innovation.

3.3. *An Evaluative Process to Debate Human Limitations*

That there might be ethical disagreement over such a topic would, I suggest, have
been of minimal concern for Aristotle. A key feature of this kind of ethical evaluation is that
the role of ethical disagreement is a central part of the process. There is no 'external' arbiter
to whom we can appeal, because resolving ethical disagreements of this kind requires our
evaluation of what we judge to be the most important features of human lives. Nussbaum
points out that an agreement, if there is to be one, will come from one party's convincing the
other that the internal view he holds of what is important in his life, and which drives his
mode of acting in the world, is inconsistent with his theoretical claim about the possibility
of having a significantly extended life (for instance) while remaining both a human being
and the person he is [10] (p. 94). The process of deriving conceptions of human limitations
from an account of the human experience of human life is fundamentally evaluative, and it
requires ethical argument and deliberation. Limits to the kinds of ends we seek, as human
beings, are not to be discovered; they are to be established by reference to an evaluative
account of what we judge to be the truly fundamental features of human experience and
human life.

Arguments from nature (and the 'playing God' objections to technology and envi-
ronmental interventions) which attempt to place limits upon the kinds of ends we should
seek through technology, by appealing to a conception of essential human nature, can play a critical role in debates about the use of technology. Such arguments should not be understood as attempts to close down ethical discussion by an appeal to an 'externally' discovered limit upon human aspiration. Rather, they are properly employed when they encourage us to reflect upon what we truly consider to be the central features of good, fitting, or worthwhile human lives—lives that we judge to be choice-worthy and lives that we, as individuals and as human beings, could survive in. These arguments encourage us to recognise that certain possibilities are open to us, while others are not. There are ends that we should hope and strive for, and there are ends for which, were we to achieve them, we would have to forgo aspects of our lives that we truly deem to be constitutive of our being human and being ourselves.

### 3.4. *From Nature to Environment and Technology—Related Virtues and Vices*

Virtue ethics gives us the proper framework in which to debate questions regarding what we consider to be the essential properties of human beings. The appeal to human nature as a normative criterion for our ethical deliberations about the good life for humans requires that we make judgments about what we deem human nature to be. These judgements must be informed by our consideration of the question of which aspects of our lives, and the lives of human beings more generally, are so essential and significant that without them we would judge that the human being, human life, or individual person no longer existed. These are exactly the sorts of evaluative questions we are faced with in ethical discussion of bioethics, stem-cell research, abortion, and euthanasia, etc. Answering questions of this kind is always going to be, at its foundation, a matter of internal evaluation, rather than objective or scientific fact. When debated from within the virtue ethics framework, these questions are properly located, and clearly tied to their ethical conclusions. In debating these questions, such as where human life ends and begins (individually and as a kind or species), we are working in the Aristotelian tradition. What human nature is, and what makes a person a person, is an ethical question, not a purely scientific question. That certain lives are not the lives of human beings, or the lives proper to human beings, is an evaluative judgement. Further, questions such as these are matters for communal deliberation and judgment and not matters for independent, quantitative investigation and discovery. These questions cannot be taken as settled. Even if there is no clear answer to be discovered, or no ultimately definitive answer to be hoped for, these questions must be debated. Otherwise, our ethical understanding of human life, of technology, and of our relationship with the environment, will be severely impoverished.

Finally, the argument from nature, and virtue ethics more generally, can be of use in technological and environmental ethical debates by encouraging us to consider what kind of virtues might be relevant to our relationship with the environment, rather than our relationship with other people. What sort of dispositions can we cultivate towards the environment in order to achieve a life of flourishing and happiness? In what way might we orient ourselves towards the natural world in order to live a life in which we achieve *eudaimonia*? By reflection upon human nature, and upon those characteristics of humans which are so fundamental and important that by lacking them we would cease to be identifiable as human beings, we can begin to determine what kind of life (on a very general level) we lead as human beings, what central human characteristics we organise our lives by, and what character dispositions or virtues we promote in order to live flourishing lives. By focusing on questions about what kind of character traits we should develop and how we should live, environmental virtue ethics can help us to determine the proper orientation that humans should have toward both technology and the lifeworld [16]. Environmental virtue ethics can also provide for us a deep structure for discussing human flourishing in the salient context of a complicated and increasingly unstable and degraded ecosystem, rather than simply prescribing right or wrong actions in relation to a narrow conception of human concern [16,17]. The relatively recent and rapid development of virtue ethical approaches to the ethics of the environment provides clear support for this
claim—there now exists an extensive body of literature explicating EVE [18–21]. While the question of what particular character dispositions might be established as environmental virtues is beyond the scope of this paper, an increasingly rich literature on this topic is being developed in this area and, indeed, on the question of how we might best cultivate such virtues [16,22–24].

So, virtue ethics is, perhaps, the ideal moral framework in which to tackle ethical issues concerning environmental behaviour and existential threat. However, it is important not to disconnect the issue of environmental nature and that of human nature. Instead of claiming that we first need to recognize values in nature, I believe that our first requirement is to come to terms with the recognition of values and limitations in human life. In this sense, environmental and technological issues would rely on the same essential core, so that environment and humans are not considered as separate issues. Thus, EVE may represent an appropriate framework for the consideration of bioethical issues, too.

## 4. Conclusions

The argument from nature, as it is commonly employed in bioethical and environmental contexts, makes proper sense only when understood as proceeding from a virtue ethics framework. The virtue ethics interpretation of the argument from nature can account for and make sense of moral intuitions about the value of nature and the place and purpose of humans in the natural environment. While the argument from nature (in any of its forms) does not allow us to deduce categorical ethical distinctions between technological acts or types of acts, the appeal to nature, as understood within a virtue ethics framework, can have a different and more foundational role in our ethical thinking about the relationship between humans, technology, and the natural world. While arguments from nature may not give us a method for making clear ethical distinctions between technological acts, they can inspire us to consider the role of human technology more generally—the place and purpose of humanity in the natural world, and the role of technology in helping us achieve our purpose and understand our place. It is fundamental to any ethics of human technology and the environment that before we try to develop a theory that prescribes or prohibits particular technological or environmental acts, we engage in debate about what sort of lives we live and what sort of ends we seek. That debate can, and should, appeal to an evaluative concept of human nature.

Understanding the argument from nature in its virtue ethics context, and as an appeal to ‘human nature’, allows us to ground ethics not in something ‘other than’ human, such as a notion of nature defined in opposition to the human, but, rather, to ground it in the human—that is, to put humans at the centre of our ethical deliberations—to be ‘virtuously anthropocentric’. It allows us to ground both environmental ethics and bioethics in an understanding of the human as human, and in an understanding of the normative implications of a deep (and debatable) conception of human nature; and to ground it in a conception of human nature that is already interpreted and evaluated, rather than sitting outside or external to human concerns. A proper understanding of arguments from nature can help in establishing which virtues and which vices relate to our relationship with the non-human world—which character dispositions are relevant to an environmental virtue ethics, with human nature as its foundation. And so, a proper understanding of the argument from nature provides the basis for a ‘virtuously anthropocentric’ environmental ethics. It is ultimately up to us to decide which environmental and technological practices to pursue, and which to eschew—and the best way to do this is by reference to an understanding of ourselves which recognises not only those aspects of our lives which we deem to be most important, but also our capabilities and our limitations, and the responsibility engendered by our unavoidable and constant engagement in making and re-making the world in which we find ourselves.

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

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

## References

**Disclaimer/Publisher's Note:** The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content.

<footnote n="1">1. However, in such uses it is important to see that the term 'unnatural' is specifically defined as according to God's will or law, and thus this version of the negative 'argument from nature' does not fall prey to the problem of distinguishing between what is natural and what is not, in the way that secular versions of the argument do.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2. My exposition in this paragraph of the various versions of the 'argument from nature' was informed by §1 of de Sousa's article.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">3. This argument is slightly orthogonal to much of the work in EVE that endeavors to develop non-anthropocentric environmental ethics and to the work specifically on anthropocentrism.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">4. See [9] for an argument of this kind made from the point of view of socio-biology.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">5. The content of this paragraph is informed by Nussbaum's discussion of Aristotle's general argument strategy in [10] (pp. 90–91).</footnote>

<footnote n="6">6. See also [13] (pp. 62–72) and [14] (ad. loc.). 'The slogan' is, of course, not uncontroversial, however it is generally accepted in ethics, probably because it captures a widely held moral intuition regarding the attribution of the terms 'good' and 'better'. See [15] (pp. 93–116) for a defence of the slogan against some of the more common objections to it.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">7. This paragraph is informed by Nussbaum's characterisation of Aristotle's strategy of argumentation in [10] (pp. 90–95).</footnote>

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<footnote n="8">8. Nussbaum, M. Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach. *Midwest Stud. Philos. XIII* **1988**, *13*, 32–53. [CrossRef]</footnote>

<footnote n="9">9. Brown, D.E. *Human Universals*; McGraw-Hill: New York, NY, USA, 1991.</footnote>

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<footnote n="11">11. Aristotle. *The Nicomachean Ethics Book VIII*; 1166a 19–22; Penguin: London, UK, 2004.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">12. Temkin, L.S. *Inequality*; Oxford University Press: New York, NY, USA, 1993.</footnote>

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<figure><img src="image_10.png" /></figure>

Article

# Temperance, Humility and Hospitality: Three Virtues for the Anthropocene Moment?

Jean-Philippe Pierron

UMR Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire de Recherches—Sociétés, Sensibilités, Soin (LIR3S), University of Burgundy, 21000 Dijon, France; jean-philippe.pierron@u-bourgogne.fr

**Abstract:** As social and ecological transition and climate change raise issues that go far beyond individual responses, how can these challenges be balanced with ethical and political responses? This article intends to show that the strength of virtue ethics lies in the fact that it translates these abstract issues into concrete biographical events that shape lifestyles. The search for the good life in these matters then finds in temperance, humility and hospitality three virtues, private and social, to operate this translation. Humility makes explicit the deep interdependencies between the living, while temperance calls for practices that are attentive to these relationships, in the knowledge that our ways of life here have far-reaching consequences on the other side of the globe. This in turn invites us to restore hospitality to its cosmopolitical dimension.

