Beyond Humanism: Philosophical Essays on Environmental Ethics

All the major ethical theories in the Western philosophical tradition?from Socrates and Plato, through Aristotelian virtue ethics and Kantian deontology, to utilitarianism?have disagreed about two related ideas: what it means to be human and what it means to relate morally to the other. However, all of these traditions have shared the basic assumption that the morally significant other is human: family, friends, fellow citizens, or fellow human beings. This is true even when these moral relationships are established or supported by God. Given this tradition, any deep shift in our relationship to nature will require a new understanding of what it means for human beings to relate to the natural world and to live a moral life as part of that world.
The present volume, a conglomerate of number of historical and Philosophical essays from Scholars of different regions of India, do present varieties of perspectives on environment. It is a comprehensive attempt to understand the ethical response humans ought to have towards nature. The pernicious degradation on the environment results in a threat to the existence of life itself on the earth. The ?wakeup call?, though late, is an effort to let the world know about the need to create an awareness among the so called ?rationales? of the moral values attached to various ingredients of the nature of which he is a part.