Naturalist Worldviews and Civic Ethics
“Smoke Stack in Burns Harbor, Indiana” by Terry Evans
A central aim of the Center for Humans and Nature is to forge practically effective conceptions of democratic ecological citizenship, regional and global. Further, we share the conviction of Aldo Leopold, A.N. Whitehead, and Hans Jonas, among others, that there is no serious moral reflection absent some background, some frame setting worldview.
There have been many such worldviews embodying their own moral convictions. This likewise is a true mark of our times and has become an increasingly important issue. We are in the midst of a cultural and natural crisis. One feature of the crisis is that reigning worldviews—whether philosophical, religious, political, economic—fail adequately to express the complex and dynamic interactions of human cultural communities and the rest of the earth’s nature. In consequence, these worldviews fail us in helping to conceive our long-term responsibilities to humans and nature and in judging complex, multi-dimensioned practical issues that concern conservation, the environment, and human cultural communities.
We need robust naturalist worldviews that comprehend the place of human beings within nature. The reigning naturalist worldview in the West has it origin in evolutionary and ecological biology or Darwinism. Yet what this worldview and its ethical connotations are remains unsettled, and there are other naturalist visions offered by other disciplines or cultural endeavors (religion, art, and literature).
With an eye towards short and long term environmental or conservation crises, the Center for Humans and Nature will convene a multidisciplinary research group to address speculatively and critically the promise of comprehensive naturalist worldviews and the insights they offer to a civic humans and nature ethics adequate to our times.