**Keywords:** ethics; virtue; temperance; humility; hospitality; Anthropocene; ecology

## 1. Introduction

There is a long list of concrete practices that are being invented today to give body, through the body, to new ecologically sustainable ways of life that support social and ecological transition: eating less meat; eating organic; choosing a bank that supports the local economy and does not fund tax havens; adopting more sustainable modes of mobility; building shared habitats that benefit inter-age and inter-species relationships while also reducing the impact on land use; sorting and recycling waste; recycling clothes. . . All of these are ways of inventing more sober lifestyles and reflect a desire for an ethical life, a quest for the good life or “living well”, as Aristotle puts it [1]. By reconnecting us with what is known as virtue ethics, the central challenge is this: to uncover our innate desire—a desire borne by every human being—to change the world, so as to direct this desire into exercises of the self, these being the foundation of a quest for the good life.

Today, people are attempting to achieve full coherence in their lives between what they understand about the ecological situation and what they believe to be necessary, existential choices to preserve sustainable and fair habitable conditions on Earth. But people do not always succeed in this, sometimes even exhausting themselves in a kind of militant burnout common among ecological activists. This calls into question whether this “logical coherence” (i.e., consistency between beliefs and action) is the sole criterion with which to evaluate the good life, or whether the good life can be judged in terms of a balance between a long-term goal, such as the ends sought in the quest for the good life, and the short-term goal of ordinary everyday choices in the context of constraints, which are sometimes contradictory. There is, for example, a temporal conflict between the long-term aim of reducing the use of pesticides in agriculture and the short-term obligation to increase productivity in order to repay loans. There is also a contradiction for a person who wants to reduce their carbon footprint but is forced to travel regularly by air for work.

In the quest for the good life, there is a renewed interest in “wisdoms” (i.e., folk knowledge and practice) that may challenge academic, scientific teachings. The latter are deemed to be too theoretical; thus, specific practices of the self are deployed in the aim of

**Citation:** Pierron, J.-P. Temperance, Humility and Hospitality: Three Virtues for the Anthropocene Moment? *Philosophies* 2024, 9, 5. https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9010005

Academic Editors: Arran Gare, Sylvie Pouteau and Gérald Hess

Received: 30 August 2023

Revised: 5 December 2023

Accepted: 7 December 2023

Published: 28 December 2023

<figure><img src="image_11.png" /></figure>

**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/).
living in greater harmony with nature. Thus, an ethics conceived as a type of dietetics is
formed, relying on new ways of being, such as making ethical food choices or reducing
one's ecological footprint. These ways of being activate practices of the self that break with
ordinary social practices via diverse radical ecological alternatives within specific ecotopias.
This leads us to propose that the Anthropocene moment surfaces a new *civilisation des
mœurs* (civilization of morals), as Norbert Elias would say, characterized by a dialectic
between ethics and *ethos* [2]. This dialectics is important because an ethics without an *ethos*
would be inconsistent: if it does not translate into behaviors, then it would remain a posture
of *belle-âme*. Conversely, an *ethos* without an ethics would merely represent a behavioral
training in superficial eco-gestures.

In our view, the contemporary quest for the good life renews a broken link with
the ancient virtue ethics that sought, in various ways, to live “according to nature” by
mobilizing effective practices and exercises of the self. Here, we address the relevance of
virtue ethics for the Anthropocene moment. The paper is organized into four sections. First,
we will ask how virtue ethics responds to the Anthropocene moment. Second, we will see
how virtue ethics can discern and support the desire for the good life in a culture of envy.
Third, we will mediate between the concern for logical coherence and the biographical
dimension of the ethical aim. Fourth, we will focus on three virtues (temperance, humility
and hospitality) and their ethical fecundity for our solidarity and our belonging to the Earth.

## 2. What Is New in Virtue Ethics for the Anthropocene Moment?

The neutrality and impartiality of ecological knowledge as a scientific issue is matched
by its ecobiographical impact on issues of existence, at the psychological level of course
(as studied by ecopsychology, e.g., eco-anxiety) and also at the ethical level (operated by
virtues). From this perspective, appealing to virtue ethics involves an ecological commit-
ment which is an essential factor in the art of being oneself, also conceived as an art of
attention toward our interdependence with living beings and the environment. A central
idea is that an ecology addressing environments cannot forgo an inner ecology that relies
on subjectivities and practices of the self in the quest for the good life.

We hypothesize that these practices of the self, in being aware of the Anthropocene
moment, are much the same as those presented by Pierre Hadot in his work on the spiritual
exercises of Greek ethics, in particular his work on the "conversion du souci" [conversion
of attention]. He writes thus: "In principle, we give value to that which we care about. To
change the object of attention is to effect a change in values and to change the direction of
attention" [3]. In this context, philosophy, in its speculative and practical dimensions, is
conceived as a "transformation of one's perception of the world", an effort that requires
virtues in order to learn new ways of seeing the world. In the Anthropocene moment, the
issue is to turn ecological information into ecobiographical events. Hadot put forward the
idea of a kind of ecological and "ethical conversion" encouraged by new exercises of the
self in support of social and ecological transition. It is not enough to demonstrate rationally
or to deduce logically that other-than-human living beings, or even environments, are
important enough for us to care about them. What is required is to practically care for them,
for it is in this caring that we give them value. As Gaston Bachelard points out, "(t)o use a
magnifying glass is to pay attention, but isn't paying attention in itself a magnifying glass?
Attention alone is a magnifying glass" [4] (p. 20).

Care, as the primary virtue of attention, shifts the architectural lines of attention
between what matters and what is secondary. This quality of attention is an ethical
disposition, and is not the same as vigilance, which is an intellectual attitude. In caring for
other-than-human living beings and environments, attention is mobilized intimately, and
this creates an ecological conversion of attitudes that resonates with the interdependencies
of the world, changing biological information into biographical events.

But how is the good life with and for others—and which others?—possible in the
Anthropocene? What level of lifestyle commitment is required to support social and
ecological transition in the Anthropocene moment? The unique challenge for virtue ethics
is to succeed in aligning the temporal and geological forces of the Anthropocene with the unique biographical time of being oneself and with the social time of being together. In the Anthropocene moment, the issue at stake is the *anthropos*: a specific conception of the self and the future of the self. “In my everyday striving, what kind of man or woman am I trying to be?” This question underlies the idea of the self and is central to conceiving a type of life—a good life as implied by virtue ethics. The renewed interest in virtue ethics comes after a long hiatus, which found its strongest justification in the Kantian tradition. For Kant, the search for the good life was so multifaceted and disordered that it was necessary, in order to guide one’s actions, to replace it with the pursuit of a principle: a morality of duty. Thus, virtue gave way to duty [5] and the good life was replaced by the timeless, universal, but also impersonal Good.

However, our late modernity has brought to light the limits of such an ethical approach when faced with “hard cases”, as Ronald Dworkin [6] would say, and has countered it with ethical pluralism. Furthermore, our post-traditional situation has replaced statutory morals that defined what which actions were appropriate with a demand for authenticity, which calls for an art of being oneself, of exercising the self. Our societies are, from an ethical point of view, mentally exhausting, precisely because it is up to each individual to work out what type of human they want to be. As Thomasset states:

> (t)he current return to virtue ethics is partly explained by this desire for a broader moral vision, which takes into account the history of the subject and the issue of education. Virtues, these inner dispositions of freedom which guide us towards the good that can be achieved, tackle these issues of learning desire, personal experience, and progression in a unique story, all while inserting the subject within an already existing tradition that aims at a common good. Today, answering the question “what should I do?” also involves (undoubtedly first and foremost) asking questions about the constitution of the subject and the construction of their identity: “What kind of person do I want to become?”. [7]

The unique event in the Anthropocene moment is the fact that virtue ethics becomes an issue for each of us and no longer just for a small number of privileged philosophers and citizens. This means that everyone needs to work out what a good life implies in one's own biography and not as a general rule. But how good is good for me here and now?

### 3. Discerning the Desire for a Good Life within a Culture of Want

Virtue ethics does not enter the moral question via principles, rules or duties but via a “desire” for a good life. The long history of virtue ethics since Aristotle has already emphasized the importance of the good life, living well and the desire for a happy life:

> All art (*tekhne*) and all investigation (*methodos*) and similarly all action (*praxis*) and all preferential choice (*prohairesis*) tend towards some good, it seems. So it has been rightly stated that the Good is what all things tend towards. [1] (p. 31)

Why is it important to reconsider this simple idea in the context of environmental ethics? Because most of them intend to be non-anthropocentric. At first glance, the terms used by Aristotle seem to be at odds with the ultra-contemporary issue of the environment. However, this holds true only when accepting, without discussing them, two distinctions inherited from analytical philosophy: the distinction between aretaic, deontological and consequentialist ethics; and the distinction between anthropocentric, ecocentric and biocentric ethics. These distinctions are enlightening from a didactic point of view. But from a practical point of view, they are not easily mobilized and tend to remain a casuistry. Furthermore, ordinarily, moral life traverses and dialectizes, rather than dichotomizes, virtue and duty, situation and principle, intention and consequences. However, we will leave this issue open, even if it seems to us that practical wisdom resists an analytical division and refers instead to a rhythm that works intimately on moral life throughout a person's existence.
The contemporary culture of technical mastery and commercial domination of nature
creates confusion between the desire for the good life and the desire to have. The latter is
a form of anthropocentrism that exalts the self while also, and paradoxically, concealing
the deep aspirations of this self. It is necessary to distinguish between *amour de soi* (self-
love) and *amour propre* (self-appreciation) of the type that we find in Rousseau [8]. The
widespread expansion of an extractivist culture that depletes natural resources as well as
emotional resources—from the burning Earth to exhausted or burnt-out psyches—is due in
large part to this confusion between desire and want. The subjects, uprooted from their
desire for a good life, anaesthetized by technical mediations (from screens to the various
ways of controlling and directing the world and living beings), reify their relationship with
themselves, others and the environment, and find themselves alienated. A way out of this
alienation would involve working on the internal consistency of the subject of the good
life, on their self-capacities and capabilities, in order to develop a critical outer resistance to
anything that prevents or prohibits the good life, based on a sense of what is right ethically,
legally or politically. But in this context, how can a desire for the good life to be clarified
and brought to the light? How do we clarify our desire for the good life so that it is critical
of a deleterious anthropocentrism?

