The last man
On the axis: Humanity's place in nature · the living world
If the last human being could, as he died, wipe out all remaining life with no witness, would he do wrong? Does nature have worth only for us, or does it have worth in itself, independent of any human gaze?
This problem is brought out by the thought experiment The last man:
Imagine you are the very last human being. A catastrophe has carried off all the others, and you yourself will die in a few moments, with no descendants and no witness to come. Before you, a device could wipe out at a stroke, and without the slightest pain, everything still alive on the planet: the forests, the oceans, the animals. No human being will ever again exist to rejoice in it or to suffer from it. Nothing you do can therefore harm anyone. Would laying your hand on that device be a wrong, or a matter of indifference?
Richard Routley (Sylvan), Is There a Need for a New, an Environmental Ethic? (1973)
As the last human being, you could painlessly wipe out all remaining life. Is it wrong?
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Justification
Against the program of and , the human as "master and possessor of nature", the current refuses as the primary relation to the natural world. It divides between two answers: the human as a of a community of the living, with no privileged position, in and ; or the responsible whom their very power obliges, in .
Næss, Ecology, Community and Lifestyle (1976) · Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility (1979)
Justification
The founding gesture of the current is to widen the beyond humans alone, against the tradition's . Where to draw the new boundary divides the family: to every being capable of suffering for , to every being for , to themselves for and . All reject the idea that the human alone counts.
Singer, Animal Liberation (1975) · Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (1949)
Anchors: Routley (Sylvan) · Næss · environmental ethics
leads to: Moral circle (The individual or the whole)