We can note that he did not consider plants, bacteria, or other living beings. Holmes feared that environmental virtue ethic approaches may not suffice to value nature in itself apart from human interests. Although he mentioned the meaning of virtue used by Thoreau “in the archaic sense of an “excellence”, survival skills in the migratory fish (with no reference to praiseworthy character achievement thus analogous to perfect pitch¹² in humans)”, he contested it and asserted that value-based ethics respecting the intrinsic value of nature are preferable rather than virtue-based-ethics. We can reply to the objection that Holmes remains dualistic and anthropocentric in a classical natural-istic (as understood by Descola) way. The ethological dualism between will/instinct that underpins the dualistic opposition of acquired excellences/endowments is widely contested. More and more ethologists/psychologists/cognitivists tend to pay attention to individual variations and developed abilities in animal behaviors [44–47]. We argue that human beings, animals, plants, and other living beings can be characterized by “developed excellences” and that we should also pay attention to individual variations rather than only consider species-typical behavior. Moreover, Holmes seemed to adopt agent-based virtue ethics as a strawman, saying that concerns for human ends are not enough to cope with ecological issues. However, as Christine Swanton suggested,

> "The environmental virtues can be understood as being virtues not just because they are dispositions to promote human-centered ends, but also the ends of the flourishing and integrity of ecosystems, species, and natural objects (sentient and non-sentient) for their own sakes. Furthermore, [the principle of pluralistic virtue] allows for the environmental virtues to have a complex profile, consisting not just of promotion of good or value, but also of respect, love for, and appreciation of natural objects." [13] (p. 94).

We therefore suggest that functional ecological virtues do not need intentionality as a requisite, although there might be examples of nonhuman beings intentionally performing actions that could be defined as virtuous (e.g., from human-trained rescue dogs to animals spontaneously rescuing humans and other animals without being trained to/rewarded by humans)¹³.

## 5. Conclusions

This paper aimed to reweave the dualistic gap that separates humans from non-humans in the moral sphere or, at least, in environmental virtue ethics debates. It also aimed to contest the modern dualistic human supremacism constructed on an ontological structure, as shown by Descola, which considered that the continuity between human and non-human beings is based on (inanimate) materiality and the fact that only human beings have an interiority (hence a moral sphere).

We propose to expand or extend the concept of virtues, loading it with a functional a-moral meaning. In so doing, we see a possible way to include, among virtues, excellent actions, behaviors, and attitudes actively exercised by non-humans (plants, non-human animals, even the entire cosmos), expressing their ecological selves. The presupposition of this theoretical move is that we may be able to recognize an ontological analogy between humans and non-humans through an understanding of the ecological self that can be expressed by both humans and non-humans caught in their web of interrelations. Therefore, our strategy is to relocate virtue as an inner ensemble of a more comprehensive way of developing excellence in a mesh of various developed excellences.

Extending the ecological self to non-humans implies, first, that mastering “skills”, actions, or behaviors of living in such interconnected webs with a multitude of other beings and pursuing their own interests (flourishing themselves and sometimes making others flourish) can be recognized as functional a-moral virtues that can be exercised both by humans and non-humans. Second, if we operate this transformation, then we might also transform, in return, the concept of human virtue, not as a supremacist acquired
excellence, but as a development of the contextual excellence to interact with the middle
of life. Thirdly, virtue entering the moral sphere at a reflexive level could be one peculiar
trait of human collectives' contexts. Fourth, the awareness of "living-with" others, and the
recognition of others themselves as ecological selves, can promote human behaviors and
attitudes that positively affect the various and pressing environmental crises, especially
while contesting the reduction of non-humans to a stock of resources to be exploited by
humans. This proposal might also have implications for environmental justice, especially
while helping to reconsider Indigenous or non-modern knowledge and cosmovisions. This
paper contributes to environmental ethics scholarship in several ways. It questions long-
standing ontological assumptions about agency and the type of virtues different agents
can exercise (linked to Section 2). It broadens the notion of agency as ecological self, thus
enlarging the boundaries of who can act virtuously (linked to Section 3). It decenters
human agency—assuming that non-human beings could exercise excellent dispositions as
ecological virtues—making it possible to conceive non-anthropocentric a-moral dispositions
as functional ecological virtues (linked to Section 4). In the case of human ecological selves
acting out functional ecological virtues, intentionality can be a relevant feature of such
virtuous behavior. However, in the case of non-human ecological selves, talking about
intentionality might not be reasonable; therefore, it does not constitute a feature.

Going back to the initial question of this SI—"Is Environmental Virtue Ethics a Virtuous Anthropocentrism?"—our response in this essay was "It Depends". It depends on what kind of ontological premises we are moving from. By offering an "ontological detour" of some of the theoretical premises of EVE, we suggested that excellent behaviors as functional ecological virtues can be exercised either by human agents or by some non-human beings. Both would, indeed, act virtuously as ecological selves.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, writing—review and editing, N.C., D.D. and G.F. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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

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

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Data are contained within the article.