First, we need to set about discerning how the quest for the good life can be supported—
or impeded. For that, it is crucial to differentiate between two types of finality: the pursuit
of the good life driven by desire; and the finality of the “extractivist” socio-economic
environment in which this desire unfolds. Indeed, as Paul Ricoeur comments:

> In Aristotelian ethics, it can only be a question of what's good for us. This relativity to us does not prevent it from being contained in any particular good. Rather, it is what is missing from all types of good. All ethics presupposes this non-saturable use of the predicate "good". [9]

We must focus on this non-saturable dimension of the predicate “good” in order to
explain why an ethical life is both a goal and a striving of the self over the course of a
lifetime, discerning between the possible forms of good in contrast with the idea that there
is a void to be filled, a want to be satisfied, a saturated good presented as a market offering
or an individualized notification in a consumerist ideology that pretends to “fulfill the
expectations of a good life”.

In stressing the tension between art, investigation, action and preferential choice,
Aristotle already identified the non-saturation of the good as the central challenge of ethical
discernment. Indeed, it is important to differentiate between ends relating to techniques
and ends relating to action, especially because our time is so marked by an administrative
colonization of the lived world, leading to confusion between needs, wants and desire. For
virtue ethics, there is a critical opportunity to distinguish between human superiority and
the critical and evaluative role of practices (*tekhne*). Ethical discernment is all about learning
to coordinate and prioritize between the many ends pursued when we act or agitate.

Today, unlike in Aristotle's time, the need for discernment is ever-increasing because
the desire for the good life (*praxis*) is dramatically disrupted by commercial and digital
incentives or notifications (*tekhne*), and because economic success depends on the equiv-
ocation between the analog self and the digital self. But how does the force of the "new
spirit of capitalism", as Boltanski puts it—i.e., the Capitalocene—shuffle the cards between
priorities by promoting a commodification of the intimate which individualizes without
individuating? What happens when this force crosses the border, not between needs (natu-
ral and necessary pleasures) and desire (non-necessary natural pleasures)—a distinction
developed by the Greek philosophers—but between want and desire?

The ecological crisis is an abstract scientific fact. But it is turned into a biographical
event according to continuous ethical choices. Thus, the social and ecological transition
goes through us. This transition is not only intimate but also present in sober, temperate
and attentive lifestyles. The latter need not be confused with the austerity of an ascetic
renunciation, nor with instinctual exaltation of orgiastic excess lured by abundance. The
ethical issue becomes a critical discourse of a political economy that encourages an acosmic
way of “making the world”, i.e., of profiling collective attitudes and behaviors. This criti-
cism is summed up in the slogan *moins de biens, plus de liens* [less goods, more connections].
It questions, discusses and disputes the type of world that invites excess and addiction to
easy lifestyles based on the depredation of fossil fuels.

In the *Discours de la Méthode* (Discourse on Method), inspired by the Stoic tradition, emphasizing the values of a relatively peaceful life in a society marked by turbulence, Descartes gave himself a maxim of action: to “endeavour always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and to change my desires rather than the order of the world” [10]. This demanding proposal needs to be kept in mind by learning to distinguish between when we are right and when we misconceive our capacity to influence what is not within our reach. However, it is based on an insular conception of the self, neither porous nor buffered, and not on its relational interdependencies with its living environment. It is politically very prudent as it aims at a reform of the self, but not a reform of the world as it is. Today, the stakes may have shifted for us. We are in an age where the new spirit of capitalism is characterized by the capacity to absorb anything opposed to the market and make it the object of a new market. The search for well-being, for gentler ways of life, the quest for proximity to nature and the desire to find oases of deceleration in which to slow down in a society marked by exhausting speed seem to contradict the market society. And yet, these are also very marketable in an economy of attention. Therefore, should we not take stock of our desire to be, in order to resist the tyranny of these lifestyles which contribute to instilling in us a confusion between the desire to be and the want to have? Is it not time to identify where our desire lies in order to reform the world as it is, especially its culture of excess?

The ability to differentiate between our needs, our desires and our wants is a very powerful critical device. It involves an epistemic reconquest of lifestyles which otherwise maintain a confusion between want and desire and stop humans from distinguishing between illusions and what they really desire. While the need to eat, drink or sleep is an objective fact which can be easily identified—although it is often distorted in advertising—the distinction between want and desire is less clear. This is because the commodification of the intimate by the market fosters confusion and disorder. Is having a want synonymous to having a genuine desire? Is the gap between desire and the product suggested to me by my smartphone’s artificial intelligence, which takes my “tastes” into account, also a gap between the individuating and the individualized person? How can I clearly draw a line between a personalized market offering and my deep personal aspirations? How far can we resist all the suggestions that channel our attention and make us want to have things that we do not truly desire? To discern one’s desire is to work on one’s internal consistency in order to develop an outer resistance to the alienating, reifying and ecologically unsustainable ways in which our societies operate, because desire is not a kind of void to be filled but a powerful call to exist. In contrast, want leads us to only one particular end: to fill a void. Desire calls us to seek experience of what really makes us tick and to unfold our own unique way of being. But confusion and trickery reduce desire to want and redirect it into its most passive form, that of envy, dependent on comparison with what other people have. Therefore, it is vital to challenge the advertising, managerial and digital devices which control and direct our desires and prevent us from experiencing the “time of desire” [11]. The time of desire is a school of freedom, so it will not be without liberation for each and every one of us.

Ethical discernment between need, want and desire to achieve a good life unfolds over the course of a lifetime. According to Aristotle, the repetitions and routines that make up the rhythms of our lives tend to establish in us a “second nature”. The kind of lifestyle that is called for in a time of social and ecological transition is an ecobiographical issue. In the course of a lifetime aiming at a good life, one learns to make use, in one’s own way of acting, of what has been understood about the Anthropocene moment. It conditions the future of a self expanded by the awareness of its interdependencies with human and “more-than-human” or “other-than-human” beings, and begins to ask how these may be
recognized as valid interlocutors with whom humans can co-exist. In this way, a first step is to refuse the expression “non-human living beings”, which erases the plethoric diversity of life in its singularity, and denies the identities of the other.

The strength of virtue ethics therefore lies in its continuist approach to existence over the course of a lifetime even though, in the context of ecological crisis, we also need to be aware of a “threatened future”, according to Hans Jonas’ ethics of the future [12]. While the morality of duty is focused on the daily conflict of duty, virtue ethics sets this drama within the continuous course of a life, with all of its tensions and contradictions. Morality is discontinuous; virtue ethics is continuous. It is due to the persistent obstinacy of the virtues, which embody attention and vigilance over the course of time, that a socially and ecologically sustainable way of acting is clarified and grounded.

## 4. Logical Coherence and Biographical Obstinacy

Insisting on the long term of a modality that develops over time invites dialectization. How do the logical concern for internal coherence and persisting ethical obstinacy come together in terms of ethics? To start with, does ethical determination call for other resources than the sole formal criterion of logical coherence? Thus, one of the ethical challenges raised by the Anthropocene moment raises is the concurrence and discordance between timescales, the emergency of climate change and of an ecological crisis and the short length of a life. To respond to this challenge, one may claim the demand for logical coherence as the (sole) criterion and summit of moral life. Disregarding how this plays out over time, this claim imposes the achronicity of the logical decree onto the temporal dimension of ethics. An incoherent good life would be inconsistent. This idea translates into a radical, demanding and generous call for the synchronization of words and actions, theory and practice and ecologically ethical thought and the personal ecology of such thought. Indeed, how can one grasp the earnestness of social and ecological transition without achieving coherence with, and entering into, that transition? The ways of being oneself mentioned earlier become expressions of the self calling for coherence—e.g., deciding not to travel by aeroplane because of CO₂ emissions; reducing meat consumption; refusing to use laptops made by big extractive companies, in order to resist a consumption of the world which is also a consumption of the self; or distancing oneself from the logics of the market and its normalization.

But these radical ways of life demand profound self-reform by seeking logical coherence and are simultaneously stimulating, energizing and disturbing: stimulating, because they show that it is possible to initiate radically new ways of life, where it may previously have been thought impossible. They demonstrate a form of practical inventiveness and a salutary and promising poetic and ethical innovation. Energizing, because the testimonial scope of these ways of life set in motion attests to the viable and desirable nature of such life choices. Disturbing, too, in two ways: they disturb individuals by drawing them out of their comfort zone so as to take part in the transition, and they threaten those who refuse this logical coherence out of indifference or selfishness. In the name of coherence, one may refuse any ethical compromise on the basis that to accept a compromise would be to compromise oneself. In this context, one can exhaust oneself in trying to achieve the impossible task of being coherent, an ethical exhaustion marked by the enormous discrepancy between self-reform and the gigantic powers against which one needs to fight in order to bring about change. This intransigent call for logical coherence crushes the temporal dimension of the moral life and its work of internalizing issues over the course of a lifetime. It neglects the fact that, in matters of ethics, presenting a problem from a rational and logical point of view is not the same as resolving it. Deciding to live a good life is not a logical solution but an ethical determination that commits an individual for a lifetime.

The primacy of the logical over the biographical can be enforced in the name of a very violent ethical purity conceived as logical coherence. Conversely, the purpose of ethical discernment, because of the situated nature of our ethical positions, is to distinguish between the ethical demand for a radically good life and ethical intransigence, which can
be brutal. To put it another way, the ethical challenge consists in asking oneself how to be
radical without being marginal.

Alasdair MacIntyre insists that lives and ethical self-narratives do not exist in a vac-
uum [13]. They unfold in the context of belonging to living environments which oppose our
"aspirations to be" with other competing, dominant, supporting or contradictory narratives.
Discernment and ethical deliberation do not operate as logical deductions, even if the
rigorous path of reasoning and the orderliness linked to coherence appear prestigious and
refined. MacIntyre prevents the temptation to lapse into ethical solipsism by highlighting
that a moral subject is constructed in connection to the traditions of meaning provided by
living communities. He warns against overvaluing the criterion of logical coherence as the
sole and definitive criterion of the good life.

Authentic ethical conduct and moral judgement become defined and formulated
in and due to learning the practices, *ethos* and habits of a given historical community,
including ways of relating to other-than-human beings and to the environment. This
narrative approach to human identity reiterates that identity is constructed and recounted
via a self-narrative, which may be a counter-narrative to the major dominant ideological
narratives. This recognition could illustrate what history emphasizes and MacIntyre
questions: "I cannot answer the question, 'what should I do?'" he said, "until I answer the
question that precedes it: 'Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?'" Achieving
a good, meaningful and unified life takes time. This unity is not given but conquered. It
is developed in a way that one situates oneself with regard to social practices, inscribing
one's life story as part of a living tradition, via practical inventiveness: "I cannot answer
the question, 'what should I do?'" he said, "until I answer the question that precedes it:
'what histories am I part of?'" [13] (p. 210).

For Anthropocene biographies, it will therefore be a question of breaking away from
the major dominant narratives (economic growth, the market, nature) and inventing other
minor narratives, other metaphors. It is important to learn to discern in order to position
oneself among the trials of friction, tension and equivocality with which one must live. The
human world is multifaceted, and it would be an illusion to believe that the great clarity of
the criterion of logical coherence could on its own eliminate the equivocality and confusion
which make a world of ethical action, in the world of humans and their relationships with
their environment.

The world of logic cannot on its own create the logic of the ecological world. This is
why there will be controversy and conflict in the interpretations provided and motivated
by an ecological democracy. It will be possible to oppose the ordinary pace of the world,
in various ways, in various types of ethical life. This may happen by withdrawing into
oneself and forming a type of inter-self (as seen in the radicality of utopias of withdrawal
in forms of autarkic community practices among neo-rural populations). This may also
lead to violent rejection and even to revolution, as seen in the revolutionary radicality of
utopias of protest that oppose neoliberal logics in ecotopias (e.g., the "Zone to Defend")
which attempt to spatially situate struggles against neoliberalism. To be able to choose
and position itself, the ethical self of ecological consciousness needs to learn, not using
deduction but deliberation, to discover and ] adopt the appropriate attitudes in order to
succeed in meeting the demands of that self. In the next section, we will shed light on this
demand by focusing on three virtues (temperance, humility and hospitality) and reflect on
the transition from self to more than self by being aware of our belonging to the Earth.

4.1. *Three Virtues towards the Decentring of Self in the Anthropocene: Temperance, Humility and Hospitality*

4.1.1. Temperance and H.-D. Thoreau

How to define sobriety and temperance with regard to the “new spirit of capital-
ism” [14]? Temperance is one of the cardinal virtues of Greek ethics and is often discussed
in the context of virtue ethics. Within the framework of ecological transition, it is often
termed “moderation”, “happy sobriety” [15] or “voluntary frugality”. Temperance is char-
acterized by a sense of moderation in contrast to its opposite, excess or hubris, i.e., refusing to be constrained. This virtue is particularly relevant in societies marked by abundance, excess, food wastage, etc., where the excess of intemperance seems to be the baseline of ordinary action. Today, hubris is encouraged by the technological solutionism of transhumanism and can be seen in the never-ending economic activity of Western society: infinite growth in a finite world supported by unbridled economic growth based on a cult of want.

Sōphrosunē, the Greek word for temperance, means “to have one’s whole mind about oneself”, or, in other words, to have a level of self-knowledge that, in turn, enables self-control. For rational people who do not take themselves for gods, excess or hubris can be seen as a pathology: losing one’s mindful awareness concerning oneself, blurring the boundaries between the mortal world and the realm of divinity. Today, in our secularized societies, where religion no longer imposes rules and transgressions are no longer sacrilege, any limitation in the name of temperance can only be a self-imposition. The issue is not to “live according to nature” conceived as a cosmos since this would represent only an order for things. It is about rediscovering an intimate sense of moderation as something desirable in an authentic experience of the self.

In the next section, we will shed light on this demand by focusing on three virtues (temperance, humility and hospitality) and reflect on the transition from self to more than self by being aware of our belonging to the Earth.

For Henry-David Thoreau, one figurehead of ecological thinking, an intimate sense of moderation is characterized by two traits: a form of self-knowledge which preserves the wild part of oneself; and performing exercises of the self in the practice of voluntary simplicity and sobriety [16]. The first of these traits is characterized by understanding and self-concern about what it really means to live in meditation and solitude. The thrust of this trait concerns the experience of the wilderness as a test of solitude. It is not an experience of isolation or loneliness but rather a condition of deepening oneself and a revery in communion with all beings, both human and other-than-human, who populate the world and bring it to life. With regard to the stimulation of technical societies, the practice of solitude and moderation is not about disdaining these stimulations: it is about mastering them. The issue is to be aware of the often sterilizing norms of social life, and therefore, a contrario, to strive to sensitize ourselves using moderation and to replenish our imagination and our inner life using soothing or invigorating physical contact with the elements. The self-disposition of moderation can be stimulated using specific ecotopic devices such as “Operation Walden”. Ecotopia can be related to what Foucault, in line with Bachelard in *La poétique de l’espace* (*The Poetics of Space*), designated a “heterotopia”, a proposal for a liberating “counter-location”. Eco-heterotopia opposes the negative impact of modern society’s delineated spaces of control. It also aims to counter the worldly solicitations that subject our bodies and lives to the injunctions of the market and, now, to digital hyper-connection—which is another type of biopolitics. Bachelard, a learned reader of Thoreau, the philosopher in the woods, invited us to live and dream the experience of solitude as that of an experience lived in the full presence of our earthly dwelling. The etymology of the verb “to dwell” embodies the profound assurance of our “being there”, of our “ecological self”. While the ecological crisis can be seen as a crisis of dwelling, the experience of moderation found in the solitude of Walden’s hut invites us to recover an intensity of presence in the joy of complicity.

> The hut is centred solitude. (...) The hut cannot receive any of the wealth 'of this world'. It has a happy intensity of poverty. The hermit's hut is a glory of poverty. From one stripping to the next, it grants us access to absolute refuge. [4] (p. 88)

The stripping away of temperance is not impoverishment but a pruning that brings new life.

The second trait translates the call for moderation into a call for a simple life and implies a type of ethical self-reform. The desire for simplification and moderation targets the excesses of modern societies in terms of luxury and excessive consumption. These excesses obliterate the self since they create a confusion between self-love (which takes
authentic account of one’s true desires) and self-appreciation (a biased look at oneself mediated by the mirrors constructed by societies)—a confusion pointed out by Rousseau (see above). In *Walden ou la vie dans les bois* (Walden), Thoreau exemplifies the prototype of what is being sought today in terms of temperance. An experience of the self leads to freeing oneself from the masks and ambiguities caused by the commodification of the intimate and the confusion between desire and want. This perspective has inspired an appreciation of the “wilderness” in environmental ethics. One can clearly see here that care for the “wild” concerns both the protection of the wild fauna and flora outside of oneself (the outer wilderness) and desire, which is the wild part of the self inside oneself: the “inner wilderness”. Thus, Thoreau writes,

> Before arranging our homes with objects that we find beautiful, we must strip the walls, just as we must strip our lives.

> Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! Let your belongings, I tell you, number only two or three, and not one hundred or one thousand (...). Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if necessary, have only one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce the rest accordingly. [17] (pp. 121–197)

Economy is far from being a secondary concern for Thoreau. By giving the heading *Economy* to the first chapter of *Walden*, he rearticulates economics and ecology using an ethical minimalism. Moderation is essential to living well, freeing oneself, if not extricating oneself, from worldly affairs with their superfluity, their luxury and the call for self-diversion. Thus, it is in the here and now of the situation that the ethical elevation of the subject takes place. Our first waste is always a waste of life. The virtue of temperance therefore operates a reversal, an ecological conversion, of the meaning and value of the experience of responsible and equitable consumption. Perceived as economic poverty by those who feel excluded from the market system, it becomes ethical simplicity for those who transvalue its meaning. Moderation or sobriety are not ways of escaping in order to forget oneself, but on the contrary, experiences of a deepening of the self. Whereas civilization distances us from ourselves by interposing its veils, virtue is a return *into* oneself, which is a return *to* oneself.

> I would go into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately and face up to the essential facts of life, to find out what it had to teach me, so that I wouldn’t feel, at the time of my death, that I had not lived. [17] (pp. 195–197)

With moderation, temperance simplifies ordinary life in order to intensify life in one's desire to be. Striving to eliminate the superfluous and to have less, of letting one's actions be guided by calculations of ecological or carbon footprint (e.g., with reference to a climate map), is not quantitative. It is qualitative: not living less but living better by changing the meaning of what it is to live. Whereas the culture of want sees all sobriety as a loss, as less, as a devaluation, the culture of desire in the simplification of moderation aims for a more intense life. The care of desire in moderation as a remedy for ecological crises is not an austere cure of abstinence. By intensifying our relationships with others and with our living environment, it is more a matter of desiring better than desiring less.

### 4.1.2. Humility and A. Leopold

Is ecologism an antihumanism, a human humiliation or the best way to understand humans? Humility is a virtue that attempts to understand rightly who we are and that resists any form of excess or hubris. The idea of humility is close to an understanding of what Arne Naess called the “ecological self”, as a form of otherness in oneself which is greater than the self [18]. The ecological self goes beyond the limits of the individuality (ego) of our socio-political affiliations and is open to our interdependencies with other-than-human beings and environments. The emphasis in contemporary ecological thought on the idea of the human as an “earthling” or “terrestrial” being is echoed by the etymological link between humanitas and humus in Latin. The same Latin root is shared by the words “humus”, referring to the soil and the “living quality of the soil”; “humanity”, understood
in terms of its links to the Earth and “humility”, which sees these links as interdependencies
and not as alienations. Accordingly, humility is the ecological virtue that responds to the
excessiveness of our uprooting from the Earth, characterized by a culture of domination and
extraction. Humility rightly resists a position of domination and responds to it by adopting
a more modest position in which one is aware of one’s incompleteness or insufficiency.

One should not confuse humility with its caricature, humiliation. The social and
ecological transition does not aim to inflict a humiliation on humanity. By calling a form of
humility, it seeks to give back to humans their right place, a place that is neither excessive
nor ridiculous. Humility is not the experience of abasement or inferiority. It is daring to
stop thinking of and envisaging oneself in terms of superiority. Only then can humility
serve as a critique of anthropocentrism—and not by fostering a kind of hatred of humans.
To think better, hence in humility, of humans is not to think less of them in a form of
humiliation. Along this line, in *L’Almanach d’un comté des sables* (*A Sand County Almanach*),
Aldo Leopold formulated a very humble call to “learn to think like a mountain”. This
call implies that one necessarily undergoes an inner/internal displacement, a decentering
of oneself. This leads to seeing oneself, in one’s own way of making the world, from the
perspective of a mountain. One needs to consider our ways of belonging to the Earth since
it began, not from the point of view of our anthropic domination. To this end, humble
practices need to be exercised.