**Acknowledgments:** The authors would like to thank Nora Ward of the University of Galway for proofreading the article.

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

**Notes**

<footnote n="1">1 "Non-human" is intended here as a synonym of "other-than-human" in the sense of a useful logical distinction but not in the sense of maintaining or defending a dualistic stance.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2 In this text, we do not distinguish between "environmental virtue(s)" and "ecological virtue(s)". In the reminder, we use only the term "ecological virtue(s)" assuming the other as a synonym. However, in the paper entitled *Virtue Ethics and Ecological Self: From Environmental to Ecological Virtues* in this collection, Gérald Hess proposed a distinction precisely between these two. Cfr. [2].</footnote>

<footnote n="3">3 See this note of Roger Crisp in his translation of *Nichomachean Ethics*: "Areté = virtue. Alternative translation: 'excellence'. Covers non-moral as well as moral characteristics, as in, e.g., 'This book has many virtues.' Aristotle usually has in mind either moral excellences of character or intellectual excellences when using the term. It is related to the notion of 'characteristic activity' (ergon): the virtue of something consists in its capacity to perform well its characteristic activity (the virtue of an eye, for example, is to see well). Analogously, a vice (*kakia*) may be seen as a defect or flaw" [14] (p. 205).</footnote>

<footnote n="4">4 If "non-humans" is considered a synonym of "nature", then option [d] could be understood within [d].</footnote>

<footnote n="5">5 "I therefore tentatively introduce, perhaps for the first time ever, a concept of *ecological self*" [21] (p. 35).</footnote>

<footnote n="6">6 Maybe the most important debate about the ecological self is the deep ecology-ecofeminism discussion of the 1980s–1990s, when ecofeminists criticized some aspects of the ecological self proposed by deep ecologists [24]. The main critique dealt with/focused on the fact that an “expanded self” or an “indistinguishable self”, and even the identification proposed by Naess, maintains and reproduces some patriarchal distortions.</footnote>
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<footnote n="7">7. Analogism refers here to Descola's work [3] which gives it an ontological (and not only logical) meaning. Descola described the modern western ontology, called *naturalism*, as a reversed formula of animism: "articulating a discontinuity of interiorities and a continuity of physicalities" [3] (p. 172). Another ontology is *analogism*, which was dominant in western ontology until the Renaissance and which is common in some asian traditional cultures, among others. It is characterized as "a mode of identification that divides up the whole collection of existing beings into a multiplicity of essences, forms, and substances separated by small distinctions and sometimes arranged on a graduated scale so that it becomes possible to recompose the system of initial contrasts into a dense network of analogies that link together the intrinsic properties of the entities that are distinguished in it" [3] (p. 201). In this sense, *ecological virtues* could be considered as such an analogical "form" that can be shared and recognized amongst different beings and potentially arranged in another scale than the naturalistic dualistic hierarchy that only conceives human supremacy over other natural beings.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">8. By 'transformative' we mean mainly two things: (1) that we transform the mainstream conception of environmental virtue, and (2) that this new conception of ecological virtue presupposes a transformation of our main naturalistic (in Descola's sense) ontological structures and corresponding dualistic experiences of the self.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">9. When Shaw exemplified these land virtues, with "respect (ecological sensitivity), prudence and practical judgment", he tended to consider only human actions, allowing us to understand that land virtues are only characterized within the biotic community and human citizens and not all the other ones!</footnote>

<footnote n="10">10. Our proposition could even be applied to a broader scale, such as Lovelock's Gaïa self-regulating her living conditions to provide a habitat for biodiversity.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">11. For instance, at a functional level, some Ruppell's griffon vultures (*Gyps rueppelli*) that can fly up to more than 10,000 meters above African lands demonstrate incredible skills in evolving in the aerial fluid element and can undoubtedly be seen a master by paraglider's pilots. Another more politically involved example are 'weeds' and the rhizomatic vegetal resistance and proliferation model, which are taken by alternative minority ecological collectives (like in the french ZAD of Notre-Dame-des-Landes) as explicit counter-hegemonic inspiring beings and dynamics for eco-social emancipatory movements (see for instance [38] entitled "Eloge des mauvaises herbes", *In praise of weeds*).</footnote>

<footnote n="12">12. Can functional ecological virtues be considered endowed skills analogous to "perfect pitch" and thus not praiseworthy acquired excellences that seem to define virtues? This example may not be the best choice. First of all, we can observe that nobody will ever develop a so-called "perfect pitch", which is a very contextual and culturally situated skill, outside of a specific musical, familial, and social background. Thus, "perfect pitch" seems a weak paradigm of endowments as opposed to acquired excellence. It is rather the actualization in certain individuals of potentialities by a specific context (of learning, practicing, and playing some music).</footnote>

<footnote n="13">13. We also note that intentionality may not be a requisite in classical virtue ethics, at least in the exercising of virtue, because virtues tend to be considered as internalized disposition or hexis in aristotelian terms. Moreover, some virtue ethics (e.g., daoist, zen buddhist, etc.) can consider non-deliberative virtues, like *wuwei* or *ziran*, or spontaneity as a key virtue.</footnote>
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