For example, how do we address the fields of architecture and urbanism whose
extractivist practices in the search for materials and the establishment of building sites
have a major impact on social and ecological systems, and how could they be made more
humble? We are not unaware of the excessiveness of the mega-towers and the technological
solutionism which make the gray cement of our cities and depletes resources. Neither
do we ignore the prestigious unilateral gesture of the architect’s signature responding to
this uninhibited anthropocentrism. But the transition from urban development practices
to those of resource management by recycling should put the emphasis on relationships
and life habits, promoting space maintenance and renovation practices. This opens up
humble options to take care of ecosystems and to increase the sustainability of places
and environments. Along this line, we may consider other rural, peasant and indigenous
lifestyles around the world. The lifestyles preponderant in urban cultures are unknown
in other cultures around the world. To recognize diverse cosmovisions of the “good life”,
e.g., the “buenos vivires” of Andean and Amazonian people, could be epistemologically
crucial to shift the way architecture and urbanism are promoted.

For the urban factory, the world...is not a generic space, but a preliminary and
inextricable fabric of intertwined vital forms. ...In view of all these interwoven
dynamics, it is clearly better to maintain and care for [these forms], rather than
decomposing and recomposing [them]. [19]

Without feeling diminished, the builder or architect can become the one who joins
together and works with those relationships (both human and other-than-human) that they
know, that they can listen to. Decisions about which projects to work on, the choice of
construction techniques and the use of recycled materials (industrial ecology) or materials
with short production chains—or, to the contrary, the use of harmful extractivist practices
(involving, for example, sand and cement)—engender a process by which the professional
identity of an architect or urban planner is shaped in continuous choices which are never
neutral. The shaping of the self reverberates on the architecture, because the sustainability
of the materials dictates the duration of the projects. Building gives a “semblance of
eternity to the fragility of human affairs” says Arendt, since it sketches a very specific
and stabilized type of common world [20]. It transcribes into materials what enables and
nourishes relationships between humans, more-than-humans and environments, or which
can, to the contrary, destroy or prevent those relationships—e.g., the impermeable city
which addresses water as a problem versus the “sponge city” which creates relationships
with water.
### 4.1.3. Hospitality and Climate Migrants

How can we guide globalization ethically and politically so that it takes care of nature and humans, that is, how to exert the virtue of hospitality? Virtue ethics applied to ecology could certainly provide a fruitful context for thinking about care of the self and supporting a form of self-esteem. But the centering on the self may be seen as an ethical comfort and a form of self-centered—if not narcissistic—complacency. The concern of achieving a good life for oneself, leaving aside the affairs of the world, its possible collapse and extinction, may be a complacent form of enjoyment of one's self-assured inner citadel. How do we avoid ethical self-concern that leads us to turn only to ourselves? What might be the political implications of promoting virtues while their contribution to ecological transition may seem marginal? Although they may raise concern for beings other than oneself, including other-than-humans, the latter will never be visages (“faces”), to use Levinas’s term [21]. How good, in short, are virtues that concern individuals, but not institutions, local authorities or States?

In response to these criticisms, we point to a virtue which lies at the border between ethics and politics, and has gained central importance as part of the new cosmopolitanism called for by the Anthropocene moment. This is the virtue of hospitality. Following in the wake of MacIntyre, the philosopher Alain Thomasset defines hospitality as a “social virtue”:

> By social virtues, I mean the virtues that are at stake in relationships with others, and more specifically, in the functioning of society as a whole. The virtues, in fact, do not concern only the conformation of an individual to a personal morality (for example in their family life), but also the behaviour of every person in their contribution to common life. [22]

In line with one's concern for a common world, social virtues such as justice, solidarity and hospitality, therefore, are to be found in the space between the self and the more than self, between oneself and others (human and other-than-human). They sustain the pursuit of a good life as the long-term goal of our ways of making the world, which need to be translated into socially and ecologically sustainable institutions within the common world.

How does the virtue of hospitality fit into a framework of ecological thought? Hospitality meets what Kant called the “sphericity” of the Earth and the global mobility it calls for. This sphericity has generated a globalization of our technical systems and also of economic exchanges. Global humanization is an ethical issue. How can we guide globalization ethically and politically so that it takes care of nature and humans? How can the goals of a good life lived with and for all beings be added from the outside to a culture that controls and directs our relationships with nature? Like it or not, our global, technical and economic interdependencies are such that we are contemporaries of all human and more-than-human beings on the planet. Thus, our excessive ways of life are too often linked to impoverished ways of life elsewhere.

Hospitality resonates in the space between the self and the more-than-self due to the two-sided meaning of its root name hostis: hospitality and hostility toward the other. We believe that hospitality will probably be challenged when confronted with those who are forced to migrate from inhabitable life environments, as this will likely disturb and destabilize our lifestyles, which so heavily depend on the resources of others. Such is the challenge of hospitality. Openness to alterity can alter us. The arrival of a stranger can prompt in us hostilities that disturb us, especially when we are open to welcoming that stranger. The ethical challenge will be to ask why others are forced, as refugees or migrants, to leave their homelands and in what ways our lifestyles contribute to this.

The ethics of hospitality contributes to reterritorializing within our lives migratory issues that seem pre-destined or out of our control. Indeed, the loss of people's home may be in part caused by us—whether they no longer have a home (landless peasants) or their land has been devastated, is submerged under rising waters or has become unfertile. This presupposes, first of all, that we are able to see in the foreigner that we too are a foreigner and also a fellow human on Earth. Hospitality, as an ethical virtue, reminds us that we
are, on some level, a guest passing through even in the very place that we believe to be
our own. This reminder links together hospitality and humility. It helps us to remember
that we are the foreigner who at some point has been the recipient of hospitality offered by
others and by the Earth. The massive international mobilities inherent to forced migrations
pose an ethical and political challenge concerning the sustainability of our ways of making
the world. Many of the military conflicts that have led to the displacement of people have
ecological causes: water wars in particular. It will be necessary to move from the de facto
solidarity of all humanity that arises from shared problems (the Anthropocene, climate
change, species extinctions, erosion) to a deliberate solidarity that gives ethical and political
significance to an awareness of our mutual interdependencies. The virtue of hospitality
becomes the figure of a new cosmopolitanism in a post-Kantian sense as it recognizes the
other in its standing as an earthly being, as a “citizen of the world”. On a territorial scale,
it opposes the practices of an inhospitable necro-capitalism that generates environmental
and social injustices in the destruction of habitats. It also responds, at a global scale, to the
ecosystemic effects of climate change, such as the impact of ecological disasters on social
environments, generating mass migration and climate refugees. Yet, what attitude should
we adopt toward the “other” who migrates? This question is both intimate—as it refers
to a personal invitation extended to someone nearby—and at the same time very public,
hence challenging a State, or even a continent, in terms of how it conceives of hospitable
cosmopolitics. Hospitality is a virtue that makes it possible to consider the arrival of people
from climatic migrations in a different light, clearing a path between welcome and worry,
availability and mistrust, the ethical generosity of openness and a realpolitik that asserts
that a “State cannot accommodate all the misery of the world” [23]. To be hospitable
means to experience an amazement at the life journey of a migrant who has come to us
(e.g., by crossing the Mediterranean sea or the entire South American continent) so as to
act hospitably. The actions of charities that welcome migrants are all, in different ways,
examples of the virtue of hospitality, see Cimade (https://www.lacimade.org, accessed
on 5 December 2023), the Welcome Network (https://www.jrsfrance.org, accessed on 5
December 2023), L’auberge des Migrants à Calais (https://www.laubergedesmigrants.fr,
accessed on 5 December 2023), etc.

One of the challenges is to understand the issue of hospitality for climate migrants based neither on a vague, general or administrative idea of migrants—of the kind that would separate them into categories like “political”, “economic”, “social”, etc.—nor on a form of compassion fatigue. The virtue of hospitality fights against the inhospitable stereotypes about migrants by daring to open up to the call of the other. It keeps in mind the fact that behind the ready-made and generalizing imagery of the “Migrant” or “Foreigner”, there is a unique life story that has unfolded against the backdrop of a socio-ecological disaster. Hospitality questions how a society treats the lives of those that it places in its margins, in the land of exile. The virtue of hospitality works to document these lives, which have been hidden by public policies shirking responsibility, and this documentation in itself is a form of welcome. By fostering exposure to the other, hospitality fights against a culture of collective anesthesia, testifying precarious lives and the conditions that are created for them. In this, this virtue of hospitality discovers its full ethical potential as a critique of migration policies. This is shown by analyzing the commitment of volunteers who, seeing that such policies are placing migrants in danger, choose to rescue them at the border. The sociologist Anne-Claire Defossez studied this in the ethical and political clashes at the Italian-French border in Briançon in 2020 [24]. These clashes were in stark contrast to the hospitality of volunteers providing first aid to migrants harmed by the cold. They revealed the “realism” of the police force who prevented the volunteers from this action, in order to avoid setting a “precedent” that might attract more migrants in the future. The border is where the tension between hostility and hospitality materializes. There, the ethical dilemma between turning migrants away or rescuing them is developed, experienced and established, pushing “nationals” to oppose “foreigners”, toward whom empathy is
prevented or even prohibited. In this context, the hospitality shown by volunteers is treated
by the police and far-right activists in the same way as the practices of smugglers.

There is no hospitality without concrete practices of hospitality by which—necessarily—
one can be affected, disturbed and changed by the other in order to also ethically guide
and support the ecological transition.

The migration histories put together by charities to help with asylum applications
is both a translation exercise and an exercise of hospitality, and brings into focus the
critical and political nature of this virtue. The use of subjective and itinerary maps [25],
which allow oneself to be affected by the other’s story, embodies, within the context of
a narrative ethic, the hospitality of listening. The maps help to recover a life story that
cannot be recounted in terms of measurable displacements. This exercise of hospitality
aims to strip away stereotypes in order to discover incredible, and often horrifying, life
stories. The political virtue of hospitality therefore resists clichéd ways of speaking about
influxes of migrants and opposes ideologies that stir up abstract imageries of invasion or
widespread replacement by “hordes of climatic migrants”, to instead pinpoint and question
the ecological logic, the deadly social practices and ecocides at the root of this mobility.
The virtue of hospitality is an opportunity for everyone to remember having once been a
foreigner subject to displacement. It maintains a *visage* (face) of exteriority that resists any
institutional or political ideology in which the history of the other is instrumentalized [21].
The virtue of hospitality reveals what is specific, where ideology generalizes.

When we show our care by welcoming them, we can in return gain a better
understanding of their situation, of the causes of their distress and of their unique
experience. And then the movement is reversed again: the recognition that we
are able to give becomes a new gift, more profound than that of food or shelter.
Hospitality to strangers, the needy and the poor, gives us a direct emotional
contact that deepens our understanding of the social changes needed and inspires
actions of solidarity that can lead to a global transformation. When we welcome
the foreigner, we are invited to discover other worlds. The initial animosity
becomes a fruitful friendship. [26]

A social virtue, hospitality maintains the ethical demand for welcome at the heart of
the constrained, pragmatic, supposedly realistic and often cynical demands of the “ethics of
responsibility”. Remembering our history as human migrants temporarily passing through
the Earth humanizes us. It invites public policies to protect the rights of refugees and
migrants. Human rights are also social and environmental rights shared by all humans
who are inhabitants of the Earth.

**5. Conclusions**

Putting into practice the virtues of temperance, humility and hospitality helps us
to discern between need, want and desire; between consumerist excess and moderation;
between a healthy self-esteem and an anthropocentric self-exaltation and between fear
and vulnerability in hospitality. This discernment contributes to the process of shifting
from a lifestyle centered on the self to one that takes care of and even changes the world.
The virtues of temperance, humility and hospitality are not the only ones that need to
be mobilized in the process. There are other virtues: justice, attention, solidarity, love,
friendship, etc., all of which help us to develop discernment in our complex and confusing
way of life. In this paper, we have focused on these three abovementioned virtues because,
first, they allow us to move from the personal to the public dimension, and together they
form a system. Humility clarifies our understanding of deep interdependencies; it invites
temperate practices that practically and symbolically connect our ways of life with distant
lives who may be forced to migrate toward us and that appeal to our hospitality. According
to Donna Harraway, the ethical existence of multi-specific and multi-continent biographies
in the Anthropocene is initiated within this network of virtues [27]. We recognize that our
continued existence is possible only thanks to all the human and more-than-human beings
in the world.
Virtue ethics in emphasizing the existential attitudes of individuals helps to raise attention to life stories in well-defined and specific situations and to make sure that debates on social and ecological transition do not remain purely abstract.

Virtues call for a personal, intimate appropriation of what *affects* and *effects* them so that the inner self can be transformed. Because of its disparity with human capacities, the global dimension of planetary forces may encourage a new destiny. Virtue ethics responds by addressing planetary issues in the here and now of a life. From within a fleshed-out, ethical context, it approaches the Anthropocene moment, not in abstracto, but by considering the effects on lives in terms of their environments or habitats, their minds and their relationships. The fecundity of virtue ethics lies in its critical and practical implication to support the ecological self and guide the social and ecological transition. In a culture of the self and exercises of the self, it offers an internal *consistency* understood as being propaedeutic to an outer *resistance*. It is complementary to other ethical approaches that are mostly focused on mitigating or preventing ecological disasters. But much of this disorder will not be prevented and it is crucial to promote virtue ethics, e.g., in education, so that human beings develop the capacity to respond to disturbing events and integrate them into their biographies, their ecobiographies [28].

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

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

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** The study did not report any data.

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

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Article

# Plant-Centered Virtue Ethics: A Cross-Talk between
## Agroecology and Ecosophy

Sylvie Pouteau

INRAE UMR SADAPT, Campus Agro Paris Saclay, 22 Place de L'agronomie, CS 80022,
91120 Palaiseau CEDEX, France; sylvie.pouteau@inrae.fr

**Abstract:** The claim that environmental virtue ethics (EVE) is anthropocentric appears inherently aporetic since it implies that either anthropocentrism is virtuous or the whole environmental issue is anthropocentric, thus translating vices into virtues or vice versa. Another interpretation is that *both* the environment and humanity are thought with a vicious conception of centeredness. Conversely, if centeredness is rightly addressed and humanity and its environment are considered as one and the same issue, the focus on anthropocentrism should also be different. By drawing on Felix Guattari's ecosophy, this paper proposes that EVE needs to be based on a philosophical understanding of agriculture. Thus, agriculture is the organic and epistemic matrix of our relation to the environment and not merely a section of an abstract environment nor one economic area among others. The environmental crisis is primarily a crisis of humanity *within* its agricultural matrix. To be an environmentally virtuous human being, a requirement is to face again the burden of our absolute need for food and for fruitful cooperation between farmers and plants, not only animals. This paper discusses the importance of plant ethics and plant topology to understand the specificities of the agricultural matrix. The emphasis will be placed on plant-centered virtue ethics and reframing anthropocentrism by drawing on transdisciplinary conversation with plant practitioners in the context of a research action project.

**Keywords:** agroecology; ecosophy; environmental virtue ethics; golden mean; plant topology; plant ethics; sense of place

1. Introduction

Both Arne Naess and Félix Guattari have proposed the term “ecosophy” to imply a broader than naturalist, scientific approach of ecology [1,2]. Guattari is well known for his long-running collaboration with Gilles Deleuze and for his political commitments to social and ecological issues. According to Guattari, ecosophy underlies three dimensions of ecology: an institutional scientific ecology, a social ecology and an individual, mental ecology [3]. The latter underpins “the flourishing and development of human potential” by changing oneself or one’s subjectivity [4] (p. 106). Subjectivity is not conceived as egotic but rather as a counterbalance of the atomized identities generated by capitalistic globalization. A major ecological target should be to de-escalate compulsive drives and mass consumption behaviors by creating more subjectivity. In the ecosophic vision, the subjective individual is part of the definition of ecology: “nothing will be possible without a profound ecological transformation of subjectivities” [5] (p. 85).

Ecosophy expands in *eudemonia* and environmental virtue ethics (EVE) and can be interpreted as an ecology of the self or a spiritual ecology. Its vision goes beyond the categories of environment and atomized individuals as it encompasses both inhabited and mental or existential territories. A major cause of concern is that: “The contemporary human being is fundamentally deterritorialized” [6] (p. 354). Existential territories, i.e., the relationship between subjectivity and exteriority (social, animal, plant, cosmic), tend to collapse. This means that most of us have lost a proper sense of our place on Earth and no

**Citation:** Pouteau, S. Plant-Centered Virtue Ethics: A Cross-Talk between Agroecology and Ecosophy.
*Philosophies* **2023**, *8*, 97. https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies8050097

Academic Editor: Soraj Hongladarom

Received: 7 September 2023

Revised: 9 October 2023

Accepted: 9 October 2023

Published: 17 October 2023

<figure><img src="image_12.png" /></figure>

**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/).
longer understand the meaning of our subjective centeredness. It is crucial to reconsider human beings in the light of their existential territories and to address their place in the ecology of the Earth. This lends to a reappraisal of the notion of human centeredness beyond mainstream anthropocentrism.

While a number of authors like Val Plumwood believe that centrism in itself is a problem [7], Guattari’s ecosophic vision supports the notion that a lack of centeredness might be an even greater problem. The issue at stake would thus be how to turn anthropocentrism into an “anthropo-centeredness”. The conversation between EVE and anthropocentrism is an opportunity to address this issue. Both expand on the notions of *anthropos* and centeredness, hence the place of humanity on Earth, though in different ways and with contrasting conceptions of nature. At first glance, EVE may seem a paradoxical assemblage because it endeavors to link the flourishing of the environment with that of human beings and may be equated to a kind of anthropocentrism [8]. One way to address this ambiguous intertwining is to introduce the notion of pattern or matrix in which humanity is embedded and develops virtues and vices. In Guattari’s terms, the aim is to envision a “re-territorialization” of humanity.

At least three underlying common patterns are to be considered in the conversation between EVE and anthropocentrism.

1. The agrarian common pattern inherited since the Neolithic. The invention of agriculture has changed radically the place of the human being in nature, and the agrarian pattern has been the corner stone of all other cultural developments to date.

2. The common philosophical pattern inherited since antiquity. The momentum issue was the emergence of philosophy, but in spite of its urban and political focus the environmental mindset of the ancient world was probably closer to an agrarian mindset than it is today. Agrarian life and the domesticated were still part of nature.

3. The naturalist, scientific common pattern inherited since the Copernican revolution. Everything we know about the category of “environment”, its complexity and dramatic changes over earthly times of evolution happens to be seen through the lens of natural sciences, this being referred to as the “naturalist episteme”.

From the beginning, the field of environmental ethics (EE) has been shaped by naturalist, scientific premises and analyses. In particular, EE incorporates the recount of a newly discovered, pristine nature that is inherent to the naturalist, scientific enquiry and inventory of kinds and traits. Meanwhile, the two other common patterns, the agrarian and the virtue-oriented philosophical, have been neglected. For this reason, the ongoing criticism of anthropocentrism keeps using anthropocentric arguments and is doomed to be inherently aporetic. The hybrid agency of EVE takes a departure from this general trend and provides a magnifying lens to reveal the complex entanglement of different worldviews or common patterns. This can be best understood if one brings the issue of agriculture centerstage rather than keeping it in the background as if it was merely a degraded part of the environment. Against the notion that “the domesticated is the degraded” [9] (p. 9), one needs to acknowledge that “environmental philosophy does need to quit seeing agriculture and domestication as “polluted” or “unnatural” and so not their concern” [10] (p. 259).

In his bright “Agrarian vision” [11], Paul Thompson proposed that an agrarian way of understanding ourselves and our place in the world could lead to a more sustainable way of life. His vision prompted a number of comments applauding his timely contribution and raised new questions in return. It was argued that the nurturing of an agrarian imaginary is not unambiguous, especially in urban contexts. The narrative of virtue can be overemphasized so as to hide the adverse effects and vices linked to agrarian history and to the evolution of contemporary agriculture as a technological system [12,13]. However, virtue is not a natural output of a lifestyle. It works the other way round; a lifestyle provides a basis or a matrix in which one can habituate and develop virtues. This paper aims to address the virtues of the “Anthropos” in its agrarian matrix, whether these virtues are directly linked to an agrarian lifestyle or not. The root name *Anthropos* is used as a concept to emphasize the place of humanity and the individual human being on Earth. The running thread of the paper is that a re-imagination of the “environment” depends on a re-imagination of the “Anthropos”. Its
argument will draw on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary interactions. It will elaborate on case studies, one being the conclusions of the COP15 and the other one consisting of conversation with plant practitioners in an agronomic research action project. Phrasing by these plant practitioners will be used to discuss the pivotal role of plant-centered virtue ethics in moving towards “anthropo-centeredness”, a more sophisticated kind of anthropocentrism based on plant-centered topology.

The paper is structured in four sections. First, it will depict the naturalist, scientific common pattern which currently prevails for decision making on environmental issues. Second, it will undertake a re-imagination of the environment by showing how different meanings of the term *Anthropos* reverberate in the understanding of its centeredness. Third, it will propose to reassess the agrarian common pattern based on the notion of “agroecosystem” by combining the terms agroecology and ecosophy. Fourth, it will distinguish three types of agroecosophic virtues, those related to:

* Agrarian virtues aimed at right agroecological practice.

* Food-centered virtues aimed at developing awareness of food reburdenment.

* Plant-centered virtues aimed at developing awareness of plant otherness.

## 2. The Category of Environment According to the Naturalist, Scientific Common Pattern

For the naturalist, scientific episteme, the environment is something that surrounds us, in which we human beings are embedded ¹. Its definition encompasses nature insofar as it is distinct from us but also as we live in it and have reciprocal influences on each other at different levels, from local to global. Beyond this, the environment also includes the second nature created by human labor, including agriculture and urban development. In the Anthropocene, an additional definition is that the environment is an issue, the issue of our right place on Earth and action on it, this issue being the subject of both EE and environmental humanities. Underlying this wide range of definitions is the implicit notion that the environment is something that requires new awareness and informed knowledge, hence science-based recording and analyses. Addressing environmental issues, especially at a planetary level, implies that there is a common interpretative framework. Debates on the anthropogenic origin of global warming and climate change have provided a clear demonstration that the environment is a naturalist science-based concept. Although this provision may seem common sense, from the perspective of critically addressing anthropocentrism, one also needs to recognize that the notion of environment perpetuates an anthropocentric bias in decision-making. To explore this issue, the case of the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UN-CBD) held in Montreal in December 2022 will be examined.

### 2.1. *The Case of the COP15, Setting Humanity in the Right Direction*

On 19 December 2022, the COP15 adopted the “Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework” (GBF), including four goals and 23 targets for achievement by 2030. A breakthrough was the decision to bring one third of the environment (Earth’s lands, oceans, coastal areas and inland waters) under protection by 2030 with the goal “to arrest the ongoing loss of terrestrial and marine biodiversity and set humanity in the direction of a sustainable relationship with nature”². By 2050, it is expected that: “The integrity, connectivity and resilience of all ecosystems are maintained, enhanced, or restored, substantially increasing the area of natural ecosystems” and “Human induced extinction of known threatened species is halted”³. No doubt, the achievement of this target would constitute a major turn in the environmental crisis.

When examining the documents released by the UN-CBD, one can observe the interweaving of two different visions or patterns. One is based on “Mother Earth centric actions”⁴ and is implicitly guided by an eco-centric approach. The aim is to foster a sustainable relationship with nature for the “benefit of all people and nature”⁵ in order that “all people (to) live well in harmony with Mother Earth”⁶. It also recognizes “traditional knowledge”⁷ and “customary
sustainable use by indigenous peoples and local communities"⁸ acknowledging the "link between biological and cultural diversity" as demonstrated by the "decline in global diversity of both nature and culture"⁹. This vision underlies an implicit criticism of the colonial and utilitarian attitude toward both nature and culture and a call to recognize "natural and cultural heritage and diversity as enablers and drivers of the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development"¹⁰. However, the Mother-centric vision may also suggest an ambiguous naturalization of indigenous peoples and local communities, e.g., by addressing both natural and cultural diversity with the same terms. This is implicit in the recommendation to "Compile, protect, maintain and promote traditional knowledge, innovations and sustainable practices of indigenous peoples and local communities"¹¹. Furthermore, the Mother-centric vision incorporates the notion that the issue at stake is "to minimize human-wildlife conflict for coexistence"¹², potentially lending to a neo-Darwinian interpretation of coexistence. These naturalist, scientific premises are conducive to a deontological approach since one may conclude that coercive measures are needed to curb human predatory trends and protect 30% of Mother Earth.

The other vision or pattern is a typical Western utilitarian and functional approach in which the basic goal is to "Restore, maintain and enhance nature's contributions to people"¹³ where nature represents resources, functions and services. Especially when it comes to agricultural issues, this means to "ultimately increase crop production" and to "invest in biodiversity"¹⁴ also "considering the potential to develop new products and medicines"¹⁵ and "promote access to the latest technologies and molecular tools for modern soilless agriculture"¹⁶. Recurrently is expressed the objective to "promote knowledge dialogues" and cross scientific and traditional knowledge. However, from the perspective of agriculture and related areas of activities, naturalist, scientific methods are expected to guide decision making and action. Thus, it is also claimed that "assessing and monitoring [...] is fundamental to inform adaptive management and to guarantee the functioning of all terrestrial ecosystems"¹⁷. This means to "Encourage the development of harmonized definitions, standard baselines, indicators and national and subnational-level monitoring activities of soil biodiversity"¹⁸ and to develop "standard protocols", "large data sets", "mapping capabilities" and "digital technologies" in order to work at "all levels", in "all sectors" and "all regions". Here, the naturalist, scientific premises lend support to the utilitarian vision, reinforcing the dualistic divide between means and ends, the environment and human beings.

## 2.2. *The Naturalist, Scientific Target: Instating Two Planetary Realms?*

One can be struck by the decision to protect 30% of Earth's lands and waters as if this percentage represented a strong symbolic threshold. Although the overall purpose is easy to understand, the background assumptions that underlie the calculation of this ratio need to be deciphered. Because background assumptions are embedded in the prevailing scientific paradigm, they are usually ignored, and many people would claim that they have no background assumption. Thus, these assumptions can only be tentatively uttered.

As already mentioned, a first assumption is rooted in the modern dichotomy between mankind and nature. Accordingly, to protect nature means to leave it on its own. On the one hand, this implies that nature has its "own", but the quality of this own needs to be specified. One interpretation is that nature has its own agency or even that it has a *telos* of its own that deserves to be respected [14]. On the other hand, this own should be left alone as far as possible. Thus, human interaction is mostly conceived as a degradation, and the environment is implicitly granted an essential standing whose integrity depends on the possibility of remaining wild, as expressed by the notions of wilderness and wildlife.

A second assumption is that minimal interaction with human beings should be achieved by spatial segregation in separate units of land, those that are under protection and those that are not. Accordingly, protecting biodiversity will mostly depend on territorial management and the possibility of sanctuarizing land and coastal areas. This
also means that access to wide areas of land will be restricted and that human societies will
be confined to more limited areas. Within a territorial management framework, migration
flows between different units will necessarily be an issue, especially with regard to pests
that may commute from one to another, e.g., avian flu.

A third assumption is that two different realms of the eco-biosphere can be kept
separate and have their own course, at least to a significant degree. Accordingly, static
conservation strategies rather than dynamic co-evolutionary strategies will be favored; thus,
the importance of both positive and negative interactions might be overlooked. However,
only soil can be conceived as properly local, whilst the other natural elements, water, air
and warmth, act at a more global level, e.g., climate change and air and water pollution.
Furthermore, protected areas are scattered all over the Earth and interwoven with areas
that are not protected. In the same way as patches of land in which organic farming is
practiced, the borders of these areas will remain exposed to dissemination of pollutants and
genetically modified organisms (GMOs) coming from the unprotected units. Conversely,
human-wildlife interaction can also be beneficial. For instance, gathering and foraging
activities play an important role in regenerating and enhancing wildlife flourishing [15].
Some small-scale, eco-systemic farming systems also promote regenerative strategies which
tolerate small levels of unwanted spontaneous biodiversity within cultivation plots [16].

Finally, a fourth assumption is that a utilitarian, functionalist approach is needed to
"manage" the environment as implied by the mechanistic notions of planetary boundaries
and Earth system. If nature should be left on its own; this is not (only) for its own
sake. Protection applies to resources, functions and services. Although the quantitative
measurement of biodiversity is useful for estimating general trends, it is also conducive to
an abstract calculation in which the sense of proportion is obscured. Thus, the ratio of 30%,
about one third of the planet may be an arbitrary threshold taken to symbolically indicate
that the ecological footprint (currently estimated to be approximately three planets) will be
mitigated. In the meantime, the remaining two thirds of the planet would have to provide
the equivalent of three planets. Thus, within the new boundaries of this "smaller planet",
so to speak, the ecological footprint would become 4.5 "smaller planets"¹⁹ Of course, this
interpretation would be true only if 100% of the planet was currently used homogeneously,
which is not the case. Furthermore, biodiversity and vulnerability of ecosystems are not
equally distributed around the world. However, implementing the protection of one
third of the planet implies some restriction of use and might increase pressure on the
remaining two thirds of the planet. In turn, this might exacerbate urban densification and
agriculture artificialization, raise environmental justice issues and possibly generate more
environmental problems.

Agriculture is one of the areas where biodiversity is most affected, partly indirectly
because of deforestation, uprooting of hedges, etc., and partly directly due to chemical and
pesticide application, seed surface sterilization, crop standardization and more generally
uniformization at all levels. It is difficult to foresee how the loss of biodiversity could
be halted unless a truly eco-systemic agriculture is promoted in wide areas of the planet.
One may ask whether it is possible for "all people to live well in harmony with Mother
Earth" whilst dividing Mother Earth into highly protected and poorly protected areas.
This would not only perpetuate the naturalist, scientific dichotomy between mankind and
nature but eventually implement this dichotomy in real life. At its extreme, this would
result in two separate, though partially overlapping, planetary realms, one dedicated only
to the environment and one handled by human beings. Although this vision might seem
over-simplistic and speculative, it is worth asking what the outcome would be if a division
between the two halves of Mother Earth could actually be complete. Could the environment
still be an "environment" if human beings can no longer have a genuine experience of
nature? Could human beings still be "human" if they are not surrounded by nature?

At this point, the environmental issue appears clearly twofold: what *is* the environ-
ment and what *is* a human being are two sides of the same coin and need to be addressed
simultaneously. What needs to be protected is not only dedicated areas hosting charismatic
pieces of the environment and their native peoples; it is basically what makes the whole
of mankind and nature hold in one piece. In Guattari’s ecosophy, this issue is embedded
in the notion of existential territories, territories that are severely undermined by capital-
istic anthropocentrism and need to be sustained. In the next section, this issue will be
addressed by considering how the lack of qualification of the root name *Anthropos* conveys
a vision of humanity without a place, deprived of existential territories. To re-imagine “the
environment”, it is important to also re-imagine “the *Anthropos*”.

3. The Place of the *Anthropos*: The Human Being in the Light of Its Topological Center(s)

The two planetary realms depicted above are fictional at this stage, but their pictur-
ing can help understand how the two visions, the eco-systemic and the utilitarian, are
eventually enacted and paradoxically tend to reinforce each other. One perpetuates the
romantic longing for pristine immersion into wild nature, whilst the other one keeps head-
ing toward further self-alienation and estrangement from nature. Although they seem to
go in radically opposite directions, they share a common disregard of the human sense of
place and proportion. It is pivotal to understand that ratio and proportion are not one and
the same thing. They correspond to different visions of the *Anthropos* and not only of its
environment. As already indicated in the Introduction, the root name *Anthropos* is used
to mean that human beings are considered with respect to their place on Earth, of what
surrounds them, of their inhabited and existential territories. It is an attempt to uncouple
this notion from a narrow understanding of anthropocentrism and contains a criticism
of the negative vision of humanity that it conveys. The *Anthropos* is not a species or an
essential kind since its definition is broader than the atomized individual and encompasses
its existential territories, others and everything that makes up its place on Earth. The
*Anthropos* includes both humanity and the individual human being; thus, it is also meant
to designate the individual moral agent. It will be a gendered he or she, depending on
whether its definition is male-dominated or not.

3.1. *The Anthrokos, to Have an In-Between Place on Earth*

The enquiry by the linguist Romain Garnier [17] on the etymology of the word *An-
thropos* showed that the link with the root name Andros (strong man) does not apply in a
straight line. He suggests instead that the word is derived from the prototype *Anthrokos*
("directed downward", whence "earthling, earthman, earthwoman"). The *Anthropos* thus
depicts a layman, or laywoman, defined by her position in space ("directed downward,
being upon Earth"). She is the earthly being who stands below the gods, who inhabits the
Earth and is mortal. She is turned downward, and yet her face is turned upward towards
the heavens and the stars. Thus, she stands above the animal whose face is turned only
downward towards the ground. Garnier also mentions a remarkable etymon which means
"turned backward, who walks backwards".

These etymological findings are of special interest because they correlate the notion
of *Anthropos* with a position in space and thus with the notion of place. This low man or
woman dominates the animal bound to the earth and yet she stands below higher entities or
agencies; thus, she belongs to an in-between kind. Because of her in-between position, she
is in a twist, her gaze being directed to an opposite direction from her legs. The *Anthropos*
"who has a human face" is also defined by the direction of her gaze. She can be seen as
the one who turns her gaze backwards in turning towards the earth. Through finding her
place, her "center", her position is now defined topologically in space. But she can also turn
backward figuratively; thus, she is the one who can take some distance, who can wonder
and reflect upon things, who can behold the heavens higher up.

Interestingly, the origin of agriculture in the Neolithic was contemporary of a symbolic
revolution that was characterized by the emergence of the first godly figures and indicated a
major psycho-spiritual shift [18,19]. Both events, agrarian life and symbolic figuring, may be
taken to depict the birth of the *Anthropos* as an *Anthrokos*, although the notion itself possibly
appeared later. Nearer to our days, the ancient *Anthropos* underwent another revolution
by "turning", or "reversing" towards herself in the practice of philosophical thought. The *Anthropos* became stretched between an earthly life bound to mundane activities such as ploughing and growing crops and a quasi-heavenly life expanding into contemplation and thinking. The birth of philosophy also meant that the "vita contemplativa" was then granted a higher standing than the "vita activa" in the words of Hannah Arendt [20]. However, it would be anachronical to equate the emergence of the vita contemplativa with modern anthropocentrism. For instance, Aristotle's philosophy of biology reveals his commitment to a more sophisticated anthropocentric perspective [21]. In the cosmology of antiquity, nature was thought to be part of the immortal realm, the "being forever" of the supralunar world. What was granted a lower standing was not nature as such but labor insofar as it implied to turn one's gaze downward only. As for Archaic cosmology, it was probably even more inclusive and all-embracing and, thus, even more remote from the mechanistic cosmology that has expanded during the Modern era and from what is currently meant by the term anthropocentrism.

## 3.2. *The Andros (or Andropos), to Be a Strong Man Who Dominates the Earth*

The adoption of a mechanistic cosmology after the Copernican revolution meant a radical change in the topological understanding of space. The emergence of anthropocentrism cannot be separated from the conception of a void universe, a cosmos that has been emptied of its primeval wholeness. As expressed by Jacques Monod in 1970 [22] (pp. 224–225): "Man finally knows that he is alone in the indifferent vastness of the Universe from which he emerged by chance". In ecosophic terms, this can be summarized by the notion of deterritorialization. As already mentioned in the Introduction: "The contemporary human being is fundamentally deterritorialized" [6] (p. 354).

It is only in a void, abstract universe that human beings can conceive themselves as "masters and possessors of nature", to quote the famous phrasing by René Descartes in 1637 [23]. In adopting this new conception, the *Anthropos* denies part of her specification, which implies turning her gaze upwards to that which stands above or appears higher than herself—be it gods, a starry cosmos, or the wholeness of nature. In this respect, she is not an *Anthrokos* anymore, but he (and not she anymore) has become an *Andros* with the qualification of a strong man, be he a man or a woman. Anthropocentrism becomes an "androcentrism". Most importantly, along with the original *Anthrokos*, the sense of place and of her position in space, her actual centeredness between Earth and heaven, disappears.

This topological change is inherent to the naturalist, scientific episteme and pervades all life sciences. Accordingly, the two visions, the eco-systemic and the utilitarian, suffer from the same topological flaw. Both visions abide by the naturalist episteme in considering that a real knowledge of nature can only be attained by preventing any human interference. This premise has major implications for our relationship with nature, and yet its importance in addressing ecological issues has barely been addressed. Firstly, it imposes an indifferent attitude and assumes that one can adopt a gaze from nowhere, independently from any sphere of reference and from any sense of place and belonging. Thus, the sense of proportions is replaced by bare quantitative measurements and ratios, and relative dimensions are taken to be absolute in an absolutely abstract universe. This is exemplified by the notion of "planetary boundaries", which underlies an object-bound quantification of stocks and fluxes in a purely utilitarian approach to the environment. The spacecraft metaphor further expands on the vision of the planet as a device. Secondly, knowledge should be best approached by relying on sophisticated devices and the building of logical rules between quantitative data. Thus, "true" knowledge should be a knowledge from nowhere, no man, and eventually an absolute knowledge. Thirdly, ethical judgements should be guided by this absolutely universal knowledge so that a large number of our decisions could eventually be delegated to smart devices.

Finally, the kind of anthropocentrism or androcentrism perpetuated by the naturalist, scientific episteme should be called "nullo-centrism" since it erases the notion that there is an environment *to be known* and that the human being is *the knower* of this environment.
The *Anthropos* as an *Andros* or *Andropos* is doomed to wander in the void, having no place but an abstract Euclidian reference. The Euclidian topology is characterized by postulates that cannot be demonstrated [24]. Although it has been challenged by mathematicians since the middle of the 19th century, it remains embedded in every picturing, building, or manufacturing and is inculcated from early schooling on. Its invention coincides with the colonialist expansion of the West and cannot be assumed to be an indifferent mathematical concept. Since the invention of the monofocal perspective in the Quattrocento, it has become the way the world should be seen [25]. In the Euclidian conception of space, centeredness means to be the absolute center of oneself and to replace one's innate sense of proportion with abstract connections. With these premises, one may wonder whether it is possible for the modern *Anthropos* to develop environmental virtues *at all*. To mitigate the naturalist, scientific and androcentric bias that may interfere with a right understanding of EVE, a first requirement is to consider the dramatic consequences of adopting a vision from nowhere, hence no man and no woman. To overcome the topological indifference imposed by an absolute Euclidian system of reference, the next section will bring the common agrarian pattern back into the discussion.

4. Agroecosophy, Virtue Ethics and the Agricultural Common Pattern

Based on the previous section, it is proposed that the virtuous *Anthropos* knows her
place on Earth, her in-betweenness. The sense of in-betweenness can be linked to the
Aristotelian theory of the golden mean, i.e., the right center or the just middle. Rather
than a geometric or arithmetic mean value, an average or a 50% ratio; it is a golden mean
between two opposites, excess and deficiency, these fluctuating with the circumstances of
each situation. The golden mean is related to the golden proportion; it is a middle in the
sense that it implies a right balance. In the *Magnia Moralia*, Aristotle insists: "And generally
in each of the feelings, one can see that *what surrounds* the middle is easy, but the mean
is difficult, and this is the point for which we are praised; for which reason the good is
rare" [26] (1187a1, Book I.9). Every virtue depends on the capacity to find the golden mean
when and where it applies as if one was the needle of a scale. The ability to approach
the golden mean is a radically anthropocentric virtue. In *His Nicomachean Ethics*, Aristotle
writes: "Thus a master of any art avoids excess and defect, but seeks the intermediate and
chooses this—the intermediate not in the object but *relatively to us*" [27] (1106b8, Book II.6).
Accordingly, it would not make sense to delegate this appraisal to any kind of digital sensor.
Although no ethicist would defend such an evaluation of the golden mean, the current
development of farm robots and smart agriculture suggests that this vision will gradually
be implemented in real life.

Place is not a location. The sense of place can be experienced anywhere, even in a plane or a spacecraft. Place is not a location and yet it implies a sense of space and centeredness. There is probably no better way to inquire about place than to consider plant farming—here considered to encompass plant gathering and crop growing [28]. Plant bodies overtly bridge below and above, and everything around, everything that surrounds [29]. When interacting with them, one needs to accommodate this in-betweenness. Plants provide a yardstick to approach a virtuous agroecology, this incorporating an ecosophic account of the golden mean, i.e., an agricultural ecosophy or an “agroecosophy”. Agrarian farmers and gatherers who continuously work and interact with plants on a daily basis also represent a yardstick to conceive our agroecological future wherever we live, even in densely urbanized areas. They are the keepers of the land, not only Euclidian territories geolocated on a map but also non-Euclidian, existential territories that afford in-betweenness and underlie our ability to experience the golden mean. This preliminary introduction to “agroecosophic virtues” will be developed further in the next sections based on transdisciplinary discussions conducted in the context of the PlantCoopLab, a research action project²⁰.